OF OPINIONS: THE ASHLEY YOUNG EXAMPLE

Football has, since (Korea/Japan)2002, been a huge part of my life as it provides me ample amusement, endless entertainment and no little amount of interesting happenstances that are potential analogies for my writings. Also, I'm a tipster -- make of that what you will. For 13years, I've watched thousands of minutes of realtime football and hours of clips from football of yore. With the background provided above and those in my previous missives, you'd forgive my frequent referencing of footballing guff for stuff that's analogous to my writings. Football is what I know and as the Bavarians say; mia san mia. Indeed, we are. To essence, I am passionate about my opinions and my opinion is that Ashley Young of Man United is a pisspoor footballer. Don't try to convince me, I'm a reticent bastard.

My biggest fear at the beginning of my writing career was getting negative reviews for works. For a long while, I penned stuff and kept them in my room until my brother snooped around and read one of my short stories. He wasn't satisfied with the quality of writing, but he was pained about a character killed. Till today, he wants me to bring the dead character from the dead. A couple of months later, I started a blog and in my first post, I said I wasn't even the smartest person in my clique but I was gonna start publishing thoughts/writings anyways. It wasn't because I was/am a self-centered egomaniac, or that I was less afraid of getting negative reviews -- trust me, nothing gladdens me heart like wholly positive acclaim for me work -- I just chose to focus on the fact people actually formed opinions about my work.

As ever, I'll extrapolate a footballing analogy to provide some perspective. So, the victim/analogy today is my personal take on Ashley Young, a man that plays for the team I support and who I think very little of. He is a winger and far as I'm concerned, wingers should be creative, stylish, electric, skillful and eccentric. Mr Young has none of these traits. Instead, he receives the ball with an awkward control, turns to face his own half, holds the ball for far too long, invites pressure on himself, before inadvertently passing the ball backwards to his defender. When forced to attack, all Mr Young does is cut the ball onto his right foot and hook a high ball into the opposition area which the goalkeeper plucks out of the air 90times out of 100.

Such is my disregard for Mr Young's footballing (dis)abilities that I once blamed him for United's defeat before someone pointed out that he wasn't even in the match day squad. Lol. I'd rather see a younger player take his place and shank  crosses out for throw-ins. Now, when I see Mr Young curl the ball into the goalkeepers arms, I'm not even disappointed anymore. I don't even complain -- just because I don't expect anything footbalically good from the man. However, when someone I think is more technically gifted and has more inherent talent shanks a cross into the goalkeeper's arms, I get angry. I complain. Because I believe that person can do better.

That is how I see work and criticism. That is the perspective I think young people like me should have. Personally, I'm yet to choose a career, but when I do, I never want to be the Ashley Young of that profession -- whence people evaluate my work with varying levels of cursory disinterest. I want my work to provoke some sort of reaction. I want someone to say "this bastard is good" or some people to say they're terribly disappointed by my work. I never want to drift into that cesspit of mediocrity where people won't even be disappointed when I goof. I never want to be that writer that puts cross after cross into the goalkeeper's arms and the fans won't even be disappointed because they don't expect anything better from me. Rave reviews are greatest. Negative reviews will sting your ego, but if it has any merit, you'll be better for it. Negative reviews of extreme sort probably tells more about the reviewer than the reviewee.

More than anything though, If people think you're punching below your weight, take it as a compliment. Aspire to be more than you are. Be more than Ashley Young. Never become Ashley Young.

(...outside of the pitch, Mr Young is a terrific human being)

---CAPTAINCUE (...is a freelance writer taking on gigs for unridiculous money. Send me a direct message on Twitter @Captaincue or send me a mail with your writing needs at kaptaincue@gmail.com)

WHAT IS 'GOOD'!

Hello. At this rate, I might have to make this guy an admin on my blog. He has been prolific to say the least. Including this post, he now has three posts on MY blog; and the trio have been thought-provoking. Big ups to the Engineer.  For a recap of his previous missives, click here and there. For today's post, here you go:

"I don’t have a day job (that should not necessarily be translated as me being jobless). That probably explains why I spend every waking minute, and some sleeping minutes of my life thinking about random topics. Just the other day, I had a dream in which I was thinking about stuff that made me cry. I woke up and the tears just wouldn’t stop. So, I THINK I brood in my sleep too.


