Well, we gonna do it again...
Anyone?
Street Style. Fashion. Photography.
@davidnyanzi on Instagram
@davidnyanzi on Instagram
Friday, 29 October 2010
Spot The Label.
Kids, do you remember us playing a game called Spot The Label a while ago?
Well, we gonna do it again...
Gucci.
Goyard.
Mulberry.
COS.
Okay, I'm gonna need some help here, and - stop laughing at the back - this is serious.
Anyone?
Well, we gonna do it again...
Anyone?
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Kit & Cat...Sommerset House, London.
This is Kit
This Cat aka Coco.
As far as opportunities go, they couldn't come any better than this.
I promptly jumped out of my seat as I watched these two shoot each other coz I knew exactly what the title of the post would be: KitKat...haha!
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Scooter-Chic At Sommerset House...Aldwych, London.
The second most dangerous risk you can ever take is to break into the headquarters of the CIA, steal the codes to the nukes with an aim of selling them to the highest bidder... prefarably one from the middle east or, better yet, eastern europe. (Russia, ahem)
"Surely, that should be number one. No?" You must be wondering."Okay, how about this?" Stepping on an Italian's shoes? No. Stepping on a blackman's brand new white Air Force Nikeys? No. Showing up at a Ku Klux Clan meeting and playing Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech? No. Parking a gas guzzling SUV monster in front of Green Peace offices? No. Wrong. All those do not count I'm afraid. The number one spot: spilling a Glaswegean's pint. As I personally witnessed what happens to the perpetrator, and I gotta tell you, it ain't pretty.
So why is it that we human beings are drawn to risk like vegetarians are to pork chops? Simple. We are hard wired to take risk. Can you imagine if the first people on earth weren't risk takers to wonder what lay beyond their caves? "I wonder what's in the next valley?" The risks of going to find out were immense, but obviously they went ahead or we'd all still be living in Ethiopia. More recently, what caused Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic, or Neil Armstrong to fly to the moon? Why do people bungee jump? Well, it's simple: we like risk.
Deep at the root of the human brain is the limbic sysytem, a sort of slug-like sticky thing that controls our instincts. That section manufactures and drops something called dopamine into our heads everytime we do something dangerous. And it's this dopamine that gives us the thrill, the rush which takes us to a state of euphoria. It's when you feel most alive.
It's also what cocaine does to the brain everytime it's inhaled. Certain properties of it fool the brain that it's in danger and causes dopamine to be released. That's why people become so addicted, why it's so moreish. The sense of feeling invincible. It's what you feel when you get on a rollercoaster ride. It's gut-wrenchingly scary, but you wanna go again and again. Dopamine is why.
So then, it's this search for risk that drove me to take this shot IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD as the lights were turning green...!!!
Man, what a rush! Blame it on the dopamine.
So tell me. Amidst all the honking and the kind of language that would be frowned upon in a convent, was it worth the risk though?
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Monday, 25 October 2010
Refugee And The Fortress.
Britain and the flight from tyranny.
Now, this is a topic that is not everybody's cup of tea. So, if it is not your usual brand of Vodka, please turn away now.
I do not know who I'm writing this for. As an African in the diaspora, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It affects each one of us that were not born in this country but have become a part of the fabric of society and somehow forgotten about our fellow brothers and sisters in the motherland following in our footsteps for a better life.
Asylum seekers have to endure many humiliations. They share lodgings with arbitrary companions, and have nothing in common - sometimes not even a language - other than flight from persecution. The highly qualified and the political dissident coexist with the peasant and the petty criminal.
Some wish to study and prepare for a career in Britain, while others only drink and watch game shows. Overcrowding, shared beds, the distinctive male odour of cramped humanity, a pinched, undernourished existence. Yet as one man said, "At least we are not dead - unlike friends tortured with electricity, raped with metal rods or made to line up in the grey dawn to be shot over the shallow grave they had been forced to dig in advance."
Refugees are people who risk arrest, prison and death. With stolen identities, aliases, forged papers and counterfeit documents that are their lifeline some people say they scarcely know any longer who they are. The expenditure of lifesavings to save a life: who can blame either desperate people who have simply challenged a tyranny, or those making risky but lucrative livelihood out of their plight?
But their relief at being in a secure place can easily be subverted by their first encounters with bureaucracy when they get to Britain.
Most say they encounter suspicion from employees of the Border and Immigration Services. Those telling the truth find themselves greeted with scepticism, and the assumption that they are lying. To those falsely accused, beaten and imprisoned, this aggravates from the outset the sense of rejection, which can be reinforced by the often interminable wait for recognition that they are here as involuntary visitors, refugees, in need of the kind of solace and support that too often remain elusive.
