Ok, a thousand apologies for donning the Deepak Chopra hat. I’ve never even read an Iyanla Vanzant book! 

Think about it, in life being considered uncool will not get you many friends. In most cases, ‘being cool’ means living for the moment. The guy who spends his groceries’ money buying Patrone for friends on a night out is “a legend”. The same reverence is bestowed upon the girl who ‘catches the no-food-buying-Patrone-on-me’ guy!  So I decided to risk being uncool and throw a penny into this pool of insanity. Maybe it will stir a few brain-cells…

Ever the one who wants to run things, I recently worked out an approach that could help make it happen for anyone. So here goes: 

1.       Fam first, always.

The most hardcore of gangsters will tell you, never neglect your family! That might also include the great people you meet on your way up, may I add to that. Family love is one of the few guaranteed things in this world. And after all, are we doing what we are doing to take the family name higher?

2.       Beware the comfort zone

“It’s the easiest spot to be in”, warns Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs. “In most cases, the comfort zone pulls you in while you are unaware.” You’ve been doing this for ages; you know how to work Indesign with your eyes on that hottie in the next office; the new coffee machine found you here; hell, you’ve even been to the MD’s house for his birthday bash. True players know, having a 9-2-5 doesn’t mean you’re home and dry.

3.       Find your Mister Miyagi

It’s simple really. If you’re in a certain career yet can’t single out one person you look up to in the same field, you should get out. (Michael Zulu, the fact that you admire how Zee hits back those tequila shots doesn’t vindicate your ass!) Even before he was shooting hoops at high school, Kobe Bryant knew he wanted to be a basketballer. He wanted to be like Michael Jordan. That spirit has driven him to acquire legendary status.

4.       Shield your eyes with your hand to show your role model that you’re looking up to them.

Everyone has to start somewhere. And learning is a big part of that. Where would the music world be if the late Buena Vista Social Club’s bassist, Orlando ‘Cachaito’ Lopez hadn’t spent days honing his skills under the tutelage of his respected uncle, Israel ‘Cachao’ Lopez? Get it? Cachao…Cachaito! 

5.       Listen to yourself

It’s a fact; ‘Yes men’ are down there with rats and cockroaches! The best way to spot this pathetic species is how they handle advice. Or more like how lap up advice without any questions. Master the art of listening and decision-making. Use that ‘advice sift’. This is your life.

6.       Kick Mr. Miyagi’s ass

It’s about raising the bar. Now that you’ve grasped the lessons on how to make it, why not go make it bigger? Out with the old. In with the brave new, mesays.

7.       Preach the role model’s gospel in your own way

Be cognisant of the times and what you can do. Create a personal stamp and add it onto an existing formula. Carrol Boyyes is doing it!

So there. Let’s move from ducking shots and start eating some quail.

Phew, I promise to write about something more exciting next time! Sex?

 Think about it, this love for chicken is fervent from Luanda to Madeira, Rio de Janeiro to Soweto. It is one of the few things Themba from Diepsloot informal settlement in South Africa has in common with Mekhi from Upper Manhattan, USA.

 Attempts to get to the bottom of this have yielded everything from funny comedy skits, tasteless perspectives to extreme cases where people (instead of the chicken) lost their lives! And who can forget our learned friends at that university-that-is-famous-for-conducting-research-on-everything-including-research-itself who confirmed that there is nothing in any Black person’s genetic makeup that predisposes them to the famed ‘no chicken shall cross the road’ mentality. After picking 25 Black people from all over the world and placing them on a strict no-chicken diet for 3 months, they also concluded that there was a noticeable dip in their outlook on life. Doh…

 To understand the relationship between Black people and chicken one has to go way back to the early years in Africa. The Dark Ages. To increase their survival odds, everyone belonged, and remained loyal, to a tribe. This group of people stayed together and did all the survival things like gathering fruit, looking for fresh water and hunting together. Mostly, it was the men’s duty to go hunting for game and as in today’s world; meat was a rarity compared to, say, African potato. A tough task it is, hunting always had individualistic elements to it – every man hunted for his family. However, when a big animal was killed it was expected of that hunter to invite his tribesmen over to his house for a feast. When a hunter came home with a small catch, it was him and his family who had smiles on their faces come dinner time. In most cases the meat was shared according to age and logically, meatier catches like guinea fowls and other bigger birds brought more joy to everyone in the family.

