Blog Review For Today - Naapali

Chronicled by Afronuts @ Monday, May 19, 2008

From the info page to the blog pages, Naapali struck me as some shaman or internet sage of some sort.
His blog is simple but has this look that strikes you with the feeling that you are about to go into the depths of a deep spiritual and philosophical mind. The Mysticism is interesting and engaging.
Naapali’s interest and use of rich art murals which adorn his page and avatar space are elements that reflect the nature of the blog’s owner: a lover and devotee of the arts.

But those are not the only things you’ll notice when reading Naapali’s blog.

The depth of knowledge, the artistic virtuoso of narration, the powerful metaphoric allusions, the richness in choice of words and strength of entertaining semantics makes Naapali’s blog a delightful read.
The strong sense of intellectual reasoning is unmistakable. When Naapali narrates a story, you are compelled not to only be entertained but to also look for a take-away message because you’ll somehow sense that there’s much more between the lines than what you see and read.
When you read Naapali’s entry, you are taken into the depths of an unusual mind. Its always very possible to be both entertained and educated on Naapali’s entries with all the allusions he makes now and then to historical facts, biological facts, and all manner of educative facts and references.

I would have gone ahead to say Naapali’s blog only appeals to the intellectual mind but that would be a misnomer because even a non-intellectual mind can be carried along as well. It’s a classic example of intellectualism rendered with simplicity (I hope you get what I mean). The creativity and thinking is outstanding (check out his Second Floor Macy's series). I’m inspired by this blog to fully resurrect my writer’s skills into full swing.

Undeniably. Naapali’s blog is a blog I will always enjoy reading. That’s why it made my list.

Rating for Naapali
This Blog Rocks!

kush chronicles 101

Chronicled by Afronuts @ Monday, May 19, 2008

Okay, I have been hearing complaints about my comment section on my blog. Most people dont know how to work it. So here's a simple tutorial on how it works. I hope y'all get it.


When you open my comments page, this is what you see. At first it looks as if all the other comments are not visible but the are actually there. What you probably don't notice is that there is a side scrollbar at the bottom which the red arrow in the visual is pointing at in the image below.




When you scroll horizontally, the other comments will appear. There is also a vertical scroll (arrowed in yellow) in case you want to scroll upwards.



If you don't see the scrollers, then your explorer is probably outdated but all the same if you click on the space and move the arrow buttons on your keyboard, the comment segment will scroll.

Answering to the Random Tagging

Chronicled by Afronuts @ Monday, May 12, 2008

Okay, so Standtall tagged me and I promised to respond. So here are the random things about me. I actually had done it and was about to post it as Things you won’t believe about me. But it don't matter. Its the same thing. So here goes...

1. I don’t watch football.
Yeah! And when I say this most look at me in a funny way and think I’m weird just because I don’t dig what every other guy likes. Duh!
The reason is simple…as long as I gain nothing except a sore throat from screaming at players goofing on the field, then it aint worth it. What even sickens me the most is the fact that over here in Nigeria, we have people who are fans of foreign football teams like Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea etc. but no one will claim to be a fan of our own Eyimba football club and the likes. Apart from watching Nigeria in International tournaments, I don’t watch anything else about ball.

2. I’m not ‘shooking’ till we’re married.
That’s true. I don’t believe sex is the true expression of love and besides I feel it’s wrong to even do it b4 marriage. I believe that any guy that can’t hold his zip up till he ties the knot is still a boy and not a man. Yeah, I know some of you will think I’m nuts reserving sex till marriage but know this, its only strong and determined people that can hold out like that. Besides that, I always make sure my woman and I never get into a circumstance that will make us to do it. We’ve faced temptation many times but we always find a way to fight it. To me, that’s a way of respecting my God who has laid it as a law in the Bible and a way of respecting my fiancée too.

3. I dislike huge nigerian wedding ceremonies
Yes I do with a passion! All the ‘aso ebi’ thingy and flamboyant spending and spraying of money on people. What in the world?? Ugh! I believe the wedding should be a brief ceremony with just modest celebration, not a carnival! The bigness of the wedding doesn’t determine that a marriage will last. That’s why I’ve decided not to let anybody push me into what the nature of my wedding should be. After all, the size of my wedding won’t be in my resume, will it? And the funniest thing is that after the whole thing, it’s forgotten. I can’t even stress how bad the money spraying habit is. I think huge weddings (especially when you struggle to do one that eats your pocket) are just a sorry excuse to throw a big party and ‘show dem say you sabi.’ Sorry if I’m bursting someone’s bubble.

