Virgin Knee Geria 01.10.08

so virgin knee-geria, yeah that name will stick in my head like its been carved into my head with a blunt swiss army knife by some ex reckie who fought in the forgotten war.

so i make check in, this only after i had to deal with miss customs who is lying flat back slumped in her chair doin her nails,looking like jabba the hut. i aint sh*ttin you.

anyhoo i make a bee line for the departure lounge, well if you can call it that.so im reading this book, boo hoo.its about boo.com, an online start up that made billions but went crashing after its directors drank and partied it all away in 6 months. thats rock n roll i tell you.

the flights delayed for 45 minutes for refuelling, thats always gotta be a good sign, i mean afterall a full tank is a happy tank. im strapped in my seat, and ive memorisd safety procedures

so then this lame oke, literaly lame is slumped in his chair, after deliberating for 2 hours and after the sun had set, it was decide to wheel the lad off. bada bing. start your engines mr 767.okay now at the best of times im a frightened flyer, ive got loads of miles under my belt, but at 30 000 feet and dropping that don't count for much.

its a 50 minute flight and it rocked, as in like an ice cube in a glass of ice cold coca cola, this thing bobbed and weaved like muhammed ali.

anyhoo i was biting the seat..hard

it was ten minutes to land, but i just didnt notice the plane dropping slowly, then bang the floor of the plane drops.sweet gsus is it now that im gonna die while munching a muffin. an aside, the airhost says, 'cake or beef roll' , i went cake, these things are so dense the palestininans could use them as rocks, but boy these things taste a lot better than a rock.

so now im wanting to squeeze a tear outta my eye ball, then the pilot, the irish batsard with only a learners licence, starts pushing the thruster away from him(now i have no knowledge of flying but from what ive seen on tv, when the plane starts diving it means the pilot is pushing the controls away), i start slipping out of my seat, my knees up my nostrils cos im in economy(no leg room), sh*t in stowage starts shifting forward and im praying to kingdom come, okay so i stole the bottle of coke from the guest house when no one was looking, but hey.

anyhoo we're now racing hard i can imagine to get from 30 000 to 2000, in like 3 minutes.there's cloud cover and the light is flashing like in a horror movie but without the snakes. the landing gear cluncks out, the winds blowing at nauticle knots, im convinced im gonna die and i just see the front end of the plane rushin towrads me in a flame big enough for a marshmellow on a stick.

we then start leveling out but the wings are wobbling and im not sure the pilot was perfectly parallel to the run way, sweet mary jane.i was rattled. the planes wings, im praying, dont scrape the ground. sha wing the plane hits that runway hard like me after mike tyson b*tch slaps me. we skiddoo, onto that run way, and the pilot gooi's anchors, turns left and parks that amercian liner.

im alive, they say its gonaa rain but ill survive.

dan ger, a russian bear hunter and master swordsman who is happier with two feet rooted to the earth (but the pilot action figurine of the russian can still be bought, plane sold separately)

Sean Ghonnerea (Sean Connery) 15.10.08

Like a 1970's low budget, B-grade made-for-tv nigerian soapie so was my first journey into Lagos, Nigeria.

A 2 prop plane-a magimix with wheels and wings, to Lagos from Accra, the take off as brief as drawing a short straw. it was the smoothest ride I'd ever taken. the mountain of an airhostess as gentle as a daisy offered me a box of nibblies. I was as happy as a frog in a sock until…..

Lagos, it sounds like Lego, but there's nothing fun and primary coloured about this cesspit. And you certainly wouldn't wanna receive Lagos wrapped under your Christmas tree.

As I awoke with cold sweats to the humdrum of a diesel powered generator, I couldn't pinch myself out of the nightmare, cos I was living it. When we dream nightmares, they're probably set in lagos- lights, camera, serious action.

The streets of Lagos are a pimply teen's mug after an over dose of Kay eF Cee. The san andreas fault pales in comparison to the crevices that tear this city's streets apart. Buildings are the canvas for the plumes of diesel bellowed from the chugging generators. the buildings are delapidated and havent been updated since the colonialists in their adventure hats picked up their gin tonics and set sail for mud island.

