Before he died in 2009, the King of Pop Michael Jackson owned at least 10,000 books. No kidding. Ten thousand books. Why? How can one man possibly read 10,000 books in one lifetime? This was apart from newspapers and magazines, emails, SMS, song lyrics. Plus, Michael Jackson was no ordinary man.
She calls and says, “I just want to hear your voice.”
But my reaction was a massive sigh. And then I say, “Thank God.” to which she responds: “Why, you missed me too?”
“Well, yes. But that’t not why I said thank God.”
Books are not the only source of information and intelligence these days. If you read the Brain Pickings newsletter, for instance, you could find yourself gradually becoming a polymath.
I’m deeply honoured to be named to the grand jury of the New York Festivals Advertising Awards. Which is a super big deal.
To tantalise, according to Google, is to tease. To torment. Now, why would anyone want to associate their restaurant to that punishing feeling?
This is a meme I saw on my WhatsApp Status today:
Yesterday I drove by Ahmadu Bello Way and looked to the right. The beach was no longer there!
Wait, who removes a beach?
The Bar Beach, aka Victoria Beach, was always the highpoint of Ahmadu Bello Way. You knew it was always there. But now it’s not.
There’s something called the Morning After Effect. Nope, it’s got nothing to do with alcohol nor does it refer to athletic sex. It’s totally about music. Yes we realise that music is like an addictive drug for some people and many sexual encounters do demand a fitting soundtrack. But, for this special episode of our life-disrupting discussions, let’s consider the Morning After Effect of Afropolitan Vibes.
If you haven’t heard, let me tell you something: Uber is a very big deal. No, not UberSocial, Uber.
Just when everyone thought that the wheel on a taxicab couldn’t be reinvented, Uber went ahead and reinvented it. Although it tries to discourage people from calling it a taxi service, preferring ‘ridesharing’ company instead, the easiest way to understand what Uber is all about is to look at it as a cab service on steroids.
However, what perfectly sums up the business idea behind the company is its tagline: Everyone’s Private
Steve Jobs was a fraud. He pretended that he didn’t research the iPod. Or the iPhone for that matter. Steve Jobs has been quoted many times quoting Henry Ford who said this: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Steve Jobs lied.
The truth is that Steve Jobs never asked people what they wanted. Because, of course, nobody knew what a better the best MP3 player would look like. Who would have thought that a mere MP3 player would become a thing of desire? But here’s what Mr Jobs knew:
If you can’t speak your native language, you’re doomed. Sorry I don’t mean to be alarmist, but no matter how you cut it, it is still a tragedy. If you lose your identity, you neither belong here nor there. And neither do your spawn after you. You’re in an identity purgatory, which is like hell on earth. And you’re doomed.
So. I started thinking this way because someone in my office challenged my command of the Yoruba language. She said to me:
I was eating popcorn when I received the call that my mom had died. My wife and one year old daughter were in the car with me. I parked the car, blocking the entrance to a residential building, and cried with childlike recklessness. When the security guard to that house came to shoo us away, he saw a grown man crying in front of his family and decided to let us be. I dropped the bag of buttered popcorn. Now, many months afterwards, every time I try to eat buttered popcorn, I remember the day my mom died and I lose my appetite.
The day my mom was buried, however, a friend of mine told me some fascinating stories about his dad. I’m going to tell you three of those stories.
