At the Nwokemodo's I dos

If you're planning a wedding, and you have a large family and your intended also comes from family that's a village on its own , a lot of time and arrangements are needed. For instance, you might want to consider not inviting outsiders at all if you want a normal sized wedding as both your family members will merge into a little community of witnesses. But then in Nigeria what fun would that be?So, you already have one community down pat and then friends will come with their families and other friends who will bring their own friends and families as well....and of course 'mogbomoya'. By the time everyone has gathered, you might have a little challenge on your hands but luckily for you, you'll be at the high table and pass your time grinding your teeth, or biting your lips whatever means you can employ to let out frustration at some of the things you'll be seeing. But I love our weddings and so it was a beautiful day as my Nigerian half cast sister Oluchi Eno and her hunky gorgeous beau  Ejikeme Nwokemodo exchanged vows and 24TH August,2013 became permanently engraved in gold for them.

Big brother africa and The Dillish surprise.

The five big brother the chase finalists left the house that has been their home for ninety one days today in the following order: Beverly and Melvin from Nigeria,Elikem from Ghana, Cleo(Zambia) and Namibia's Dillish. That means that Dillish(the barbie doll) won the $300,000. Ok, for a starter, I haven't been a Dillish fan majorly because I'm not a huge fan of barbie dolls,never been ,probably a childhood issh maybe..., and because I thought she was extremely fake, can anyone be that perfect? as it turns out yes is the answer because Dillish kept up her act from day one till the end.
Something arrested me though the first time I listened to her diary room session; she told big brother that she wasn't going to be confrontational with anyone, she was going to let the big ones fight and ignore her and after ninety one days she was going to quietly take home her money. I thought she was too cocky and conceited as well, but then then there was a lot of wisdom in what she said as it turns out that the big and terrible ones fell before her.
Another amazing and striking thing about this surprise win is the fact that Dillish had never been a Head of house, never won the power of 'no!' , no bad girl shenanigan gigs and she was never confrontational and true to her words, she quietly with cute fine girl's tears took her money home. Food for deep thoughts.

         

MUMS, DAUGHTERS and NEUROSES

I was at an event and happened to sit behind three very vocal young ladies: usually I love to sit behind the 'happening chics" because most times they can be a well of information, although at the end of the day, one has a huge task sifting through the plethora of information in a bit to get useful morsels...So, there I was unwittingly been privy to some juicy secret(someone else's not theirs) when a much older lady walked past and the younger ladies all busted into riotous laughter  because of the former's dressing, sufficient to say this sickened me to my tummy and then I thought to myself, don't these girls realize they would soon get to her stage- after all as we all know youth is fleeting regardless of the number of plastic surgeries or age defying remedies that abound now. The woman was old enough to be any of our mother. It got me thinking as to the kind of relationships these young ladies had with their mothers and I thought about mine too, that was how the idea of this article came by. So I started chatting with friends about their mums. I shouldn't have apparently as some did not find it funny especially when I asked for a photograph of them with their mothers, in this age of camera phones and display pictures it's been a herculean task getting mom and daughter pictures( I'm still holding out) It was SHOCKING! It seems daughters prefer to bond with others apart from mom and mom of course couldn't be bothered with such mundane childish things right?
We're all familiar with Oedipus complex a term coined by the Austrian neurologist who is also the founding father of psychoanalysis Sigismund Schlomo Freud(May 6 1856 -September 23 1939). The complex has its origins from Sophocles's second Thebian play, an Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex( a Thebian king who was destined from birth to kill his father and marry his mother as a consequence of a sacrilege committed by his father). The complex was used by Freud to explain the attraction of children to parents of the opposite sex and its attendant neuroses. The problem seems to be prominent amongst the fairer sex than among the male folks.Could that possibly be the reason mothers and daughters don't get along just because they're of the same sex or is there a deeper cause? It made me think. ..I fight with my mum a lot.  Why?( huge question requiring -post PHD to answer) why do daughters feel daddy will understand and not mum and invariably break mummy's heart ,could it be that mums themselves were not understood and as such cannot understand their own offspring? a sort of transferred aggression in a vicious hurting cycle?..........(To Be Continued)

