I have known of James Bond for as long as I've been alive. He's essentially, the most visible example of Witchcraft, Wizardry, Sorcery, or flagrant Vampirism in the world.

I refuse to believe that there's some new medical procedure that's helped him stay between 31 and 42 for 53 years! And I absolutely refuse to believe that it's a code name. There can't be that many men with deathly alcoholism, chronic commitment issues, profound womanizing disease, and the most terrible loathing of disabled people in all the world.

I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, "But how the Vladimir Putin does Afam know that James Bond has some rather frightening feelings about disabled people?" I shall break it down for you Villain by Villain.

Dr Julius, Amputee, boiled to death!
I mean... Couldn't Bond just have shot him and been done with it. It's a ridiculous way to kill a man!

Emilio Largo, blind in the left eye, shot through the back with A SPEAR GUN!  
Talk about Overkill. 

Ernst Stavros Blofeld, Paralyzed, Incineration.
Can someone say fire and brimstone

Tee Hee Johnson, hand eaten by crocodile, tossed off a speeding train.

Francisco Scarmanga, three nipples, shot in the heart #heartshot.
Finally! Something humane. If being shot through the heart can be called humane.

Karl Stromberg, webbed hands, multiple shots to the penis.
Have Mercy Bond! It's supposed to be Bang bang he shot me down, not Bang Bang I no longer have a Penis. 

Alec Trevelyan, Sever Facial Scarring, tossed 50 stories and then crushed by metal debris.
Because he wasn't dead enough after falling down the equivalent of a sky scraper!

Le Chifre, he had a weeping bloody eye (quite disgusting, really), head shot.

Raol Silva, horrendous looking he had no jaw and he was in terrible need of a dental appointment, stabbed in the back.


There is also the matter of his promiscuity. In all the years that I've seen him in action, I have never once seen him with a condom! Does he have a latex penis or do his magical vampire body switching powers prevent him from catching STDs? Or maybe it's that he reconstructs his body everytime he gets a new potentially fatal infection.

And what of his alcoholism? How many vodka martinis can a human being possibly consume without being a functional alcoholic or gaining a liver with the same constitution as a stone?

As far as I can tell, the only good thing about Bond is his sense of style. He really does know how to pull of a suit.

Look at him on the left. I'd be so taken with the suit that I'd literally forget to dodge. I only have one good suit and I've got an affinity for hand me downs.

A charcoal grey double breasted suit, a white shirt and a red tie. I can't tell if it's a match made in heaven or in hell. All I can tell you, is that every man should aspire to look like this at least once in his life.

Happy Days,
Afam
Thanks to Suit Direct for these epic illustrations about Bonds present and past. 

Also, thank you internet for revealing Bond's apparent hatred for the disabled. I do not think I would have noticed it without you. Particular thanks should go to the Funny or Die team, for I laughed and I didn't die. 

For more about how to look like Bond without killing, drinking or shagging like him, please go here- https://www.suitdirect.co.uk/inspiration/james-bonds-suit-wardrobe

Ah famzers it has been a while. Well it's only been 8 days but in blogging time this is an eternity. For those of you who noticed my absence and missed me I love you. You're far too good for me and you're far too good to me. Even if I worked everyday to deserve your goodness I would come up short. For those of you who didn't notice, I hate you. You are terrible. But even this hate is love. I only hate you because you do not love me more. You do not love me as much as I love you.

I was going to write you a scorcher on Valentines day but my Valentines day did not go the way I planned. You see, on Valentines day I was going to make a few phone calls, and then maybe go out for supper at Manchester's most popular hipster palace with the lady in my life but I didn't.

Manchester's most popular hipster joint is an American themed anti-establishment restaurant by the name of Almost Famous. Even though bloggers are not allowed in I managed to sneak in without anyone being the wiser. This is how much I love my Famzers. I sneak into alien territories to bring you the scoop. More on this later.

I didn't start my Valentines day with a box of chocolates or paying for flowers, I started my Valentines day in one of these.


No, I didn't climb into one of the very fine bins at Student Castle because I have a little bit of a kinky fetish for them, I climbed into one of them because I accidentally threw my wallet and my phone in there with the trash. In my Afam playbook there are only 3 plays that can emerge from something like this happening so early in the day.

• The Universe has its eye out for me. Any and every activity I partake in will be jeopardised by one freak incident or the other. Call in sick and spend the day watching Scandal. (This might be completely inappropriate but Kerry Washington's face seems to blossom when she is whimpering, screaming or looking depressed. She never looks more beautiful than when she's acting like her life's about to go up in flames. Her face was made for suffering. I can only hope that she continues to pick more emotionally challenging roles.)

