Month: June 2012

Some of you have asked if I have ended the Death Chronicles or run out of concepts. Uhm… No. The recent spate of deaths and killings in the country are just a little too grim, and making a parody of Death at this time just seems..well.. So I’m giving Hades a bit of a break, and we’ll continue in a bit.

I was hunting about for a topic when @Obee_007 told me about this ‘How to date a Writer’ post, so I looked it up. It was aii, but she made writers look too good. So after considering some of the writers I know, I decided someone needs to say the truth.
Before I start, a few ground rules:
1. When I say ‘Writer’, I don’t mean anybody who can put together a few words and make a sentence. Hell, even my mother can do that, and that woman possesses not a shred of artistry in that accountant mind. Okay, maybe a shred.
2. I am not talking only about the successful writers; Soyinka; Chimamanda; Dan Brown; that guy from that blog, whatshisname?, so if their names were in your head, forget it.
I am talking about all true artists, the ones who know how to use their words to spin webs of magic…and those who want to uhm..learn to do that.
3. This piece is probably going to be very long.
So, When You Date A Writer:

1. Love the Writing
This is the singular, most important rule of all. All sins may be forgiven, and a generous amount may even be forgotten, but this is the mother of them all. If you don’t love the writing, there is no place for you.
You see, Writers are a bit of the egoistic, narcisstic type. In English, we would love you, if you adore us. So when you don’t know half the lines from his novel or story or poem, or you don’t comment on his blog(Yes! Yes! Yes!), you just got a notch against your name in the big Black book.
On the other hand, Writers detest fawning or pretence, especially when it comes to their work. They want their work to be acknowledged for their prowess, and not due to personal motivations. So if you don’t like the piece, gently say so, rather than get caught pretending. Your writer lover would love you more for being an honest critic.

2. Drama

This is like the most annoying trait of all. Writers can be dramatic!!!smh.. Everything is a scene from a play, every word perfect and scripted. In a relationship, this can be uber-annoying. To worsen matters, to keep a writer, you have to be a bit of a drama queen too. Writers abhore (and yes, they love big words) boring, un-artistic people. You have to be interesting to keep a writer.

3. They are not ‘cool’

*sigh*..It is the truth.
Writers may be elegant, debonair, chatty, witty, drive expensive cars, dine at the classiest restaurants, live in penthouses, but they ain’t cool; not in the uhm..sense of the word. There would always be something off about them; she will not know how to do the azonto, and he would rather watch the Grand Prix than UEFA. I guess sometime during the creation process, that ‘cool gene’ got replaced by a certain weirdness. If you date a writer, get ready for a level of eccentricity (in English, a whole load of dorkiness).
However dorky he/she may be though, the crazy weirdness of writers attracts people to them. If you want a relationship with lots of surprises and weird turns and twists, a writer is your best bet.
And the sex…back to the post!

4. Melancholia? Yup!

They can form deep and emotional! Hian! It’s not their fault though, most of the time they were born with issues: Daddy issues, early masturbation, not-getting-that-Buzz-Lightyear-action-figure-at-the-christmas issues etc. They get pensive and retreat into their inner shells a lot, which can be quite nerve-wracking in relationships, especially when they have Writer’s block or get a bad review (Writers reaaaally hate criticism..beats me!). All those writers, like @Xaviers_lore them, after reading Tolkien and Goodking, would now be forming deep and mystical, claiming addiction to a “..certain kind of sadness” Puuuhlease! (˘̯˘ )/`

5. The Money

If you’re dating a writer for his cash, you jam rock! The thing is, writers don’t really care about money (..don’t ask me..), hell, they don’t even comprehend the meaning of material things. It’s that ‘poetic’ twang working against their senses. I know someone who gave his girlfriend a baby bib and feeding bottle for her birthday, since well..she’s his ‘Baby’..smh. But sha, they really show you that, it’s not all about the money, other things do matter. So dash those dreams of 32-carat, platinum-inlaid, Lola paluzzi diamond rings and Honeymoons in New York, say hello to plastic circlets and climbing monastries in Greece or safaris in Kenya.
And sometimes they can afford it.. ¯\(º_o)/¯

6. Never disturb the work process

I agree with this entirely.
When you see me butt naked, sitting on the balcony with a piece of rope, a jar of ice-cream, a packet of condoms and a bowl of hot soup, please go back to sleep. I know what I am doing.
Writers are crazy people, and sometimes to better portray a scenario, we have to understand it, and to understand, we may have to experiment. So just ignore and don’t critique.
NB: the ice-cream is for inspiration.

7. Writers are hardly faithful

Uhm..uhm..I don’t totally agree with this.
Quite alright, writers are quite flighty which, I guess, is what you get when your train of imagination is trackless (#stolen). It is why their relationships are necessarily full of drama and excitement. However, when the excitement fades, the writer is oft times too bored to continue.
Just so you know..

8. Stolen Convos
When you date a writer, prepare to be casted into their stories. If you have never been used as the object of your writer-lover’s poem, article, story, then chances are they don’t love you.
Your conversations will be stolen and used in novels, your views amplified and used in articles. He would write a poem with your emotions, write a joke about your dress-sense, cast a sex scene involving your breasts and that scar above your nipple. If you’re the type who doesn’t appreciate your private life staring at you from the pages of a book, get used to it when you date a writer.

9 Words

Big words, small words, sarcasm, metaphor, irony, exaggerations, hurtful words, painful words, loving words, true words etc. Writers use them all. Apparently they say only what they mean, using the right words at for the situation. (Yeah..right…) Anyway though, if a writer says they love you, they mean it…at that moment.

10. They can not help it

Writers have been weird since they were born. In school, they were probably the dorky ones; the girl with the wrong plaits and the long baggy skirts or the guy with the big dorky glasses. What they do, how they do it, is not really their fault. However, it’s annoying when in the middle of sex at 3:00am, she screams “Aha!” and runs naked to her table to scribble ten pages of a novel, or type a blog-post. And I am just supposed to take it in stride.

Finally though, nothing beats dating a Writer. They are funny, romantic, witty, intelligent. They understand you, and their christmas gifts are the best. Love songs, poems and stories would be dedicated to you. And when you consider how fast and wide their imagination soars, just imagine the sex…

Uhm..ok bye.

Disclaimer

• it is a bad idea to date a writer
• uhm..I am faithful oh!!!..I think.

ff me on twitter @janus_aneni

Peace.

This isn’t usually my style as most of you know, but one of my uncles sent me this today and it really applied to me. It was written by Marina Keegan, a 22 year-old final year student of Yale.
I don’t know her course sha..
Ignore that,  read on…

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

Disclaimer

• I am posting this with WordPress for Blackberry..mscheeeeew
• Marina Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday
• If this post applied to only graduates, I do not apologise
• WordPress for Blackberry would not let someone be great sha..smh
• Disclaimer haf finished

ff me on twitter @janus_aneni

Peace.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.