THE SEX GODDESS AND THE SAINT

I hadn't heard from a friend of mine for quite some time although I had her on my bbm, what's the point of having numerous contacts that you never speak with anyway?, so, I chatted and asked how she was doing and her response was " you forgot about me abi? " I hadn't, (by the way it takes two to tango if I had not reached out to her, shouldn't she have done it?) I apologized for being such a bad friend and we got talking and then she dropped it " I'm very surprised you pinged me first it's very unlike you". Now, that seems like nothing but it got me thinking: what is like me? I went to an oral interview once some time ago, the interviewer said to me that she was disappointed at some of my answers because she had not been picturing me that way(she had already made up her mind about who I was and some things I actually liked did not go well with her picture). If truly as we keep singing ;variety is the spice of life, why are people so against it? I listened to a very interesting lady speak once and she had said that versatility was overrated .Isn't it sad really about life, these tiny boxes that people put others into. Everything you do that does not fit into the box is resisted and you keep getting "that's not you". It always baffles me when others claim to know you more than you know yourself and would go to great lengths to argue for hours just to convince you you are who they think you are.In the words of Stacee Jaxx in the movie Rock of ages " they don't know me,I know me because I live inside here". Gru the villain in the cartoon Despicable me bought into the idea that there's nothing good about himself despite taking in three orphan children( that wasn't him of course) and caring for them -a very unvillainous act. Back to my question why these tiny boxes?  do they help people to profile you easier? placing you in tiny comfortable compartments in their minds, no thoughts required. So let's explore some of these profilings: If I am an Akwaibomite that automatically makes me a sex goddess and a master chef right? If I am a short slim girl, that automatically makes me an angry vindictive bitter person right? If I go to church and sing in the choir that makes me a good girl because i do not engage in any of the vices of bad club girls. If I am a Yoruba girl, then I must be the definition of dirt as we use the same utensils in the kitchen as well as in the toilet. If I am an Igbo girl, i cannot be trusted because I love money too much... Nice little holes that do not require thoughts as I said. So, what happens if I am a Yoruba girl that cannot stand the sight of dirt?I must b e strange "haba,that's so  unlike them,she's pretending"How about if I am an Akwaibomite that also sings in the choir? Total confusion. I mean how do you reconcile the sex goddess free spirited vixen image with that of the saintly church girl? Too much drama that doesn't fit into the box when it's easy to just pick one part and leave the rest.

KEEPING CULTURE ALIVE

Went to a colleague's wedding recently, and was pleasantly surprised to see the cultural troupe there, probably  because it was the white wedding and not traditional. Even at traditional level these days people tend to shy away from the real traditional which makes a mockery of the whole event, i mean, sometimes you go to a traditional wedding, and they're all speaking English and not the native language and everything is so conventional and non traditional( if you're going to do it, you might as well do it well right?).  Anyway, here is a video to tickle your taste buds...