Photo credit: abc. Do you see what I mean? She looks upset. She looks like she just saw someone eat a goldfish alive! But she's never looked more attractive. More power to her. She makes the struggle look sexy.

•  The universe is trying to tell me that my phone is pants, that it is about time that I put it where it belongs i.e the bin. Well a year ago I would have believed this but I have come to the conclusion that I should not rush into getting a new phone. If I got an iphone 5 today i could break it in an hour. I'd rather bang up my already banged up blackberry (struggleberry, crackberry, shitberry #justsaying)
• Lastly, the universe is trying to tell me that my wallet is pants. Tell the universe to stick its head up its arse and then get a colonoscopy to determine whether or not it has succeeded in this endeavor. My wallet is very good at telling pickpockets that the opportunity cost of picking my pocket is too high. You see, if anyone were to pick my pocket and relieve me of my wallet, they would immediately find that I have no money. They only have so much time to pick so many pockets. Picking an empty pocket is a risk they cannot afford.

I decided that the first play was the best play and spent all day in bed watching Scandal. I don't think I've ever had a better Valentine's day. There should be a blog dedicated to the many faces of Kerry Washington but all of that is by the way.

Valentines day is perhaps most famous for it's ability to expose the thirsty in society. The older I get the more aware I am of the the thirst. The thirst can be defined as an all consuming unrelenting insatiable infinitely blinding craving for love. Thirst is a very powerful thing. It leads to prayers like the one below.

This is an actual book. It's supposedly quite funy

Can you see? She is so desperate for a husband that she doesn't even care about the kind that she gets. She has turned her life into a box of quality street or celebrations. Yes! do not argue with me. She did not specify the type of husband she wanted. That is how God will deliver her a cactus as a husband. You will see her on a documentary on the discovery channel, "I have become an objectophile and I am happy with my life" that's what she will say. She will never guess that the root of her objectophilia was a half thought prayer that she beamed up to heaven. But objectophilia is better than the alternative.

What is this alternative? This alternative is a RUBBISH husband. The kind of husband you pick up willy nilly on a Gambian beach. What if God provides you with a husband that drinks, sleeps around or beats you black and blue. Will you still be happy? Who will you complain to? It's just like asking your father for a car and receiving a lemon. You asked for a car, he got you a car, so you have to live with it. You can't go back and be like "well daddy, this isn't the car I wanted. Give me another one." It is far better to be in a romantic relationship with your can of deodorant than it is for you to have a bad husband.

(A lemon is the Nigerian equivalent of a Tokunbo and any English made car in the seventies. The best thing I have ever heard said of the Austin Allegro is 

"it isn't a particularly bad car, it's just an astoundingly adequate car with mistakes made in it." 
Top Gear

This is the power of the English. Their understanding of the language is so absolute that they manage to say the worst things about things without actually saying anything bad about them. For those of you who do not already know what Tokunbos are, a Tokunbo is a vehicle that has changed hands no fewer 50 times and no longer possesses the underlying features that constitute what exactly a car is. Most of them were once legends in their own right but they've been tinkered with so many times that their interiors are vaguely reminiscent of one of my Science projects from my school days.)

This my dear friends is a Tokunbo. I know it doesn't look that bad but can you imagine what they've done to the suspension to make it appear normal even though it's carrying enough Onions to feed an entire village for half a year? Without the sacks the butt of the car would be closer to heaven than it is to the ground. I have seen this so I know it to be true.

Furthermore, if you are unhappy without a husband, you will be unhappy with a husband. Your unhappiness will make your husband unhappy and then make you doubly unhappy. It is better for you to contain your unhappiness in your own vessel than it is for you to infect others with them. Your misery doesn't need company. The person that first suggested that is both a Villain and a Suppressive person. I stole the last one from the Scientology handbook.

So remember, when praying for your husband add a long list of adjectives lest you receive a bounty when you really wanted a malteser.

Happy Days,
Afam

I just read an article. I'm sorry I must back track. I'm not accustomed to being so direct. It is far better to be an indirect long winded fellow than it is to be the opposite. Why? Because I am an indirect long winded fellow and I love myself without restraint. To prefer the short winded direct people would be to despise myself and I can't have that can I? Yes where was I? I was having my usual gander on facebook when I saw an article shared by one of my famzers, Arriety. (Don't ask me how I came up with that pseudonym. All you need to know is that Hirosama Yonebayashi who was also an animator on Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke directed a movie called the Secret Life of Arrietty in 2010.)

This particular famzer is greatly esteemed not only because she's the sister of my first girl friend but also because she is clever, opinionated and outspoken. The first time she shared something that I had written I wrote the following about her,

"Arrietty and I went to school together. She was two years above me. I can't say that we had that many conversations but what I can say is that her telling me that she loves my blog made my head swell to the point of bursting. I had an extra spring in my already springy step. Yes, that's how highly I regard her opinion."

