Subject: BHA: Popural Education, Philosophy  & Social Practice
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 10:46:48 +0100


Listers!


What entitles philosophy - is it popural education or social practice 
the practice of life itself? It is certainly a controversial question 
though, for one asks if practicing  "popural education" is the same as 
social practice or rather that does what education define social 
practice to be, or that popural education offers a full social practice 
of life itself.

There was a discussion of Weber on PSN and the iron cage - I've tried 
to make efforts to link the "iron cage" to a free " social practice" 
popural education and free will. I am still failing in all.

However an interesting article is picked from  this student in Brussels 
and how he saw things from the other side in his article; " It's all 
written in the loos "  By Robert Adam Kasozi Jan 24 - 30, 2004

The article has deeper implications in defining several issue - what 
common people think about, what education is, expression and it limits 
etc, but more the sociology of life practices. 

It's all written in the loos 
By Robert Adam Kasozi 
Jan 24 - 30, 2004

Brussels - Back in the day in continental Europe, there was a job you 
dared not touch with a longstick. That job, with the unsexy title of 
night soilman, was left for drunks and never-do-wells who hadn't 
figured out what to do with themselves in life. You see, even after the 
Romans built a wonderful sewerage system that still stands today, these 
proud Anglo-Saxons just couldn't come round to using it. 

So they continued taking a crap in an open pot and hiring the night 
soilman to carry it away and dispose of it wherever he saw fit -- which 
was usually the next alley behind your house. 

Forget the public Roman baths and spas. Continental Europeans (and you 
may laugh now) are just about as new to the toilet as we are, only 
accepting it fully in the last one hundred years.

Which probably explains why a lot of chicanery goes on in the public 
conveniences about here. Back in Uganda, getting into a public toilet 
is a one-two-three go experience. Two minutes to do your business and 
you dare not even breathe in there. Here? It's the time to get kinky 
and dirty. And nothing illustrates this better than the toilet 
grafitti. 

The doors are usually a metre away from the pot where you do your 
business but that hasn't stopped the grafitti artistes from writing on 
them.

One common theme seems to run through all of them. These are very very 
angry and bitter men. Well, sometimes they are also gay and very horny. 
On the wall to the public convenience in the library, for instance, one 
fellah who got spiritual while doing the dirty wrote "Jesus loves you. 
He died for your sins." Nice try. 

Just below him is another fellah who cared nothing for Mary's boy and 
had a bone to pick with the Iraqis. So he wrote: "Fight the [Iraq] war, 
f*ck the norm."

This F-word business continues directly below with another angry user 
who rants: "F*ck Belgium (and I thought I was the only one with that 
dark thought). F*ck Europe. F*ck the world. F*ck people." Well another 
guy thinking about his last date with death muses 
philosophically: "sometimes it ain't easy to die. She didn't even kill 
me."

Well back to the horny gays. About here it isn't just fashionable to be 
gay, it's also something to bait people with. 

That's how this classified ad ended up on the toilet door: "If you are 
homosexual and you have a beautiful girlfriend, I can f*ck you, 
provided you let me [sleep] with your girlfriend. Leave e-mail. P.S I 
am 1m 87, penis 16cm. I am not a nigger nor a f*cking Albanian."

It probably didn't take very long for another fellah to answer the ad, 
because just below is this script: "I am a homosexual and I have a 
beautiful girlfriend but you can't f*ck neither of us because only a 
guy who has a really small penis would write this bullsh*t. 

It really sucks to have a small dick, doesn't it, you poor heterosexual 
idiot." [emphasis not mine]. You would think people would stop at the 
sex wars and insulting each other, but no sir. The ads keep coming and 
this guy definitely hadn't had any for a long time. His solution? 

Advertise in the loo. So he wrote: "I need a f*ck. Free girls everyday. 
Call me please." For good measure he drew a heart, but forgot one 
important detail. There was no phone number to call him on.

Not so this fella. Feeling the urges of nature taking over, he 
wrote: "You wanna suck? Service de baser." I dare not translate the 
French, but this fella left a number. It's 0494 143237. It seems like a 
genuine number and if you've got the guts, just put a 32 in front of it 
and find out what type of cojones this guy has got.

It would be kind to suggest that most of the people who get into these 
conveniences and get literary urges are fairly drunk and there is 
evidence. Like writing on the wall that says: "Drink Vodka. Everyday." 
But that can't be the whole story. The famous French mathematician Rene 
Descartes may have declared a universal truth when he said "I think 
therefore I am" but some guy here would have none of it. So he crossed 
it out the word 'think' and wrote: "I hurt therefore I am." Hardly a 
drunk fellow.

When the lads are not getting terribly xenophobic, they are ranting 
about the boys in red (Man U, silly). One fellah must have been so 
peeved after the Red Devils took the premiership crown last year that 
he wrote: "Who the f*ck is Man U?" To be honest, they were last year's 
English premiership champions, winning this trophy for the 8th time in 
11 years, but how did that escape this fella? 

Anyway, a sober voice intervenes in pencil nearby asking: "How can you 
love/hate a team? Do you guys have no lives?"

But a despondent writer in this rest room seems to sum up the bile 
boiling in men's breasts here. Referring to recent events in the Middle 
East, he makes this doomsday call. "[President George] Bush rules the 
world and that is very good. And he will soon be ruling hell too along 
with Saddam [Hussein], Osama bin Laden and all the other ass holes that 
destroy the world day by day. Wake up." 

Now when did the men's room move from being a mere convenience to a 
political arena full of zealots, homophobes and perverts? Huh?





_________
bwanika
 
url: www.idr.co.ug

Logon & Join in ug-academicsdb discussion list

                               http://www.coollist.com/subcribe.html

                               List ID: ug-academicsdb
                               Your Email address: 
                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                               url: http://uhpl.uganda.co.ug
                              
http://pub59.ezboa


     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---