crazy world

Some things are just hard to understand.
Newtown Killer's Obsessions, in Chilling Detail
Inside the rambling, pale-yellow Colonial-style home in a Connecticut suburb, Adam Lanza lived amid a stockpile of disparate weaponry and macabre keepsakes: several firearms, more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition, 11 knives, a starter pistol, a bayonet, 3 samurai swords. He saved photographs of what appeared to be a corpse smeared in blood and covered in plastic, as well as a newspaper clipping that chronicled a vicious shooting at Northern Illinois University.
A gun safe was in what investigators believed was his bedroom. Among his clothing was a military-style uniform. There was also a holiday card that contained a check made out to Mr. Lanza, 20, and signed by his mother. Investigators suggested that the money had been intended to buy a gun.
The disturbing details of Mr. Lanza's possessions were disclosed on Thursday for the first time since he carried out the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation's history. The information was included in search warrants and related affidavits connected to the investigation into the Dec. 14 attack, when he killed 20 first graders, 6 educators, his mother and himself.
The inventory of the house, combined with interviews conducted over several weeks with law-enforcement officials and people who crossed paths with the Lanza family, afford a somewhat fuller picture of the dark corners of Mr. Lanza's mind.
The interviews revealed that his mother, Nancy Lanza, confided to friends several years ago that her son, who classmates said had been found to have a type of autism, was faring poorly and being bullied in high school. More recently, he had cocooned himself in front of electronic game consoles in the basement of their home, playing warfare games.
The contents of the Lanza house are of intense interest because the lives of the family have been picked apart since the shootings, often yielding little insight. A clear understanding of Adam Lanza's thinking and the texture of his relationship with his mother and others has yet to emerge. What pushed him to his brutality may never be discovered.
After killing his mother at their home on the morning of Dec. 14, Mr. Lanza drove to the grade school that he once attended and carried out the massacre in less than five minutes, according to the search warrant.
The rampage brought the nation and the world to tears and touched off a continuing national debate over gun control.
Stephen J. Sedensky III, the state's attorney who is in charge of the investigation, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Lanza shot his mother in the forehead with a .22-caliber rifle while she was in bed in her second-story bedroom.
At the school, he used a Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle to fire 154 shots, the statement said. The police also found 10 30-round magazines for the gun, many of them partly or fully emptied.
Mr. Lanza also carried two semiautomatic handguns, one of which he used to kill himself. The police found a 12-gauge shotgun in the car he drove to the school.
The inventories attached to the warrants delineated pertinent items found by police in the home that Mr. Lanza shared with his mother, a two-story house with dark green shutters at 36 Yogananda Street in Newtown. Ms. Lanza was a gun enthusiast who often took her son to shooting ranges. She was divorced from his father, Peter Lanza, a General Electric executive.
The items included more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition bullets, some of them housed in a Planters peanut can and a Nike shoe box, and an array of weapons found in a brown safe and in bedroom closets. The lists mention four guns, including the shotgun found in the black Honda Civic that Mr. Lanza drove to Sandy Hook, and 70 shotgun shells found in the car. There were two rifles, including the one used to kill Nancy Lanza, as well as a BB gun and a starter pistol.
The police also found a certificate from the National Rifle Association bearing the name Adam Lanza. The type of certificate was not clear. The organization said on Thursday that Adam Lanza and Nancy Lanza were not members.
There was also a receipt from a shooting range in Oklahoma, an N.R.A. guide to the basics of pistol shooting and training manuals on the use of a variety of firearms, including a Bushmaster.
There were paper and cardboard gun targets, as well as a considerable amount of computer equipment and game consoles and equipment. There was a hard drive that appeared to have been deliberately smashed.
There were numerous books connected to autism. One was titled, "Born on a Blue Day - Inside the Mind of an Autistic Savant."
Classmates of Mr. Lanza and others who knew the family have said he had an autism variant known as Asperger's syndrome, though investigators have never confirmed that diagnosis. Even so, his association with the disorder has raised alarms among parents of children with the diagnosis, who have expressed concerns that the public might believe that those with autism are prone to violence.
Experts say people with autism spectrum disorders are often bullied in school and the workplace and frequently suffer from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. But the experts also say there is no evidence that they are more inclined than any other group to commit violent crimes.
Though Mr. Lanza's life remains mostly opaque, interviews in recent weeks show that he was a socially fragile individual captivated by warfare video games and bent on military service.
Marvin LaFontaine, 53, a mechanical engineer who considered himself a friend of Nancy Lanza from Kingston, N.H., where Ms. Lanza grew up, kept in touch with her chiefly by e-mail, Facebook and phone until 2010. He remembered that Adam Lanza deeply admired one of his mother's brothers, a retired Kingston police officer named James Champion. Mr. LaFontaine said Mr. Lanza was keen on joining the military, as his uncle, Mr. Champion, had done.
"This all started when Adam was 3 or 4, and became more ingrained as Adam got older and ultimately decided that he wanted to become a Marine," Mr. LaFontaine said.
Classmates said Mr. Lanza was smart but acutely shy, and was not known to have close friends. His mother frequently moved him in and out of school, and at times home-schooled him. Several years ago, when Mr. Lanza was in high school, Mr. LaFontaine said Ms. Lanza shared with him that "the problems with Adam were getting worse and that he was getting picked on and bullied and was starting to shut down."
A Newtown rabbi who counseled the families of victims of the shooting said former classmates of Mr. Lanza had told him that Mr. Lanza was sometimes the object of ridicule in high school. Other classmates have said they did not recall instances of his being bullied.
Mr. LaFontaine said Ms. Lanza had been weighing a number of options, which included once again removing him from school, which she later did. Mr. Lanza left Newtown High School after 10th grade. For a time, he attended college.
Despite his issues, Mr. LaFontaine recalled, "Nancy was generally confident that he could beat this and grow up into a normal, confident man, and that she could help him to do that."
He shared an e-mail in which she described how much she enjoyed living in Newtown, which is about 75 miles northeast of Times Square.
"People are so nice here," she wrote. "I feel very lucky to have found a place where there is such a feeling of community."
While the documents show that Mr. Lanza readily had access to weapons, a fact that was already known, by themselves they do not shed light on his motives, said Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University who has written several books on mass murders.
But in many school shootings, the killers were often bullied or ostracized by their classmates, "and the motive is revenge," Mr. Levin said in a telephone interview.
And Mr. Lanza did have other traits in common with school gunmen, including social isolation and access to weapons and firearms training, Mr. Levin said. The clipping on the Northern Illinois shooting, Mr. Levin said, indicates that, like some mass murderers, he might have been inspired by past shootings.
Adam Lanza had cut off contact with his father and his older brother, Ryan Lanza, in recent years, according to various accounts.
David Burton, a former co-worker of Peter Lanza's at General Electric who is now a lawyer in private practice, said Peter Lanza spoke rarely about Adam Lanza's challenges.
Still, Mr. Burton recalled being at a Christmas party in 2010 or 2011 at which Peter Lanza's eyes lit up upon learning that Mr. Burton's wife was an educational consultant.
Peter Lanza peppered her with questions, Mr. Burton said.
"When Peter learned of her expertise, he brought up Adam to her, and was clearly looking for an educational solution for Adam," Mr. Burton said. "She mentioned some boarding school options. It's one of those things you look back and say we should've done more there. But then everybody gets busy and it doesn't happen."
Two law-enforcement officials who were initially involved in the investigation said in recent interviews that the Newtown police had never been called to the Lanza home for any disturbances, and that before the shootings the family was basically unknown to the authorities.
They said they believed that Mr. Lanza had spent most of his time in the basement of the home, primarily playing a warfare video game, "Call of Duty." According to these officials, it also appeared that Mr. Lanza may have taken target practice in the basement.
In the documents released on Thursday, prosecutors redacted the names of witnesses interviewed by the police, but shared some of what they said.
The day of the shooting, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed a person who said Mr. Lanza rarely left his home. The witness considered Mr. Lanza to be a "shut-in and an avid gamer who plays 'Call of Duty,' amongst other games," according to a law-enforcement affidavit accompanying the warrants. It also said the witness told agents "that school was Adam's 'life,' " referring to Sandy Hook Elementary School, which Adam Lanza had attended.
Additional material turned up in the searches might contain clues into Mr. Lanza's thoughts in the days and weeks before the massacre, but their contents were not divulged. Police officers found seven journals written by Mr. Lanza, along with several of his drawings. The drawings were not described.
Beside three photographs of what appears to be a corpse, there was an article from The New York Times in February 2008, about a shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill. In that shooting, Steven Kazmierczak killed 5 people and injured 21 on Valentine's Day before he killed himself.
Whatever problems Adam Lanza may have had, the documents indicate that Nancy Lanza was comfortable with his being around guns.
The holiday card to Mr. Lanza from his mother contained a check that specified that the money was to buy a "C183 (Firearm)," the documents say.
The date and amount of the check are not listed. It was not clear if the reference to C183 contained a typographical error and was intended to mean a CZ83, which is a semiautomatic handgun.
The Hartford Courant previously reported that investigators had found news articles about the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik in a bedroom of Mr. Lanza's. Mr. Breivik killed 77 people in two attacks in July 2011, most of them teenagers who were attending a summer camp.
Those articles were not mentioned in the documents released on Thursday.
The searches did turn up medical records, which are not identified, as well as some of Mr. Lanza's school records.
Among the records was a report card for Adam Lanza from many years ago.
It was issued by Sandy Hook Elementary School.