Traffic congestion is a flu inflicted kid with nose donuts(snot encrusted nostrils).alleviation comes in the guise of an okada, sounds like avocado but has absolutely nothing fleshy, fruity or green about it, and it certainly doesn't taste good with a pinch of salt. Okada's are modern day cowboys bedecked in kanye west goggles and helmetless heads. They're pilots, they're out riders. They're the pixallated enemy in space invaders. They're a necessary dr eevil. It's a taxi on a motor bike. They swarm in bunches, they take the high street and the low, they ride in formation, they're the Luftwaffe on wheels and they're scary as sh*t.

The city is a mosaic of black faces with white eyeballs densely packed together. each rummaging for a place in the overcast gray sweatiness that is Lagos. here everyone is trying to make a dirty sweaty naairah. the market, is truelly an African market, bludgeoned beasts, flies, hairy yams-it's the contents of Dammer's fridge, it exists on the streets of Lagos.

Highways are markets too- from toilet roll to meat roll, you can get it all. Highways are running tracks, highways are the pipelines of heaps of traffic.2 lanes are 6 lanes. Keep left pass on the pavement, pass over the car infront of you, then pass right over the pedestrian through the BRT lane, then cut off the ambulance, then mount the right pavement, then stop in the middle and buy a meat roll. It's the African jungle and it's survival of the ballsiest.

Lagos consists of 2 islands-Victoria Island, Lagos island and the mainland, all connected by shabir shaky bridges. The bridges swoop over murky bodies, dead bodies, of water that look abused and unfiltered. Local fisherman in home made boats with plastic bags knitted together to form masts, sail the seas plundering crustaceans.

i needed to pee the trauma of lagos down the drain, and it was a trip to Abuja, that relieved the tank.

Abuja is the capital city, custom designed for that purpose. it is rather beautiful- rolling green hills, litter free and at an 800m olympic pace. i was in and out of there in 3 hours, but id probably give it another scratch and sniff given the opprotunity.

Lagos opened my eyes wider on the state of Africa, i have no sympathy, i have no remorse, does the west really need to place a band aid over africa to heal her. i now know not. im glad to be back in africa, the south of.

Excerpts from an unfinished scratching:

Ice cold sweaty coca cola:

Lagos, ill take an ice cold coca cola, it arrives dirty as hell, the neck and mouth resembling a new deli public toilet. The bottle skinny, sexy, 350ml of pure joy , shafts of ice poking the top screaming for air. The coke emblem emblazoned on the side of the sultry elongated bottle, its dirty and worn as chafed leather. The perspiration of the bottle careering down the undulations of the chiselled bottle. The waiter cracks it open, rubs it down with a serviette

I'll take a straw thank you

Yellow brick road

i got to Lagos the other day, but there was no one to frikkin pick me up and every one always says make sure you have like a police escort and sh*t, anyhoo it turned out alright cos i got a ride with a taxi and i said to him, 'victor, im puttin my trust in you.", so thank goodness i wasn't kidnapped.

i got a huge room here with 2 double beds, what a lag, so i dossed in the one bed but it had a huge dent in it, then in the middle of the night i moved to the other bed, it was better, and then in the bath room i saw an empty packet for these long lasting s*x pills, eeuw

A rat in a hat

so the other morning i came into the boardroom where i work and there was this hectic smell, so i chooned 'there is a hectic smell' and i left the building, then the cleaners went in with a broom mopping about, the smell still lingered like a fat man to a steak roll. then with a bit of elbow grease the cleaner removed one of the ceiling boards and found a 16 kilogram rotten rat the size of a baby labrador in the ceiling void. oops i hope that chicken next door was real chicken.

Nothing here inspires, nothing is beautiful, nothing is sacred.

There's nothing soft, chewy or gentle about Lagos. If I never see her again it will be too soon. Lagos is the date you leave at the dinner table, you excuse your self to go to the bathroom and you just run, boy, ruuuuun.

so Oprah, next time you 'come home', stay in Lagos, then say 'im home'.

My humblest apologies for an uber late scratching, but it was rather difficult to scratch about a dump.

danel(the armaments leg of dan), a Russian bear hunter and master swordsman.

I have an ipod nano…who needs friends when you got an ipod

well what do you know, I found a pubic hair embedded in a Super C sucking sweet.