The seldom seen kid

(Classes havent started so I may blog extensively over the next few days. Once class has started...not so much)

Manchester is an odd town. Within the first few days, I'd encountered a blizzard of excuse me's and thank you's and sorry's until I felt like I was swimming serenely in a sea of decorum. Lynne Truss wrote an entire book talking about the rudeness of modern life in England. I really havent seen even a hint of it. Even in a melting-pot like Manchester with people from all over the world, good manners is like the grease that....erm wait I think I've lost my metaphor there. Sod it.
However there is anecdotal evidence that there is someone somewhere in this city who may actually be rude. I did overhear the following telephone conversation on the bus yesterday.
Perky blonde girl: I can be a bit rude sometimes you know? I was sitting next to this guy on the bus and he was reading the 'Daily Mirror'. He was doing 'The Brain teaser' and I told him 'Thats an oxymoron isnt it? 'The brain teaser' in The Daily Mirror and he was so rude!"
(Incidentally the oddest sentence I overheard this week was a guy telling his friend that "If a cow sits on your bonnet, its your fault". It didnt sound like they were joking, so its a topic I wish had been explored in more detail as I walked by)
I went down the road to buy the paper the other day. After I paid for it, the guy at the counter- a heavily bearded Indian- said "Thank you very much sir- you are a gentleman"
I left the shop in a state of confusion. What exactly had I done to warrant such high praise? Not rob the guy? After all, I bought a paper and paid for it. Hardly the mark of a good upbringing. Or was it one of those zen destiny things? Perhaps I was such a gentleman that it shone like a halo around me inspiring everyone I met to achieve greater things and find their true selves?
Or- and this is admittedly a lot more likely- the poor fellow was still learning English and was merely practising something he had heard on TV.
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I've spotted some interesting signs around town (Long-suffering readers of this blog know this is a recurring theme)One of my favourites is the chip shop with a sign saying WE ONLY HAVE ONE BRANCH. Is this a plea for help (as in 'Please come and eat here- we only have one branch!') Or is it a sign of defiance ('We are rebelling against globalization and its evils and as a result have taken a stand. We will not establish more than one branch to give satisfaction to our capitalist overlords')Maybe its trying to set them apart from a copycat ('Remember the other chip shop you ate at yesterday? That wasnt us! Those guys are ripping us off')
I am also wondering quite seriously how the proprietors of Al Baghdad cafe are hoping to attract customers- perhaps their prices are explosive (That's enough-editor)Likewise The West Bank Restaurant may be headed for tough times especially with the checkpoint you have to get through before you can get a seat inside.
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A Ugandan blogger recently left a comment on my blog in which she drew parallels between my rant against Top 40 music the other day and a blog she thought I was responding to. Actually the bit I took down was a response to 27th Comrade's attack on- among a million other things- evolution, white people and rationality. The blogger thought I was actually responding to a now famous attack on the Ugandan blogging community which appeared in The Monitor ()
However although the criticism was made in good faith, I have to defend myself against comparisons with that Monitor piece which I very strongly disagreed with. While Im at it, Im also going to identify what made me so uncomfortable about that article.
1. Dennis Muhumuza- the writer of said piece- based his entire article on a flawed premise: that blogging must be 'serious' and reveal deep, sociological, political and economic truths about a country or else its basically null and void. From this flawed premise he arrived at even more flawed conclusions-that this was all blogging was about in Uganda. I based my post on a good premise- that music has to be good and interesting. It doesnt have to be serious, but it should be good. Such a thing is subjective obviously, but its a good place to start.
2. The writer's piece was basically a character assasination of the bloggers in question- in effect calling them shallow, uninformed and thick. I didnt personally attack the musicians whose work I hated (Except Akon but thats because a man who invents a life as a criminal just for some street cred cant possibly have more than two brain cells to rub together).
3.The writer was a hypocrite. He attacked Ugandan bloggers because they were obsessed with banality. However the writer's blog was characterized with such pulse-racing delights as relative's weddings and birthday parties. Glass houses and all.....
4. He used a few minutes from Happy Hour as a crucial sample to further his argument which was a fairly stupid thing to do and what football coaches like to call 'A schoolboy error'. So what if people were giggling and fooling around? That says nothing, certainly not in the short time-frame that was on offer here. We are also supposed to believe that this Tommy Smyth fellow-the visiting American in the piece- is so important that his decision to prematurely leave Happy Hour said a lot about the blogging community. Well who the hell is Tommy Smyth and why is his opinion crucial to deciding this question?
There is also the incredibly disingenuous opening paragraph- it seems out of place because it wouldnt seem to tell us anything but if you think hard about it, it does. The author is using it as evidence of bloggers being unserious. You can feel contempt in his description- she was chasing him around the restaurant! Patrons were whispering! It sets the tone for the disapproval of the bloggers that is to come. It's actually a bit clever, but severely misleading. Film makers know this- they realize that the opening shot of a character is extremely important towards shaping your feelings about that character in the film.
I guess what Im also trying to say here is that a rant isnt identical to another one just because they are both rants and as such would be miffed at the notion that he and I were trying to accomplish similar objectives. Its not about who is 'clever' or whose piece is well-written- he could have written that as beautifully as James Joyce and still stunk the place out metaphorically speaking. Its about logic and self-awareness and attitude.
The blogger notes that the difference is that I was clever enough not to get it published in the papers but thats not the point. The writer of the 'Ugandan bloggers' piece revealed his misjudgement not just in publishing said piece, but in actually holding to that point of view in the first place. If someone is ignorant in a forest and no one hears him, he's still ignorant- if he broadcasts it by megaphone, it is simply a continuation down the bumpy cobblestones of ignorance. We may have shared a certain basic fact in common- we dont like the way things are in a certain regard (he with blogging and I with the Top 40) but my issues with music are hardly existential- I could turn on the radio tomorrow and there could be a complete U-turn in the quality involved. I wont have to change my position to appreciate this and lets face it- its simply music we are talking about here.
On the other hand, we had someone who completely trashed the efforts of Uganda's sterling bloggers (of which the aforementioned commenter is one)and missed the very simple fact that so-called 'banality' is one of the greatest possible expressions of the state of society. I hereby wish to completely diassociate my rant from the rant that appeared in The Monitor and call for the right of rants not to be grouped with all others simply by virtue of their nature.