Just curious!

Ever wondered what happened to the cat? The one that got slain by it’s own curiosity? I wonder what sort of cat it became after shaking off the dust of death from it’s back and returned to the land of the living for the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th or … 9^th time. I wonder what it started doing when curious (old habits die hard). If it turns on the tv, grab it’s bag and go out window/shoe shopping, get stonned or spend all night partying. Or if it refuse to cave in, got curious and died another death.

Don’t you think, perhaps, that a cat who isn’t curious would resemble this generation? A generation so unmotivated, so bored that it would go to great length for a bit of excitement? To perverse or self destructive lengths, most of the time?!

That’s what i feel whenever I see my little brother (14) going in and out of the house, “as if there is a pin on his behind”, whenever a film he’s seen before or a talk-show he doesn’t like comes on tv. A curiously uncurious generation scared to be left alone with it’s thought!

I’m not saying, although decades older, I am any better. I have none of the wide eyed interest and the feverish excitement of my teens when hearing about something I’m not familiar with. No more reading everything that fall in my lap. Or trying to hook up with a follower of every strange religion I heard about. No Bob Marley, no UB40, No Don Williams! But I get curious from time to time. Like yesterday evening, for example. I got curious about boxing. If it’s a sport, or a bad day? Why the word “the ancient Greeks started it” seems to encourage things that should be condemned. And if curiosity killed the cat, lack of curiosity won’t kill us all dead?

Will the real “First Lady” please stand up?

We’ve all heard & and been upset with it (perhaps for various reasons). The Amharic equivalent of the word “First Lady”, (“Qedamawit Emebet”) being applied to P.M. Meles Zenawi’s wife. However, is Azeb Mesfin really a first lady?According to Wikipedia, a reliable and dear friend of mine, the word “First Lady” is a term applied to the wife of an elected male head of state. And Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, although the real leader behind the crown, ISN’T ‘head of state’… yet, anyway. There is a man he is supposed to report to and bow before the signature of. This dude is real, alive and well. Well.. maybe not that well but alive enough to embarass those shallow Ethiopians (like me) who like to have their president good and functional. It’s not known if this man has a wife, but if he does, the good lady would definitely go by a different name. So you’d think, atleast for appearances sake, the ENA people not to refer to his 2nd in command’s wife as “Qedamawit Emebet”. Don’t you? Unless they are trying their hands on political satire. Which is very unlike them.*Azeb Mesfin is an Ethiopian women’s right activist, businesswoman, member of parliament, and political spouse. She is also the vice President of Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA).[1]Azeb is the wife of Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi and the mother of three children, Semhal, Marda and Senay Meles.*