Satire

The Second Quadrannium of Gambrach: End SCARS

/ Scribe of the Tword / Leave a comment
The Passion of the Christ Revisited 15 Years Later – /Film

In the land of Jirriah, where King Gambrach reigned over the 37 Kingdoms, from the Iron Throne of Boo Jar, there was a division of the King’s Constabulary known as SCARS.

SCARS was an acronym and lo, it stood for Subhuman Constables Against Robbing Sitizens. Yea, it should have been SCARC, as ye well know that ‘citizens’ is spelt with a C. But the King who inaugurated this unelite unit did so in a time of scarcity and did not want to give his detractors the opportunity to say he created both SCARC and scarcity. Yea, was he a cerebral king. But we digress.

SCARS was created as the arm of the constabulary that would defend the people of Jirriah against robbers and bandits. The constables who filled its ranks were those who failed the Humanity and Empathy modules at Constabulary College – by design, so they could deal ruthlessly with the menace of crime. And gaddem, how it backfired!

You see, lacking in Humanity and Empathy, the SCARS commanding elite quickly came to the conclusion that the best way to save the Jirrians from the scourge of robbers and bandits was to rob the people themselves, before the robbers. They called it the Hammer for Headaches Strategy.

Thus it was that SCARS began to relieve the people of their wages, their dignity, their virtue and their blood. The people rechristened them the Subhuman Constables Against Revelling Sitizens for behold, all one had to do was look like one was enjoying life a little too much and he would fall into their trap. And if he did not have the means to satisfy their vampirous thirst, it was quite possible that, like in the ancient times of the slavedealers, such a person would never be heard from again.

Time and again, the people cried out to Gambrach and the Nassholes, “deliver us from SCARS!” but the Many Years’ Disease meant Gambrach heard them not and the Nassholes gave no gaddem, for they hired the SCARS as their personal bodyguards. If the wailing was loud enough, the Head of the Constabulary would re-call the SCARS from the highways, that the people might have respite for a few days, but in no time they would be back again. Thus it was that on three occasions, Bashally, one of the King’s Spining Quills, announced to the people, “thy King has heard thee despite the Many Years, and the SCARS shall trouble thee no more.” But it was an ofege.

Finally, in the second year of the second quadrannium of Gambrach, the Neests of Phemmi rose with a loud cry, declaring “It is enough! SCARS is scarring our lives, our pscyhes and beings. No more SCARS, no more scars. End SCARS!” And the cry rang throughout the 37 kingdoms, from Ekonnos, to Canodonia, to Ekitilopia, to Oshunlonica all demanding an end to SCARS.

Yea, they sent word and shekels to the Neests of Phemmi saying, “do with our coin what ye must, that we be saved from a life of SCARS!” From all over Jirriah, the shekels poured in, even from Jirrians in the dayasporata. And with the coin, Queen Effle Kay and her fellow Neests bequeathed succour, refreshments, security, repair and morale upon the crowds of people demanding full and final reprieve from SCARS.

Mefilius, warden of the Iron Bank of Boo Jar saw it and was greatly troubled. Gambrach summoned him on the fifth day, asking “How have the Neests of Phemmi amassed so much shekelage in such a short time?”

“Your Majesty,” replied Mefilius, “it seems to be the work of the Social Medianites and the Digital Perusites; feeling cool with themselves, communicating and coordinating like a government. If not that it were completely legal, it would be high treason!”

“Can the inflows not be blocked?”

“Majesty, I am thy intellectual slave but bankers never reject money deposits. This is not like geographical borders, O King.”

“Okay, how about withdrawals then? Money that cannot be withdrawn cannot be spent,” countered Gambrach, slightly irritated.

“Now that is a most excellent idea, Great King. I shall throttle them.” Lo did Mefilius give the order to all the Copper Banks (Garantease, Zany, Hack Sex and all the other copper banks) to encumber the Neests of Phemmi.

The King of Twilistia, Samurai Jax, saw all that was going on in Jirriah and it gave him a constipation most severe. Wherefore he sent for his Twilistian meisters to engineer a solution for the Jirrians. And thus it was that the walls of Twilistia collapsed for half a dozen hours and none was able to send word to another. And there was no gaddem chill in the land.

But then the walls were rebuilt and Twilistia stood again and with this came the revelation that King Samurai Jax had blessed the Neests with verificato certificato and appointed a sigil unto the tagging of hashes for the ending of SCARS. Behold, the agitation took off with renewed vim and vigour and lo, was the cry heard across all the four corners of the earth, “End SCARS” and “halt Constabulary capriciousness”.

The Head of the Constabulary squirmed as he saw the rising tempers. “My King, permit me to inform the people that we have proscribed SCARS, taken them off the King’s highways and replaced them with an all new unit called SCRAPS – the Subhuman Constables Really Against Plundered Sitizens.”

“This is a great idea!” declared Gambrach. “Give them SCRAPS!”

