Dear Facebook Girl

It’s me again. I must admit it’s been a while but I hope you are coping through the rapid changing times and even doing well?

It’s necessary I wrote to you after what transpired between us the last time, but nevertheless, I couldn’t get myself to shut me down entirely, without letting you know what’s on my mind and probably how I feel about your demeanor on FACEBOOK.

First of all, I realized, you are no celebrity and have never in the least had any appearance before an organized public, where I could even allude that single incident to a celebrity status. You don’t philosophize and your timeline is readily available to attest to that, yet your friend’s list is more than the privileges FACEBOOK can allow and now you are almost enjoying subscription status and that gives me a cause to worry.

I must be worried because, the last time I checked, you have never studied Photography and have not even mentioned it as a hobby, where people could add you up to acquaint themselves with myriads of picturesque landscapes, trends in vogue, buildings and random images that you might capture on your daily walks of life, yet, your pictures are all over the place as you keep saying ‘thank you’ to the comments they attract.

Furthermore, there are no pictures of Showrooms, galleries of Models and Musicians to watch and no posting of tit-bits from around the world nor have you even shared a hyperlink from the internet, where we could justify your two thousand and counting friends as hanging on for some kind of information, yet, you even have friends that surpass public figure subscription and you want to be taken serious?

I’m yet to think through how posts like “Tonight is gonna be a good night”, “Thank God it’s Friday”, “Who will take me out tonight”, “I’m bored, call me if you have my number”, “I will never trust men again” and lots of similar posts could get you that much number of friends you don’t even interact with, and I’m wondering if you have thought through it yourself to know the basis.

How do they find you? Do they find you on other friend’s wall and if that holds true, the how is it possible, because you are hardly interactive.

Do they come across you in your corner or it’s as a result of your lax settings on your account? I really need to know if you have an iota of reason why they keep flocking in your direction as they extend hands of friendships. 

Even though its human nature to be gregarious and attention seeking, the bad news I have for you is that most ‘serious’ guys do not like to entertain girls that come across as ‘multi-sockets’. They like girls who have fewer friends because logically and practically, it is only merrier when it is few. It is also the only way, they can think of getting some quality time and kind of attention from you.

Additionally, you come across as one desperate girl who doesn’t know what he wants and always gets chosen and probably dumped in the end. You cannot accept all ‘friend request’ simply because you don’t become friends with everyone who bares their teeth to you in real life. Is that being nice or indecisiveness? You really have to wake up and smell the coffee. Get real!

How many do you call and what do you guys talk about? 

I can only admonish you to position yourself well and be mindful that people are watching and anything you do here will be staring in your face in the near future, if not already. Stop the false impression you are trying so hard to create and you just might attract like-minded people into your circle which can eventually bring out the best in you since iron sharpeneth iron.

Finally, you could take off all those sexually suggestive pictures of you from Facebook since being a woman alone is enough to remind men of sex. Stop overdoing things because men will still find you in your obscure corner and give it to you according to your experience, dictates and maybe expectations too.

To this end, I will end my missive here to attend to other pressing matters but I will find time in-between to pay you a visit or probably contact you before I receive your reply.

Take care and live well.

Yours, 

Fo Fovi

The Unthinkable

The only time I take a pause

Is to re-evaluate my cause

The urge to rid me off my flaws

To think about the unthinkable

Unthinkable themes like life and death

Destiny

Miracles

Magic

Love

Thoughts of the after-life

Themes like God’s awesomeness

And how adamant He can be

Thoughts of my parents having sex

Thoughts of my life being reeled on set

Of my thoughts affecting other thoughts

What about the uncanniness in town

The gravity of these thoughts weighs me down

 These thoughts no matter how, I cannot understand

Makes my vision bleary

and my body weary

Yet, I indulge because it is my high

 Maybe, solution is nigh

The unthinkable stokes in me, a fire

And levitates my desire

A feeling that takes me higher

The only feeling that gives me healing

And oh! I only do this when I take a pause

The only time I lay beside me, my cross

Just to think about the unthinkable

Fool's Paradise

Trying to demystify why ‘fools fall in love” is one of the endless pursuit a man can indulge himself in, which begs the question, why amorous love has so many negative inferences and connotations, among which are “love is blind”,  “at the touch of love, every man becomes a poet”, “love is not for the faint-hearted".

This makes me wonder if the supposed wise people do not have emotions that are aroused by the attractiveness of the opposite sex and the need to copulate or perhaps, they have a way of going about it, which does not have effect on their senses, because it looks like the more I do, the more I get lost and at this point, I can only rescind my fate and choose between being a fool or a wise person.

Sometimes, the import of all these negative inferences makes meaning when you look at it from a different perspective, which makes you smile and nod your head to these age old truisms as a form of approval. 

A fool according to an unknown source can be someone who lacks commonsense and intelligence and mostly, it is what we display any time love comes knocking on our door. It is very easy to appear a fool or actually do relatively foolish things for the one you love and in worse cases, defy all beliefs which hitherto were sacred to you, just to please that one special person.

Being a fool in the context of love is not necessarily acting up in the circus or has nothing to do with comedy. What it simply means is to be thinking with your heart which is sometimes referred to as following one’s heart.

The head is physical and logical and tries to put things in its right perspective according to the bearer’s level of intelligence and expectations while the heart is illogical and can only be felt. The heart does not think and cannot think. It doesn’t know what is right or not and does not conform to norms. All it exudes is emotions and lots of it. 

How often have you not been lost at sea when asked to explain why you love the one in your life?