Not until they have overcome these obstacles will they learn about another Britain of kindliness and fellow-feeling, an acceptance that doesn't question the memories or horror and loss, an enfolding assurance that they are indeed at last safe.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the refugee and the fortress...
Now, I would like to get responses to the next question which provides a quandary to those adhering to easy morality and clear distinctions between right and wrong.
Should people-smugglers, those venal rescuers, be punished for taking advantage of despair, or lauded for their humanitarian function?
Now, this is a topic that is not everybody's cup of tea. So, if it is not your usual brand of Vodka, please turn away now.
I do not know who I'm writing this for. As an African in the diaspora, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It affects each one of us that were not born in this country but have become a part of the fabric of society and somehow forgotten about our fellow brothers and sisters in the motherland following in our footsteps for a better life.
Asylum seekers have to endure many humiliations. They share lodgings with arbitrary companions, and have nothing in common - sometimes not even a language - other than flight from persecution. The highly qualified and the political dissident coexist with the peasant and the petty criminal.
Some wish to study and prepare for a career in Britain, while others only drink and watch game shows. Overcrowding, shared beds, the distinctive male odour of cramped humanity, a pinched, undernourished existence. Yet as one man said, "At least we are not dead - unlike friends tortured with electricity, raped with metal rods or made to line up in the grey dawn to be shot over the shallow grave they had been forced to dig in advance."
Refugees are people who risk arrest, prison and death. With stolen identities, aliases, forged papers and counterfeit documents that are their lifeline some people say they scarcely know any longer who they are. The expenditure of lifesavings to save a life: who can blame either desperate people who have simply challenged a tyranny, or those making risky but lucrative livelihood out of their plight?
But their relief at being in a secure place can easily be subverted by their first encounters with bureaucracy when they get to Britain.
Most say they encounter suspicion from employees of the Border and Immigration Services. Those telling the truth find themselves greeted with scepticism, and the assumption that they are lying. To those falsely accused, beaten and imprisoned, this aggravates from the outset the sense of rejection, which can be reinforced by the often interminable wait for recognition that they are here as involuntary visitors, refugees, in need of the kind of solace and support that too often remain elusive.
Not until they have overcome these obstacles will they learn about another Britain of kindliness and fellow-feeling, an acceptance that doesn't question the memories or horror and loss, an enfolding assurance that they are indeed at last safe.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the refugee and the fortress...
Now, I would like to get responses to the next question which provides a quandary to those adhering to easy morality and clear distinctions between right and wrong.
Should people-smugglers, those venal rescuers, be punished for taking advantage of despair, or lauded for their humanitarian function?
Friday, 22 October 2010
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Faces...London
Yu Masui, writer.
And yes, that's a Prada belt as a headpiece.
Utilisation at it's best.
Monday, 18 October 2010
The Four Most Dangerous Words In The English Language.
Buy Now Pay Later.
The four most dangerous words in the english language are, buy now pay later. Well, some may disagree, but in the next few words, I am going to show you why they are.
Whether you like it or not, everybody sells their soul to the devil...I just decided that I'd get a damn good price for mine from Mephistopheles' agent.
Just as Luke Skywalker needed Yoda and King Arthur needed Merlin, fate had decreed that I would meet and learn from R. Little did I know then, but this great man would show me the tricks needed to thrive in this dreadful new dog-eat-dog world of self-serving capitalism while also ensuring that my corrupt side was cultivated successfully. Admittedly, this second task was made simple by my natural propensity for the principal vices on this planet. I needed money. Big Money.
There is a part of us humans that can never be satisfied no matter what. The genius that invented money as a medium of exchange must have been a psychologist possessed by a vicious evil spirit that knows no bounds. You see, money is the root of all evil and I'm sure you've heard that numerous times. But it simply and truly is.
Those that have it will do all sorts of evil (the prettiest people do the ugliest things on the road to riches and diamond rings). Those that do not have it, do the ugliest things to get it as well. So both sides of the coin are entrenched in dirty business. And that my friends, is where you lose your soul and become a slave to the beast.
In order to survive in this cut-throat-survival-of-the-fittest world, you must do and acquire certain things to present a facade of success to the outside world. This appeals to that element of insatiable demand within the human soul. Think about it, with the exception of the five human basic needs: air, water, clothes, shelter and food, what else do we really need?
Well, there are certain things that one must utilise to make twenty-first century living as comfortable as possible: mobile communication, all forms of transport, decent housing (in a good neighbourhood with enough space to swing a cat...well furnished of course and therein lies the devil). It's when you want to 'live comfortable' that things get complicated whereby you end up selling your soul and becoming a slave to the things that you 'need' to acquire.
