Kevin Baldeosingh
?WEDNESDAY. "All we want is an equal place in the marketplace," said rapso artist Brother Resistance, lobbying for a 50 per cent local content quota on a radio programme hosted by veteran journalist Tony Fraser, who said "Yes, dread." Resistance was clearly using African arithmetic, where 50 per cent of airtime for a few thousand local songs is equal to 50 per cent of airtime for millions of foreign ones. He was also using a rapso definition of "marketplace" since, in white people economics, the market is defined by supply and demand. Ergo, it's not a market if you're dictating demand. That's like making people buy local lettuce although they don't like salad, because it's good for them and your wallet.
SUNDAY. "A society that disrespects its female population is a society on a sure path to self-destruction," asserted the editorial of the Catholic News. Obviously, disrespect doesn't include laws that prevent women from occupying the highest offices in a society, because such laws are not self-destructive once women are respected as wives and mothers and vaginas. Similarly, a society with laws that tell women what to do with their bodies isn't disrespectful, since women are allowed to pluck their eyebrows. And those societies which tell women what to wear are only protecting women from men who can't stop themselves from sooting and raping when they see slim women in tights. More importantly, this ensures equality for most women who men ignore when they pass by in frilly dresses on their way to church.
SUNDAY. In the October issue of UWI Today, which is carried as a supplement in the Sunday Guardian, the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, not ironic, announced a project titled "Work/Life Balance and Aging in Trinidad." The 10-member team, headed by Professor Patricia Mohammed and including five research assistants, are all women. That's because the feminist lobby for gender balance and sensitivity applies to everybody except the denizens of the IGDS, where women are as good as men and weep about trees.
Additionally, the project aims to provide "vital qualitative information on the labour force," which is another way of saying "Statistics are an invention of the patriarchy intended to oppress women." Moreover, after a few lectures at either TTEC or WASA–the article's writer apparently didn't know which–the IGDS says that "there has been greater contentment and productivity within the organisation." How they reached this conclusion without measurable data is not explained, unless you consider the phrase "axiology between concept and practice" to be an explanation.
MONDAY. The Oilfield Workers Trade Union published its update on Brent Crude oil prices on its website. But since T&T measures oil prices by West Texas Intermediate, which is known as Texas light sweet, the union was clearly using the wrong price indicator to warn its members about capitalist racist diabetes.
MONDAY. On page 12 of last Monday's Guardian, the National Lotteries Control Board took out a full-page ad to highlight a seamstress who won a Mercedes Benz twice in three years in their Scratch game. According to the NLCB copywriter, "Perhaps it is because of her consistency; perhaps it is the universe responding to Mrs Nandlal's good deeds in helping out members of the community in need by sewing for them."
In fact, the ad only specified that Mrs Nandlal used to help her friend who worked at a Lotto booth "during lean times by sewing uniforms for her daughter." But why did the universe make a child who needs so many uniforms? And does the universe only help out lottery players who help out NLCB employees?
Mrs Nandlal also said that for three months she relied on Scratch to pay the rent for her sewing business. Is this a pitch that would impress the business people on CNC3's Planting Seeds programme? "Give me one million dollars and I will use that to pay my overheads, buy Scratch tickets every Monday and, in three years, the universe will return your capital with 15 per cent interest?"
MONDAY. The Caribbean Broadcasting Union is in Cuba this week for its 47th annual assembly. Because the CBU's directors believe that a place with only State-controlled media is an appropriate venue for media managers. Not only that, but in a country where the private sector is illegal, the opening lecture was on "Caribbean Competitiveness." Obviously, the feature speaker won't be talking about "Caribbean Competitiveness, except in Cuba," because then he would be arrested. To top it all, the theme of this year's conference is "Building Media Capacity to Advance the Caribbean," in a country with no wireless, no electricity grid and no porn.
Email: kevin.baldeosingh@zoho.com
Kevin Baldeosingh is a professional writer, author of three novels and co-author of a Caribbean history textbook.