Now, having a lot of spare time in the day only partially explains why I think a lot because there are millions of jobless people everywhere who still never sit down to think about anything. The real reason will be that I am just Homo sapien personified. I like to fix every piece of any [figurative] jigsaw. Discrepancies between two recounts of the same event keep me awake all night. When timelines cross, I am always busy thinking. Mostly I am not looking for the lie alone; I am looking for the “why”. Why things happen… Again, I deviate.

In June, I had to embark on the same 8hours road trip four times in four days - coincidentally,  I am typing this in transit of the ilk. Not driving afforded me enough time to do what I do best: sleep think. The driver of the commercial vehicle on one of such journeys had an mp3 transmitter that kept doling out Naija “hip-hop” songs, mostly Olamide’s. I loved that. Then a point came when the music genre changed to Fuji. My music taste only excludes songs by Lady Gaga, so I had no problem with that. I even sang along in my mind. Then a co-passenger made a comment that means “where have you been hiding good music all this while?”  Now I had a problem with that statement. Who told him what good music is supposed to be? Who?!

As general as pretty and ugly can be – because I believe everybody agrees on who is pretty. It is the ugly ones that are up for debate – people still come up with a consolation sentences like “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” [“and the angle you are beholding from” as my lovely ever-recurrent ex girlfriend will put it]. If that applies to beauty (I believe if your beauty depends on who is looking, you are just not pretty – come sit with me), then music is an even more appropriate topic to apply that.

Ultimately, music is entertainment. Different people find different things entertaining. When a musician sings, he/she does so with the hope that someone somewhere finds it entertaining.  If you do, it means that you can relate to whatever message the song is sending; it doesn’t mean that people who don’t like it are doing anything wrong. A Yoruba adage translated to English will mean ”a mad person is fun to watch, not fun to birth”. I am not in cahoots with that. I don’t find mad people fun to watch one bit. But then, I don’t begrudge those who find madness funny their fun. I also have weird ways of catching fun too (like watching people die in SAN ANDREAS* - a classic comedy IMO).


Music has very broad genres. Even within the same genre, styles differ. I know Dare Art Alade, for instance, knows basic music. I know he knows the quavers, clefs, notes, scales and other music jargon, but I am not sorry that I don’t find what he sings as entertaining as Terry G’s. Lil Wayne just talks, I hear none of the Igbo Phyno spits, Baddo and Reminisce are razz, but their songs attend to my issues every day. Of course I listen to every other kind of song depending on my mood and what is obtainable. But then, I will not be caught dead singing Timi [Dakolo] or Simi’s praise. And don’t even get me started on Praiz. That don’t mean I’ll go about calling guys who love slow female songs (whatever they call that genre) fags - what I think of course is in my mind.

In essence, when BET or Grammy declares that someone won an award, the person won THAT award. After all, there is no standard as to what songs should be like. So whatever the organizers decide holds. Now if the Headies decide that Sean Tizzle had more votes than Burna Boy, the “elites” should welcome the idea instead of boring us with how the process is flawed. It’s not like it is not these razz music we [the local ones] and the elite alike groove to in the club.
It is not impossible that I will feel differently about the paragraph before this after right now. But the message today is that: what is music to you is crap to someone else, and quite rightly too. Live with that or kee yourself."
                     --->>>El-Jay ( @laycawn)

*I find it funny that with the number of people (who also have families) that lost their lives, the movie only focuses on a family's survival. Viewers are tricked into only really pitying that family, like the other lives are expendable.

BORING BOREDOM

There are many ways to spend free time – like staring at a wall, watching paint dry, write nonsense/something like this, start a blog, contemplate starting a blog, think about why people contemplate starting blogs, read about why people ever contemplate anything…or any other thing that doesn’t involve electrical power and cellular network (especially if you are in Africa) – which makes the alarming rate at which people complain of boredom sadly astounding. Thirty minutes without their (smart) phones makes youths (and dare I say some adults) of nowadays uneasy.