One definite consequence of the recent boom times is an increasingly divided, dissatisfied society. Self-serving capitalists' ostentatious display of wealth help make sure the less well-off feel that they are working in Mcjobs and so act like the underclass that they are rapidly becoming.
Between 1990 and 2005 the top one percent of the UK's richest peoples' share of the national wealth moved up from seventeen percent to twenty-five percent and has undoubtedly risen further since then. The rich are getting richer and the poor are gettting poorer. Ironically, this was especially true under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's management of UK plc. Eighteen years out of power made these guys so paranoid about being viewed as 'old labour' that everytime the business community asked for 'business-friendly' reforms they rolled over and allowed tax and regulatory changes that facilitated the rich accumulating ever more capital.
This very visible ever-widening disparity in wealth helps cause such resentment that an increasingly violent, crime-ridden society becomes a racing certainity. In Great Britain, we are all Thatcher's children now living in a country where there is 'no such thing as society' - just a bunch of individuals competing with each other for the scraps on the table. In this unhappy dog-eat-dog world the only answer for many of the repressed is, as 50 Cent so sweetly put it, to 'get rich or die trying'. Call me old fashioned, but that attitude doesn't seem condusive to a healthy, joyous society.
Admittedly, this process has been helped by the decline in religion and the discrediting of its successor, left-wing idealism, by the failed experiments in Russia and China during the twentieth century. Into the void stepped money as the one true God and the Gospel according to Adam Smith became the only one that anyone now listens to. We are missionaries for the new faith and our conspicuous consumption is a testament to modern day slavery to the Almighty dollar.
Capitalist economies can only survive if they grow and that requires people to be dissatisfied because only people desperate for material betterment will buy that flashier car or that smarter jacket. To ensure success we have enlisted advertisers as our propagandists to spread the word. These scumbags will sell us the ice cream that makes us fat and then make sure we buy the diet pill to make us slim.
The trick is to make people as unhappy about themselves as possible so that they strive to spend the cash (which is not theirs) in the false hope that it will make them happy and sexy. The last thing they want is for you to be content because then you'll just stick with your beaten-up Ford Cortina and the whole system collapses. You can buy now and pay later.
The problem is that money is so clearly a false god and that striving for it single-mindedly generally brings nothing but unhapiness. Desperate attempts to keep up with the Joneses just breed discontent mainly because there is always some joker who's got more than you.
The question, of course, is why haven't have-nots got their stuff together, realised 'all property is theft' and changed an unfair system that condemns them to living as second-class citizens? 'Bread and circuses' were used by the Roman elite to keep the plebeians in line and now we have cable tv and KFC, football and Mcdonald's. As the radical William Corbett said two centuries ago: "I defy you to agitate a man on a full stomach." Radicalising people to try to change a corrupt system is made even harder when the alternatives have been discredited by the likes of Stalin and Mao.
Anyway, our masters have successfully employed clever propaganda to feed our pathetic obsession with celebrities and so distract us from unjustifiable wars and the hideous unfairness of our socio-economic system. What's even worse is that the media have so successfully extolled the virtues of the market economy that most people blindly 'believe the hype' despite Public Enemy's best attempts to try to dissuade us from doing so. Hence we live in a superficial, bling bling society that is neither happy nor peaceful. Mordern-day slaves we all are.
I for one, is in the process of renegotiating with the devil to have my soul back because I shall only spend what is in my pocket. Middle finger to wants. I do not need that holiday in the Maldives. No credit, thank you very much.
And that my friends, is why those four words are the most dangerous in the english language.
I hope you guys leave this post with a bit of your soul back.
Now could somebody pass me a pair of scissors. I have some plastic to...fill in the rest. You know how that story ends.
The four most dangerous words in the english language are, buy now pay later. Well, some may disagree, but in the next few words, I am going to show you why they are.
Whether you like it or not, everybody sells their soul to the devil...I just decided that I'd get a damn good price for mine from Mephistopheles' agent.
Just as Luke Skywalker needed Yoda and King Arthur needed Merlin, fate had decreed that I would meet and learn from R. Little did I know then, but this great man would show me the tricks needed to thrive in this dreadful new dog-eat-dog world of self-serving capitalism while also ensuring that my corrupt side was cultivated successfully. Admittedly, this second task was made simple by my natural propensity for the principal vices on this planet. I needed money. Big Money.
There is a part of us humans that can never be satisfied no matter what. The genius that invented money as a medium of exchange must have been a psychologist possessed by a vicious evil spirit that knows no bounds. You see, money is the root of all evil and I'm sure you've heard that numerous times. But it simply and truly is.
Those that have it will do all sorts of evil (the prettiest people do the ugliest things on the road to riches and diamond rings). Those that do not have it, do the ugliest things to get it as well. So both sides of the coin are entrenched in dirty business. And that my friends, is where you lose your soul and become a slave to the beast.