 Fast forward to the years when Westerners decided that Blacks were a commodity of sorts and started shipping them all over the world. The Slave Trade era. Slave owners fed their chattel as cheaply as possible, often with throwaway food from their tables and plantations. Corn, tops of turnips, beet and dandelion were the main ingredients in slaves’ meals. On those rare occasions they gave them offal, pigs’ legs and chicken skins. The slaves started adding garlic, onions and thyme to the food to enhance the flavour and this is where the renowned ‘soul food’ started. Later on laws were relaxed and slaves were allowed to own small pieces of land where they grew vegetables and started rearing chickens and pigs. Because of its ample size and by-products, especially lard, pork rivalled chicken as the meat of choice in many ‘soul food’ dishes at some point. However, when it was discovered that the high fat content in pork causes obesity, hypertension and other ailments such as Type 2 Diabetes, chicken flew to the number one spot as the meat of choice amongst the new-age slaves. Chickens were slaughtered on special occasions and added something extra to the ‘soul food’ come mealtime for the families.

 This practise was visible everywhere in the world. With Black people living under more or less the same conditions, a chicken coop in the backyard became a similar feature in many households. Plus it counted for a lot that chickens are easy animals to rear: egg, a chick weeks later, a hassle-free diet of maize and other food scraps and voila, you have a sizeable fowl to make a memorable family meal. Many families will eat vegetables during the week but come Sunday lunch, one of the few occasions where Black families sit together for a meal, chicken will be on the menu. I even thought my friend had a point when she said that ‘the mere thought of eating chicken for Sunday lunch gave many Black people enough hope to carry them through the week’. Is chicken a liberation icon of sorts as well, maybe? Don’t even get me started on how every Black neighbourhood has a legendary ‘chicken cook’…

 Time flew. The world evolved. The family model changed. Cooking methods expanded yet the connection between Black people and chicken is as intense as ever. Be it at funerals, parties or weddings, chicken is considered the special meat. The fights over who should be served this meat during these occasions at many a Black gathering is stuff of legends. And as we all know, men like Colonel Saunders of KFC fame and Nando’s Fernando Duarte and Robert Brozin owe a lot to the Blacks/ chicken link.

 My conclusion is, even in the modern day, chicken is not only the meat for us. Subconsciously or otherwise, whenever a Black person takes a bite of that piece of chicken it’s a deep-seated journey to ‘something real’.  To a time when the family got together. The mother’s inimitable cooking. Laughter. The graduation from the little piece to having a choice. Love. Bond. Something inside so strong…

 In short, the chicken takes us home.

* Many thanks to Wikipedia for fortifying my general knowledge, especially with the ‘soul food’ bit, on this one.

Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to. – TLC

‘Freedom of expression’ is arguably the most misinterpreted and abused right in the world. Someone, I just don’t remember who, summed it up perfectly when they said, “The right to express yourself ends where your nose begins”. Sadly, there’s a bunch of people who don’t subscribe to this mentality and are hell-bent on stretching their expressions to places their noses will never catch a whiff of. 

The most notable (read annoying) of this huge bunch are those who decided that the best way to express themselves is through the written word. You don’t even have to think about the last time you came across one because badly-written articles, stories, blogs and books are everywhere. Countless internet bloggers should get the Van Dammesque power of my kick but my blood reaches boiling point when I think of the number of inept authors, advertising copywriters, poets, songwriters, scriptwriters, journalists, hip hop artists, etc

 From the Bible (In the beginning was the Word…), Shakespeare (To be or not to be…), fairy tales (pick any) to your local daily; written word continues to have a profound effect on countless lives. It’s simple, if it’s well penned and. to a certain extent, relevant, its power knows no boundaries. How these people overlook this fact baffles me. That some of them get paid to spew their bullshit our way is a discussion I don’t even want to get into!