At this point, I have to make two things clear:
What I am going to end up writing about isn’t what I had in mind when I wrote the first sentence
Errr…I have forgotten what my second point is supposed to be. Moving on…
Smart phones, through the help of social media, are gradually grinding real life human interactions to a halt. I was on an ATM queue the other day – one of the many places where a serial flirt like me picks up targets, by creating weird EYE contacts – and everyone was busy on their phones, to my dismay. Some were smiling, some scowling, a few giggles. Then there was this particular dude who was typing at “breakfinger” speed; something I only do when the other party is trying to breakup with me – Yes, I broke up with the same ex several times-. Now I have to find even more sociopathic and creative ways to pick up targets.

Another increasing trend is the rate at which people text and drive. Ehen, now I remember what my second numbered point is supposed to be: I am in no way “innocent” of any of these vices.
So I sat under a tree close to a major road, observing the flow of traffic (another thing to do with your free time) some days ago and I discovered (not astonishingly) that every other young driver was doing something with their phones alongside driving. And the ones that were my ilk, (with a female ‘copilot’), had their passengers on their [passengers] phones too. Personally, I find long journeys boring if all I have to do is drive. So, I spice it up by dancing, chatting, or making videos. But in my defense, my co-commuters are usually focused on the road whenever I am not. And again, I believe local transit requires more concentration… I digress, not for the first time.

Ignore my verbiage. Verbose, they mostly are. The gist is, social media is eating deep into real social life. Our phones are taking over our lives. It is not uncommon to see people sending friend requests to dead people. That shows how shallow these friendships really are. Now we meet people online or by stealing their phone numbers off mutual friends’ phones (actually, that’s how I met my ex who I like to think I dated for five years!), BBM pins and what have you. We start casually. Initial niceties, mostly veneer. Then it gets religious; staying up so late it becomes early morning. Then a point comes when we run out of things to talk about, even the perverted ones.  The subsequent drifting apart is such an anticlimax, but it is not unexpected. I mean, there is only a few ways to rephrase questions that mean “what is your favorite sex position?”

There is a finite amount of topics you can chat about without seeing each other, not to talk of having mutual friends. And mutual friends are what keep relationship conversations going, IMO. Without them, what/who do/will we discuss? And all that while, there is a brother/sister somewhere, physically available, who we keep rolling with, only until the next exciting online prospect comes around. Sadly.
I don’t expect this piece to change anyone’s attitude towards their phones or the like. Verily, I don’t even expect many people to read this article. I’m just a guy who knows a guy who owns a blog. Hence, my pedantic rant. I am not even necessarily going to change how I use social media, as a result, so there is absolutely zero reason why you should.
Pizzout!

L.J

OPPORTUNITY COST

I had no illusions about my academic abilities. Or disabilities, if you will. I was a below average student in senior secondary. All the theoretical guff posed a semi-serious challenge to me; the challenge of assimilation and application of such knowledge to practical, everyday life. I didn't rightly understand the destructive distillation of coal. Or the vulcanization of rubber. Or the memorization of those phylums.
On the other hand, I liked the geography and technical drawing classes because their lessons were immediately tangible. Most of all, I really enjoyed the economics classes as those lessons immediately ensued in the real world. The concept of demand & supply, the concept of scale of preference, the concept of forgone alternatives -- I liked stuff like that. Though, I feel now, as I felt then, that the concept of hustling and making money ought to be one of the clear, main tenets of O'level economics -- but that's a topic for another day.

One of those economics lessons proved invaluable these past weeks. Amongst a shitload of competing demands (and limited time), I had to arrange competing priorities in order of their relative importance. My B.Sc special project that had stalled and threatened to derail the hustle was given undivided attention. Thankfully, I completed the work last week and got it signed. And approved. In a couple of months, I'll be able to sign off college and actually do something with my life. I am mighty relieved, gaskiya!

For the aficionados of this platform (if there are any), I'm sure you people must've been wondering where I went. E ma binu. I would have informed you of the recess earlier, but I prefer to talk about my bets after they come in (a bad trait I'm looking to cut out). Apologies.

I'm glad to see that birds are still sounding like birds and rats are still sounding like rats. (Yorùbá people will understand that line). Normal services have resumed from hereupon.
I thank you for your indulgence.

--->>>Captaincue (Ramadan Kareem)