4. I don’t believe in Visa Lottery
I just feel it’s another form of slavery. It’s what’s been responsible for taking away most of the brains from Nigeria and Africa. Bad enough, we all get to be second class citizens when we get there.
I’d rather just travel abroad for better education and come back here to explore the endless opportunities which the many Asians are seeing but Nigerians are failing to see. I’ve discovered some of the secrets to these opportunities and I’m gonna tap into it.
Visa Lottery is just awoof that will scatter belle.

5. Success is in how I’ve touched lives, not how many houses and cars I have.
It’s a common thing among Nigerians here. A man hits big money (mostly illegal) and uses cars to decorate his compound and builds houses in high brow areas with ‘prison walls’ to show the world that he has ‘arrived’. He doesn’t know he’s just displaying his low self-esteem. One of them occupying our seats of power once made a stupid comment some years back that mobile phones were not for poor people. Today, everybody, including the poor are mobile!

6.I have beef for Nollywood

The average Nigerian movie is downright predictable, stereotypical, occasionally senseless, lacking in suspense and creativity and negligent in details. Apart from classic Nigerian movies that were produced by Nigerian producers/directors with foreign exposure and expertise, I can never be found accidentally spending my money buying a Naija movie. Most of the culprits are the English movies. The Yoruba movies are not doing bad though they are still affected. The most annoying is the term ‘Nollywood’. Where did it come from? It’s nothing but a copycat! It’s just an intangible entity unlike Hollywood which is also location in itself. It’s no wonder it’s hard for original stuff to come out of the industry.

I'm tagging Ollay, Charizard, Pamela, and Archiwiz. So you guys get cracking!

The Gaping Maw

Chronicled by Afronuts @ Tuesday, May 06, 2008

It was like 12 years ago when I paid a visit to the dentist to have one of my molars filled. I had a nasty sweet tooth and was finally getting to 'reap the benefits'of my obsession. I had awoken in the middle of the night groaning in pain, waking up the entire household. My parents had rushed me off to the dentist the moment it was morning and the dentist had resumed at the hospital.


If you've ever been to the dentist to have a screwed up tooth drilled with a small drilling machine in order to clean out the decay and make room for proper filling, you can understand what I mean when I say, it was a nightmare I never wanted to experience again.


As the the dentist drilled my rotten molar, I screamed in horror as unspeakable pain ricochetted through my entire body. Mum held me and assured me it was gonna be alrite.

I was like WT?? Alrite? This dude is drilling me to death!



As the drill bit deeper into my molar, I percieved the smell of granite, it was the smell of hot friction against my tooth as it chipped away under the intensity of the dental drill. I screamed like a banshee, the nurse and my Mum held me down tight. I sweated profusely like a condemed criminal. I thought I was gonna die.

Eventually the dentist stopped drilling, got me to rinse my mouth and proceeded to fill up the gap in my tooth. I promised myself I'd never get into a dentist chair again.

Wrong!!

12 years later the same tooth started acting up. I was like 'aw hell no!' But hell yeah I needed to go get my choppers checked.

The dentist was a nice middle aged lady. I thought because she was nice I would have it easy on my dentals. She examined me and discovered the tooth had cracked and some it had broken off (Now I know why I thought there was stone in my rice!). She did a temporary fill, then instructed me to come back in a few weeks but if it begun to pain me I should come down immediately.

A week passed. Two weeks, then the pain came. I dismissed it as just a healing process thingy until it became excruciating and kept me awake all night. The next morning I took off for the dentist from the office on permission. The tooth had no choice but to be removed.



My dentist, the nice lady got me seated in the comfortable dentists chair. somewhere inside me, the dread began to mount again. She's gonna dis-tooth me. Won't it be painful? I had heard from others that there would be anasthetics to dull the pain and that's what chilled me a bit.


She injected my gums with anasthetics and I relaxed as my mouth-flesh went limp. My dentist is a nice lady so I thought she would do it gently on me.

Wrong!!

I almost screamed when she picked something that looked like an ice pick and began to break the base of my tooth. It was so intense that I accidentally bit her finger.

I almost fainted when she picked up something that looked like a plier.
I close my eyes and practically went half dead as she yanked my skull and pried to and fro. I was still waiting for more terrible episodes when I was told it was over. I gasped in relief, my mouth region still half-dead and feeling like Sylvester Stallone's face. It felt so good to over the whole nasty toothy affair. But I felt strange; I now had a gaping maw which I had to adapt to for the next four weeks before I had a replacement. It was like being disabled, I could only eat unpleasantly with one side of my mouth for the next few days.



Word to y'all - take good care of ur frigging dentals! After my experience I understood the full meaning of 'Prevention is better than cure'!




PS. I'll soon be posting my own 'random things about me' as posted by Standtall who 'tagged' me to do my own version. Haven't forgotten!