In order to survive in this cut-throat-survival-of-the-fittest world, you must do and acquire certain things to present a facade of success to the outside world. This appeals to that element of insatiable demand within the human soul. Think about it, with the exception of the five human basic needs: air, water, clothes, shelter and food, what else do we really need?
Well, there are certain things that one must utilise to make twenty-first century living as comfortable as possible: mobile communication, all forms of transport, decent housing (in a good neighbourhood with enough space to swing a cat...well furnished of course and therein lies the devil). It's when you want to 'live comfortable' that things get complicated whereby you end up selling your soul and becoming a slave to the things that you 'need' to acquire.
One definite consequence of the recent boom times is an increasingly divided, dissatisfied society. Self-serving capitalists' ostentatious display of wealth help make sure the less well-off feel that they are working in Mcjobs and so act like the underclass that they are rapidly becoming.
Between 1990 and 2005 the top one percent of the UK's richest peoples' share of the national wealth moved up from seventeen percent to twenty-five percent and has undoubtedly risen further since then. The rich are getting richer and the poor are gettting poorer. Ironically, this was especially true under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's management of UK plc. Eighteen years out of power made these guys so paranoid about being viewed as 'old labour' that everytime the business community asked for 'business-friendly' reforms they rolled over and allowed tax and regulatory changes that facilitated the rich accumulating ever more capital.
This very visible ever-widening disparity in wealth helps cause such resentment that an increasingly violent, crime-ridden society becomes a racing certainity. In Great Britain, we are all Thatcher's children now living in a country where there is 'no such thing as society' - just a bunch of individuals competing with each other for the scraps on the table. In this unhappy dog-eat-dog world the only answer for many of the repressed is, as 50 Cent so sweetly put it, to 'get rich or die trying'. Call me old fashioned, but that attitude doesn't seem condusive to a healthy, joyous society.
Admittedly, this process has been helped by the decline in religion and the discrediting of its successor, left-wing idealism, by the failed experiments in Russia and China during the twentieth century. Into the void stepped money as the one true God and the Gospel according to Adam Smith became the only one that anyone now listens to. We are missionaries for the new faith and our conspicuous consumption is a testament to modern day slavery to the Almighty dollar.
Capitalist economies can only survive if they grow and that requires people to be dissatisfied because only people desperate for material betterment will buy that flashier car or that smarter jacket. To ensure success we have enlisted advertisers as our propagandists to spread the word. These scumbags will sell us the ice cream that makes us fat and then make sure we buy the diet pill to make us slim.
The trick is to make people as unhappy about themselves as possible so that they strive to spend the cash (which is not theirs) in the false hope that it will make them happy and sexy. The last thing they want is for you to be content because then you'll just stick with your beaten-up Ford Cortina and the whole system collapses. You can buy now and pay later.
The problem is that money is so clearly a false god and that striving for it single-mindedly generally brings nothing but unhapiness. Desperate attempts to keep up with the Joneses just breed discontent mainly because there is always some joker who's got more than you.
The question, of course, is why haven't have-nots got their stuff together, realised 'all property is theft' and changed an unfair system that condemns them to living as second-class citizens? 'Bread and circuses' were used by the Roman elite to keep the plebeians in line and now we have cable tv and KFC, football and Mcdonald's. As the radical William Corbett said two centuries ago: "I defy you to agitate a man on a full stomach." Radicalising people to try to change a corrupt system is made even harder when the alternatives have been discredited by the likes of Stalin and Mao.
Anyway, our masters have successfully employed clever propaganda to feed our pathetic obsession with celebrities and so distract us from unjustifiable wars and the hideous unfairness of our socio-economic system. What's even worse is that the media have so successfully extolled the virtues of the market economy that most people blindly 'believe the hype' despite Public Enemy's best attempts to try to dissuade us from doing so. Hence we live in a superficial, bling bling society that is neither happy nor peaceful. Mordern-day slaves we all are.
I for one, is in the process of renegotiating with the devil to have my soul back because I shall only spend what is in my pocket. Middle finger to wants. I do not need that holiday in the Maldives. No credit, thank you very much.
And that my friends, is why those four words are the most dangerous in the english language.
I hope you guys leave this post with a bit of your soul back.
Now could somebody pass me a pair of scissors. I have some plastic to...fill in the rest. You know how that story ends.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Friday, 15 October 2010
Spot The Label...Bag Lady.
Kids, we gonna play a game called; Spot The Label...
Vivienne Westwood.
Mulberry.
DSquared2.
Hermes.
Celine.
ummm...wait, wait, wait, I know this one! Okay, okay I give up. I've got no clue.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Friday, 8 October 2010
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
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