The people heard it and maigheeeeurd, THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE GADDEM CHILL IN ALL THE LAND!

to be continued sigange

All in One Place:The Limericks of November

/ Scribe of the Tword / 2 Comments

The Victorious Golden Eaglets

GEJ’s brought the rub of the green

The best footie days since my teens

MRIs or not

Three great goals, One shot

Our sorrows, tonight, they are lean

 

The Sacked, Unambitious $1m Ghanaian Minister

Ghana must go, so they went

And the last three decades have been spent

In doing stuff right

And fighting the fight

Of not letting government be bent.

 

Please stop referencing Ghana

And all Dramani’s Drama

While you eulogise

Our government denies

Being a republic of banana

 

Stella “Escapes”  Attack #Stellagate

She purchased those cars, not in jest

And also a bulletproof vest

The House’s report

Is just writing sport

Now sympathy trumps an arrest

 

Turned out the Beamer’s weren’t costly

And we were outraged unjustly

To questions about

Corruptional doubt

Our Prez has replied “robustly”

 

Birthday Blues

Twas Ol’Goody’s day yesterday

50yrs Oswald popped JFK

From school with no shoes

To buckets of booze

No surprise he was poorly today.

 

Christopher Kolade Resigned

Hear Chrissy has chosen to leave

Untainted, he’d have us believe

But all that is sure

SURE-P wasn’t more

Than an ace up ol’GEJs sleeve.

 

ASUU Wants Strike Pay

Did nothing for four months and one

It seemed like the striking was done

But they want to show

Much more than we know

The pen is a BROS to the gun.

The Roof, the Warriors and the Chocolate Teapot

/ Scribe of the Tword / 6 Comments

STORY ONE

Once upon a time, there was a man who looked up and saw the roof of his house crumbling. “This roof will surely fall in,” he thought to himself. The next day, he thought about calling in a builder to take a look but decided against it. At any rate, the pressure from the external water tank, on the ground next to the kitchen was really poor. So he called a plumber instead, and the moved the tank from the floor and installed it on the crumbling roof. “This roof will fall in a few months’ time if you don’t reinforce it immediately,” the plumber warned the man. “I know.” the man replied. But the next week, he installed a large satellite dish on the roof and then moved his sofa right under the fault line in the ceiling. Damn, he thought, as he looked up from the sofa one evening into the widening crack in his ceiling, this collapse of this roof is imminent. And then he turned back to his program.

STORY TWO

The villagers at Poposhinshin village were in the middle of their daily feast, when a young man ran into the village square, panting. “Quick,” he said between pauses to gulp in air, “they warriors of Alajeju village are on their way here to attack us. They are still about two days away. What do we do?”

“Hmmm,” said the village chief, stroking his chin very slowly, “this calls for a meeting of the council of elders. We shall meet after the feast today.”

“Forgive me, my elders,” said the breathless man, now much more composed, “but what is there to meet about? They outnumber us 5 to 1, their weapons are far more advanced than ours. They are a village of giants. We must either flee or send an emissary with a peace offering to beg them.”

“You have spoken very well and we will consider all this at our meeting.” The chief replied.

At the meeting later on, the chief divided the council into two committees, one to look into the obvious and remote causes of the pending invasion, the other to propose ways of appeasing the Alajejus. The committees deliberated until sunrise the following day, when the spears, arrows and swords of the would-be conquerors could be seen glistening in the sun, just over the horizon.

All over the village, the mood was surprisingly calm as the glistening metal cluster drew closer to the village. One man decided to leave with his family that day, for Animashaun village. The Animashauns were more powerful than the Alajejus.

As dusk approached again, the people of Poposhinshin had begun to hear the stomping of the Alajejus. “We are doomed”, they casually remarked to one another. “When our village falls, these people might enslave our men and take our women as their wives.” Still very visibly unperturbed, they carried on as normal. The council of elders continued its meeting.

STORY THREE

Once upon another time, the people of Doofus discovered the gift of tea. The tea was brought to their village by a travelling European explorer, who was temporarily their king but was deposed when they decided they could rule themselves. They figured this tea was desirable, for the European had described to them all the wonders of this tea and how it made his own village so much different from and better than Doofus. While the European explorer was king, he dispensed this tea to them in small portions from his nice metal canister. After he left, they decided they needed this tea in much larger amounts.

But they didn’t know how to make tea. They had the fire, they had water, they had tea leaves. But they weren’t sure what to boil the tea in. The European explorer never showed them how he brewed his tea. Their day of triumph came when the council of elders proudly announced that they now knew how to boil the tea. The people of Doofus gathered and watched in amazement, as the elders produced a chocolate teapot and put it on the fire.

STORY FOUR

The people of Nigeria, when looking at the indices and benchmarks of a functional nation, have for a long time predicted the implosion (in a calamitous conflagration) of their nation. They do not flee. They do not fight the forces of the impending doom.

The Convention

/ Scribe of the Tword / 9 Comments
*This piece is a work of fiction and the ribbing is intended to be in good humour.*

 

This story cannot begin without me telling how I got into the business; how I became a surgeon of destinies. Well, I am only in my first year or practice, so perhaps I’m still a resident or trainee surgeon but well on the way to being a consultant. Forgive the medical metaphors, I probably watch a little too much Grey’s Anatomy in my ever-shrinking windows of spare time. I’ve become much busier these days. And I digress.