It’s sad to see them overlooking the magic that writing can bring. Instead of tintinnabulations, the bells in their missives ring, their cows graze in the Free State July; nearby flower vases explode seconds after the gun goes ‘bam!’; ‘strange’ rhymes with ‘orange’ and in extreme cases, their people they run!

 In an attempt to understand their actions, I narrowed it down to the following reasons:

1. Lack of guidance during formative years

School is the first place where writers separate themselves from, um, non-writers. Like Shakira’s hips, those 40% aggregates in comprehension and grammar tests didn’t lie. They were a clear warning that little Matthew is very dangerous with a pen in hand and that he’s better off carving desks and shelves in the Woodwork class! Imagine if teachers across the country played a more active role in guiding the learners to fields where their natural ability will carry them through. And it would really do this world so much good if they drum it into the learners’ heads that THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD.

1. The peanut gallery

This is me and you; the consumers who peck at these people’s work and never come clean with them. Sometimes we don’t wanna hurt their feelings or we pray quietly that their next instalment will be better. More often than not, we shake ourselves from post-consumption disgust and, with a big grin, high-five them for their efforts. A colleague describes a friend who is a hip hop artist: “He calls himself ‘the bee’s knees in the hip hop universe’. Seeing him on stage is embarrassing. During one freestyle session he went: Were I French they’d call me Manufique/ So tyte I’m the Dalai Lama of music/ Yeah, my rhymes are sick… I’m yet to recover from that but hey, he’s my boy and I will always support him.” Who needs enemies when you have friends like these! Let’s be constructive. If it’s a bad performance, let the artist know. Who’s fooling who when you’re sitting through an uninspiring poetry session, a cringeworthy comedy show or a bad movie. And if you read a blog and it smacks of rubbish, offload in the ‘comment box’ for heaven’s sake! After all, terrible things happen when good people do nothing.

1. Ignorance

They say it’s bliss but honestly, ignorance is the reason for so many wrongs. With the different media at our fingertips, everyone knows where the standard is. Either these people are looking to mediocrity for inspiration or they simply turned a blind eye when their peers gave the world gems like these:

Life’s a bitch but God forbid the bitch divorces me –Nas in the track, Life’s a bitch.

Would I have turned out to be nothing if Mama had not married Daddy? Would I not be the same Ofilwe I am now if Mama had never made it out of the dreaded location? What if Mama had chosen love, where would I be now? What would I be now? Nothing? – Ofilwe in Kopano Matlwa’s book, Coconut

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. – Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) in the movie, Forrest Gump

Whose cruel joke was it to put ‘s’ in ‘lisp’? – Savannah Dry Cider print ad

There are too many examples to illustrate where the standard is. Do yourself a favour: Watch the movie, Sideways. Make it a point not to miss the TV series Society, on SABC 1. YouTube ‘VW commercials’. Make Sunday Times’ Carlos Armato’s and Simnikiwe Xabanisa’s articles part of your weekly consumption. Go to your nearest CD store and ask for Common’s ‘One day it will all make sense’. Get your hands on Zapiro’s ‘Pirates of Polokwane’ and any Johnny Steinberg book. Go to a Trevor Noah comedy show. Hell, have a beer with degreed people!

1. Attention-seeking

We all know of that kid. The one who doodles on the freshly painted wall with a crayon. All because no one gave him any attention. This time we are dealing with adults so a snotklap might not be the solution. Neglecting to stay true to thyself is the main reason why grown-ass men and women go to the extreme to get noticed. A friend might be a great rugby player but that doesn’t mean I have to throw my scrawny self into the scrum. When you find something that you love, a task you can complete with your eyes closed, an occupation where your being is not compromised and your family name comes out intact; you will rise. There are many way to appreciate the written word. And no one will hold it against you if you limit your creativity to Facebook status updates.

At the end of the day it’s more than about the trees.

Please, think about the children.

Put that pen down. 

P.S. Due to their 3-brain cells nature, Daily Sun reporters and SMS-spk writers (God bless them or is it, GBT?) are exempt from my wrath.