This is the article that Arietty shared http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/in-nigeria-youre-either-somebody-or-nobody.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&smid=fb-share

Give it a read will you? It will be a hundred thousand times easier to follow everything that comes after this if you have. But because not everyone has the time I will quote the first paragraph.

"IN America, all men are believed to be created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure."

This paragraph should tell you all that you need to know. The writer is incurably addled. She's not addled the way I'm addled as I am nothing if not a rambling mad man. Her sense of the world is skewed beyond the point of recovery. As someone who is quite familiar with the world I can tell you with full confidence that some are born to own and enjoy while others are born to toil and endure. To refuse to admit the universality of this statement is to be naive.

Like the writer of the article when I was growing up we had staff. Till this day we have staff. We have a male steward, a female cleaner, a male cook, 2 gardeners courtesy of Omar Gardens, one washer man, 2 drivers and 2 nurses (My grandmother has Cardio Vascular Dementia. The nurses are indispensable). When I was younger the stewards and cooks doubled as nannies. Yes, the Afam household is a little like a small economy. You might say that this many staff running a 5 bedroom house and relatively small grounds is ludicrous. But you know what? My parents have earned it. You see Mama and Papa Afam were not magically installed as the rulers of this micro economy. It wasn't handed to them by God and the privileges of birth. Two decades and a half ago they lived in a one bedroom apartment on my paternal grandmother's estate and my father ran his business from the living room. So you can understand why I insist that this woman is beyond deluded.

As children we were not permitted to call staff by their first names, they were auntie and uncle or mister. Even now that I am a man (well a man-child) I cannot call Papa Afam's driver, Alfred, anything but Mr. Alfred. They were imbued with as much authority as our parents. Heaven forbid you were rude to them or didn't say please or thank you. Sometimes the reward for your poor behaviour was a scathing look but sometimes it was an hour long lecture that put you firmly in your place. If auntie Patience, my nanny, punished me and I dared tell Mama Afam she too would punish me. After they had lived with us for a while, Mama Afam would call them to her room and ask them what they wanted to do with themselves. Some didn't know, and that was fine. Others wanted to go to school, and that was fine too. Whatever they wanted to do we supported. It wasn't uncommon for them to come to us illiterate and leave with better vocabulary and diction than some university graduates. They were not figures depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species as Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani seems to think. They were our teachers, our confidantes, our friends, our disciplinarians and our helpers. There were times that it didn't work out. Some of them stole but we weren't so jaded as to believe that they were all scoundrels. If they were all scoundrels then I would have been the worst of them because by the time I was 8 I had forged my mothers signature a few times and stolen 50 Naira when Papa Afam wasn't looking but while I couldn't be dismissed I was certainly punished. My punishments were significant enough that I wished that I could be dismissed.

She goes on to say that America is a more civilized place than Nigeria because of the principle of equality that was laid out in the declaration of independence. To say this is to make light of the struggles that America has endured to achieve the level of equality that it has today. Equality was not presented on a platter of gold. It was fought for. It is still being fought for. And what's more Equality of service is not something that is humanly possible. I cannot expect a waiter to treat me the same as he would treat Rihanna. I am a student. Even if his service was legendary, I could only tip him £5 at best but with Rihanna the possibilities are almost limitless. In Pretty Woman Julia Roberts walks into a store and is denied service because she looks like a whore, but this is true anywhere. Shop assistants have no patience for window shoppers, they cannot earn a commission off you so they try to determine who the likely customers are by going on preformed ideas of wealth. Because of my current lack of funds I can hardly expect to be given a private room and a glass of champagne every time I visit my bank, but if my account were fat enough that would be the least my bank would do for me. We all know this. At least if you don't know, now you know. People act in their best interests. To piss off a man who has banked £300 millions with your bank is to lose your job and earn a bad reference. To piss off a student knee deep in his overdraft is to laugh about it over drinks that night.
The same principle applies in Nigeria. If you do not display certain tenets of wealth you cannot be expected to be treated the same way as someone who does. You should expect the same service but you shouldn't expect to have your arse kissed for it. 

I am not saying that this is right or wrong. I am saying that this is common and not uniquely Nigerian.

But I suppose the fault is mine for making the effort to read and blog about an article that can only be described as the journalistic equivalent of trolling. I fear she fails to realize that somebodys can quickly become nobodys and nobodys can just as quickly become somebodys. My story includes an extensive knowledge about apartments in Knightsbridge that are no more and families that ripped themselves to shreds fighting for the dredges of parental wealth and people that were once somebodys but are now nobodys. Perhaps hers isn't as well informed.