Have often have you not rationalized why the one you are with is the best thing that has ever happened to you even though you know parts or the whole of your explanation is false?

How about the lies you discovered s/he told you and still you found a way to make her/him stay with that big heart of yours, not to talk about the physical abuse?

How often have you not asked friends and family to mind their own businesses because it’s your life and you could choose whom to love against all odds?

So, why did you lie to your friends and Employer about the bruises and scars s/he left on your skin if you were actually in your senses and thinking right?

Can these aforementioned and a lot more rhetoric of this nature be considered as someone in their right senses?

Unfortunately, the mind and heart fails to coordinate when an issue of love arises and each in its own right chooses a different path. It is also convenient to state that no one in his right senses can love because loving is for fools who suppresses or discard some of their right thoughts just to be with the one they meant to be with.

The head with a fanciful brain, sits up in its quietude to prepare a checklist as to who should own its heart but the heart just chances upon someone and tasks the fellow to own its head, thus betraying the head-heart relationship. The heart does not mind any other stimuli apart from what it perceives and further blinds its eye to all the reasoning his mind and that of others will give it. It is the heart that beats at the sight of our captors, and it is the heart that breaks when that person does something awful against us or exits out of our life.

Furthermore, love is one thing no one has monopoly over and can barely control, unless they retreat from that pursuit, because it reins everyone in and makes them fools at one point or the other and I am sure you can readily attest to letting go of some ideals and terribly compromising on some commonsense, just to ensure that something was done right.

Additionally, knowing that love relationship is a paradise for fools, can make most of us relax and make things work by not being rigid and too logical because love in itself does not make sense and you can bear out to my assertion if you probably have asked yourself once or twice in the past, why some people end up as couples whom in your opinion do not belong at all and the most familiar one by asking yourself, why you ever dated that Ex of yours.

Finally, it is prudent to follow your heart and make a fool of yourself by falling in love and possibly staying on than trying to find logic in everything your lover does to the extent of separating every two months you fall in love, because in such instances, it will be convenient to say that, the wise has rather become a fool by not dwelling in the fool’s paradise.

Terms and Conditions apply!

The need to write this piece was borne after one of my numerous encounters with one of the customer service personnel of Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) who practically gave me the impression as though she was doing me a favor.

“Hello and welcome to MTN, your call will be recorded for training purposes. For Twi, press one, for Ga, press two, bla, bla, bla….” And the pre-recorded voice trails off unless otherwise, but I doubt if they do retrieve and playback those back-up tapes for the said training or they just are learning other things I’m not privy to.

Undoubtedly, MTN is one of the biggest Telecommunication Companies who has fallen sub-par the giant status they carry about and as the best when it comes to provision of Telecommunication services. It’s rightfully so, because it looks like, they have shifted their focus from their core objective of up-time and reliable provision of services to sponsoring of programmes and provision of corporate social responsibilities. 

The lady in question made me look stupid for subscribing to their network. Her actions, depicted by the way she interacted with me also gave me the impression that I could stop subscribing to their network if I like and still there would be millions of Ghanaians who will patronize them. And, all I could ask myself after that dead-end call for help was to ask myself why I was still hooked on to their grid. I felt the need to stop using any services that had to do with telecom services, but, you know what that meant. I was going to severe ties with friends and family since there would be no form of communication, neither would I be able to publish this post. I would be perpetually out of coverage area and you can imagine how I would fare.

While pondering over the series of the appalling services these Telcos provide us, I came to the conclusion that we as a clientele base contributes to the shambolic services these service providers in tend provides us. We don’t take our part of the various contracts seriously, which is why these companies always have a field day. 

Modern dispensation has made it imperative for us as a people to continually go into contracts we are not even aware of, which unfortunately have legal bindings on us. These contracts if explored to the letter and the clauses thereof can get us into serious troubles our families cannot even redeem us from.

If you have a presence on social media, be it Twitter, Whatsapp, Facebook, Picasa, Tumblr, Foursquare, Instagram and what have you, then chances are that, you have entered into a contract with a third party application provider just by installing the application, which is usually free of charge.  As to if there are embedded costs and how this companies fare, would be another topic for later discussion.

How many of us take our time to actually read the License Agreements that comes with these soft wares? How do you know your rights and responsibilities that come with installation of these applications? How do you know your responsibilities with regards to the liabilities therein, should something happen?  How can you even sue these companies when all you did was to just click ‘next’, ‘next’ and then ‘finish’ to get your application running?

Somewhere in 2004, I managed to read the License Agreement that comes with Microsoft Windows operating systems, specifically that of Windows98 during one of my installation sessions to the very end, even though it was not making sense. I had to because I figured it was not there for its own sake. It’s purpose-driven and for a reason. 

Usually, these contracts state at the bottom of the License Agreements that “You are now aware of your rights. Click next to continue” and I ask, are we not allowing ourselves to be led to the slaughter house by just consenting to these agreements without knowing what they entail?

All these contracts and transactions have terms and conditions applying to them and it is what we should be looking out for, to see for ourselves what will be in stock for us should we validate such contracts to full blown statuses. 

Our ignorance about these terms and conditions that applies also accounts for the reason why some people win raffles but are not able to redeem their prizes. These companies know most of us will not have the time to read this supposed ‘chaff’ and this only plays advantageously to their gallery. They sure know that you will be found wanting when the day of reckoning comes, so beware.

We have to take some of these things seriously so that customer service personnel of service provider companies should not feel like they are doing us a favor since they would have known that we have actually read and understood the terms and conditions that applies, thus our rights!