THE NIGERIA OF OUR DREAM

When my mother suggested we go to a book presentation, the book entitled THE NIGERIA OF OUR DREAM written by Chief S.O.U.Igbe(MON), The Iyase of Benin Kingdom earlier today I budged mainly because I thought it was going to be long hours spent listening to old men lie through both ends of their mouths and do that ever so tortuously slow until you want to scream out in mad boredom, finally we went. She's still the mother after all. As usual, we ran into traffic and it tied gele especially when we got to Ozumba Mbadiwe( seems that road is perpetually under construction) which I considered fortunate(had I only known....). Finally we arrived at NIIA(Nigerian Institute of International Affairs) the venue of the event a full hour late. The Minister of information Mr Labaran  Maku representing the president  had just been introduced by the harassed Mc of the day Mr Sony Irabor( who was constantly been summoned by the Esama of Benin to be given one correction or the other- well, as he Sony himself said he'd been out of the homeland for sometime and needed to be reminded of appropriate protocols again- it was hilarious though.) and the minister went to work- a pretty good one he did-. Something truly original happened while the minister was speaking bout the giant strides been made in the power sector, PHCN struck. Perfect timing. Ofcourse the audience erupted in an " you see" applause. The minister unfazed went on and made cogent arguments saying Nigerians expect solutions to problems that have been around for more than thirty years in a space of two years, about amnesty for Alameyeseigha and against one for Boko Haram. He declined to give rebuttal about an alliance statement that had been made by Sen Seriki saying he and Femi Falana (SAN): yes that was my had I known because I always enjoy listening to Falana- to me his speeches are like favorite tracks you want to keep on repeat play- boo he had already spoken.... well all in all it was an interesting event, what with the very funny Edo deputy ( Dr Pius Odubu)who addressed former Lagos state governor Bola Tinubu as the Asiwaju of the universe,  and said that brief men like himself made brief speeches...

Here are some of the faces at the event.