Happy Days,
Afam

One of the best things about twitter is that it allows us access to the most amazing thoughts from the most unlikely sources. Take this tweet for instance

Some women are like abstract paintings, even though you can't understand them, they are still beautiful.
— Peter Klesken (@PeterKlesken) February 2, 2013

I do not know Peter. He followed me quite recently. I do not even presume to believe that he followed me because of the blog. With 258,000 likes on his facebook page it is evident that he doesn't require my paltry promo services. That being said, his pictures speak for themselves.

Pygmy boys play with an old decommissioned dugout canoe in a quiet sidearm of a river.  Peter Klesken. Click the link below for the original photograph. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150660051756009&set=pb.269262571008.-2207520000.1364247576&type=3&theater

I once read a book that stipulated, or postulated that there are only two sorts of women in the world: The sort that remain mysterious, no matter how long you might know them and the sort that are always straightforward.

Well... not quite straightforward, for it would be unbelievably foolish for one to assume that women are ever completely uncrooked and unwiley. No, one shouldn't go that far. Women are never straightforward but some are straightforward in spite of themselves. They fancy that every thought they have is completely private and that every action is undiscernable but they often fail to notice that internal cringes and what they imagine to be the subtlest looks of revulsion or lack of interest reveal themselves as spasms and contorted facial expressions that the performer is seemingly unaware of.

I think that my friend refers to the former, for the latter are so common that they do not merit prose so beautiful. There's hardly anything abstract about them. That's not to say that they have no merit, for men do get tired of solving unsolvable puzzles and wondering if the seductress from the night before will still be there when eyes open in the morning.

Happy Days,
Afam

Yes, I fear you heard right. No this is not a dream, and yes this is Afam not Linda Ikeji or some other charlatan. Why have I STOOPED so low? I'm sorry I really couldn't resist. It's unfortunate that my name isn't Uncle Obama and it's even more unfortunate that my banana shop is currently closed for business.
                                      
I will transcribe and attempt to interpret the interesting parts of the song,

We've come a long way haven't we? When I started this, I didn't mean for it to get so big. Well it's hardly big at all but you know what I mean don't you? I started this so that I could make sense of the world as it occurred to me. I suppose you could call it a journal of sorts.

I haven't had the best year. When I say that, please don't pity me because there are so many souls far more deserving of your pity than I. Even if you were to find a soul that was in dire need of an attendee at his pity party I'm sure you could look ten yards and find another. But no, I have not had the best year. The summer months were particularly difficult. It was then that I turned to the blog and churned out an astonishing number of posts about everything and anything. I suppose it was my way of screaming at the heavens and demanding that the world pay attention or jumping in a pool just to see how many ripples I could make.

I thought that I would grow tired, that I would outgrow this. To be a writer you must immerse yourself completely in your work. It must be your life, your bread, your butter and your water. You must write because if you didn't you would die. I don't mean physical death because there are more ways to die than being shot or hanged or poisoned or ill and there are far worse things than death. The man on the tube who works an 8am to 9pm day every working day but would rather be a clown is dead. The woman trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience is also dead.

I see now that I may never grow tired. That even if you didn't read or sometimes find me mildly entertaining I would still write. I fill pages and scraps of paper with thoughts. I read and try to imitate those I respect. I use tools that others use just because I can. For instance when I wrote about the spirit of Mcdonalds in my first rant about Vodafone (The Unfavourable Marriage Series: Vodafone, RIM, and Afam part 1. ) it was me doing a little of what Shakespeare did. Or when I used the drunken lout in Tales from Captain Reginald: Anything goes that was also a little bit of Shakespeare. I read and reread passages from the Count of Montecristo because I adore the flair that Dumas has. I love how overly verbose he is. I read books translated from Spanish because I love how musical they are.

But don't get me wrong if I didn't write I would not die... I would simply do something else. I would ride horses and go trampolining and sail, and wake board, and watch movies, and read books, and play squash, and drive badly, and sing badly and tease my parents and play squash and study Economics because I love all those things too.

I am infinitely grateful for everything. If my heart held any more gratitude I fear that it would burst. So to everyone that has ever given this blog so much as a glance, thank you. To everyone that has commented, thank you. To everyone that liked my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/theramblingsofamadmanafam thank you. To anyone that has supported me and this in any way thank you. To God for things so many that it would be impossible to write them down, partly because they are far too many and partly because I myself do not know all the things He has done for me thank you.

Never fear because I will not write another post like this until I have written at least 500 or until the blog makes £100 or until it receives 100,000 views. So until next time I wish you the Happiest Days, and the most felicitous nights now and always.

Love,
Afam.