One Sunday, at Church, rather than have a conventional sermon, the preacher invited a motivational speaker to talk to us about fixing all aspects of our lives, especially our marriages and careers and getting everything back on track. I was spellbound. I had just lost my job in the aftermath of the bursting of the banking sector bubble and had been trying to figure out the next phase of my life. After I heard the man who would later become my mentor speak, I knew what I wanted to do. I made sure I met the speaker after the sermon and spent the next 3 weeks begging him to let me be his personal assistant. I was well-educated enough and I was willing to work for absolutely nothing. Soon enough, I was taught the basics of the trade.

“First of all”, he said, “you have to dress and sound like the archetypical dream husband. You must be immaculately groomed. Low haircut, chiselled hairline, bespoke suits and a high-sounding but not too evangelical lilt to your voice.”

So I invested some of my bank severance money in 2 expensive suits, a killer pair of black leather shoes (the plan was to expand my shoe options once I got onto the speaking circuit), and cufflinks. My banker’s shirts had always been well cut, so no problem there.

“Next”, he said, “you must develop the ability to make the most mundane things sound unbelievably profound. The simpler the concept ostensibly sounds, the more profundity you can inject into it. Especially, most especially, if you rhyme.”

“Rhyme?” I asked. “Oh yes”, he replied, “to make it in the big time, you gotta learn to rhyme a rhyme.”

Fast learner that I am, I retorted, “You mean to win the bingo, I have to learn the lingo?”

“Precisely”, he said, laughing heartily. “You’re catching on very quickly.”

“What else must I learn in order to earn?” I asked eagerly.

“Calm down now”, he cautioned, “a gig isn’t a day at the crèche. Not too much rhyming. Remember, profound. There’s a thin line between profound and cheesy. A great Life Coach never crosses that line. Okay?” I nodded.

“You also need a treasure trove of scripture to buttress metaphors of increase and promotion. We are in the business of selling hope. Hope that if a person truly believes it, he can achieve it. Now, if you can garnish the hope with scripture, legitimise it so it doesn’t sound like being greedy or covetous, you cannot go wrong.

“For instance, the scripture says ‘Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers’. This clearly supports the aspiration to ‘go higher’, to ‘be better’. Our message is, if you hold on to God, it’s okay to also want prosperity.”

I nodded again, soaking it all in.

“Now, to the imagery. Again, it has to be crisp, catchy and validative of improvement in personal circumstances. So, lots of ladders…”

“You have to empty your bladder to climb that ladder?”

“Bladder, sha?” he asked, looking confused.

“Well, if you take the bladder as an organ that removes harmful things from our blood, the statement could be symbolic of purging oneself of the harmful things in one’s life – vices like smoking, excessive drinking, womanising…”

“You know what?” said my mentor, “let’s forget the ladders. How about mountains?”

“There’s a fountain beyond that mountain?”

“Dude, calm down. That’s not profound enough.”

“I respectfully disagree, sir. Finding a fountain after a mountain symbolises a reward, perhaps a divine one even, after the struggle of, well, surmounting the mountain. In  fact, how about ‘surmount the mount to reach the fount’?”

“No, no, no, no! Forget mountains, then.” For some reason, my mentor seemed upset. “Let’s think altitude, you know, a variable height.”

“Someone’s already done that. Your attitude determines your altitude? Haven’t you heard that one before? Aspire to go higher? Acquire the fire? Perspiration determines your elevation?”

“You know what?” my mentor said, taking in a deep breath as if to calm himself, “there’s a Life Coaches convention in Abuja next week. Newbies like you can attend the 2-day course and become Associate Members of the Chartered Institute of Motivational Speaking and Life Coaching. More than anything else, there’s a chance to meet other mentors. Much greater coaches than myself. Perhaps they might be able to show you an even better way.”

So here I am at the convention in Abuja. It was during the flight that I decided that I wasn’t going to be a mere life coach – I was going to be a surgeon of destinies. It sounded profound enough. I had also started working on a mantra that I wanted to run by the coaches at the institute, but I won’t bore with you with it.

As I enter the convention auditorium, I hear an attendee ask his colleague if he would like a coke. The colleague replied, “Not for me. A coke will make you choke, but a Fanta is made for banter.”

Ah, I say to myself. I am in the right place.

Good King Flashoslas

/ Scribe of the Tword / 1 Comment

 

Flashoslas

 

Good (?) King Flashoslas looked out o’er the Lekki people

With the 4-eyed man he thought, let us fleece the people

Widen roads and build a bridge, then exact full measure

For a quarter century, jingling pockets, pleasure.

 

What if they revolt, F said, could we still withstand them?

Do not fret your little head, we will just disband them.

Bring out tanks and sub-machines, gas to end their gathering

When they beat a full retreat, there’ll be no more blathering.

 

And, the 4-eyed man went on, see their feeble leaning

Gutless, rudderless and poor, full of empty steaming

They are well-renowned, you see, for a deep resilience

After feeble mutiny, they’ll accept their sentence.

 

-Timmy Flowers, 1734 -1862