Scalpeldiary

Dinner or Breakfast?

I write, but I doubt if it is enough to right my wrongs .

The apologies in these lines can assume a different meaning; based on the tone you read them.

I know how peculiar you are . I know you’re wondering why some words drift in
to the margins.

I’ve left out the emojis, I know how much you hate those things .

I hope to God I made no typos , I don’t want you to be mad at me and my apology at the same time.

I left you fresh flowers on your doorstep, I hope they don’t wither like our hearts have began too.

There’s is also a box of chocolates, 24 in number, twice the times I’ve already wronged you this year.

A bottle of red wine, hoping you spill a little on the white shirt I left at your place .

There’s a jar of perfume, it is strong. A testament to your character and the fact that you always smell my bullshit from a mile away.

There’s a red dress. Made of silk. Be generous with the red lipstick too, I intend to leave a little for you by the end of tonight.

Is Christian to forgive, so it was only right I added the red Louboutins.

If my apology is accepted,let’s meet for dinner tonight.if not ,please do me a favor. Don’t serve me breakfast while I am still in bed.

Your lost Valentine.
-Parky.

There is a man bound to repeat the mistakes he made in the previous year.🤦
He made so many mistakes and did not learn many lessons.📑
His resolution lists became a bucket list.🗑️
Yes, he lost weight and also his way.🚫🧭
Found love and lost it all in one day.😭
There is a man who swore he give up cold beer🍺 for warm milk.🥛
He said he will lose pride,but then boasted of his humility.🌚
Had a reading plan for his Bible but only shared memes .👿
Saved all his money and lost it in Dorime for Detty December.🤑
He told his friend; “we will try again”.
This man is here tonight.🌌
His praise is the loudest at this vigil.🎷
He will cross over into the new year with joy and a few of his old problems..🆘
I could point at him in the crowd if you’d like, but I thought we all agreed to be less judgemental this year?⁉️
Oh! no? , I guess we will all try again next year🤦
Parky for Scalpeldairy ®
31/12/21

TO BREAK A HEART 💔

Build a foundation of trust based on lies .
Make promises and fulfill them like wishes.
Be toxic; is the only way people know you’re ‘real’ these days.
Love may not cost a dime,but convince them that true love is pain.
Find an excuse for every wrongdoing and reasons to be forgiven a thousand times.
Tell people you love them,then go head and use them.
Find a way to cause harm and still manage to be the victim.
Remind them of their flaws to conceal yours.
Be intentional about your needs and careless about your responsibilities.
If you’re ever wrong, blame the alcohol,blame the devil and his host of angels.
Break a heart cause yours have been broken.
Forgive your partner ,then serve them revenge in a cold dish.
Everyone must taste your “breakfast”.
Like everybody else, you’re just human-flaws and all!

Parky .
6/10/21 2:53a.m

Y’ALL WORRIED ABOUT THE WRONG CHALLENGE.

Homo sapiens have been touted as the most intelligent species on the planet. The Latin word literally translates to ‘wise man’. We are a more superior specie due to our capacity for rational thought and behavior. I mean, look at us; we have managed to evade extinction, same thing that eluded the powerful dinosaurs. We have evolved and even dominated other species to serve our purpose. We have tamed Cats and Dogs to be our pets, Bulls to till our farms and we ride on Horses for our fun. We have brought the wild into the city and kept them in cages for our amusement.The ones we convince to go home with us as domestic animals have ended up in our bellies.So much for animal comradeship.We have turned vast jungle lands into concrete cities, made airplanes that fly at the speed of light and in our wisdom invented the milk challenge.

Our ability for intelligent decision making is only matched by our capacity for making stupid decisions. In 1914 , the Great war ,also known as World War I started and by 1918,16 million people had lost their lives. So many examples abound in history where the failure of a few men to shake hands has led to carnage. We have put man on the moon and yet millions are without shelter. We have managed to explain the hard questions of religion with science but have now spat on the face of science.How would a biological male go to sleep and wake up a female. I know what you’re thinking; ‘That must be a miracle or genius of science’, nope, you’re wrong. He just needs to ‘identify’ as a female. What have we not done?

The world is currently dealing with a pandemic of cataclysmic proportion. The Covid-19 pandemic has stretched health care systems to their limits and beyond. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers are suffering from burn-out. While the rest of the world is watching the Olympics in Tokyo, people in America and the United Kingdom are having their own version of the Olympic festivals-the hood Olympics. Instead of winning medals, you could win some money or in most cases win a trip to the hospital with a few or no hospital beds to spare and a tired staff. Heck, if you’re lucky,you can even get Covid-19 while at it. You’ll think the superior species would do everything to make their work easy, instead they created a challenge were people will climb up a stair of unstable milk crates . As expected their desire for clout, applause or money usually ends up in a very bad way. Noses have been broken, ankles sprained, and legs fractured. The world has seen a fair deal of these “challenges”. We have seen the #CinnamonChallenge, the #BottlecapChallenge ,the #BussitChallenge and also witnessed the #IceBucketChallenge which was one of the few that had a rationale backing it.Those nominated were expected to pour ice cold water on themselves or alternatively donate funds if they couldn’t. The goal was to raise awareness and money for research towards finding a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)- a neurodegenerative disease that results in progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. The challenge started in the United States and soon spread across the world and have been performed again in summers of 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

A challenge is supposed to test the wit of an individual but the recent #MilkCrateChallenge seems to test our capacity for undiluted stupidity. Even Dumb and Dumber no do pass this one. The #MilkCrateChallenge is spreading as fast as the delta variant of the Corona virus. Unlike the #IceBucketChallenge, I am yet to see a rational reason for the present challenge. Even if there was a rational thought behind the challenge, I personally think is a step taken too far. No challenge should pose a danger to the lives of the participating individuals. The challenge has crossed over the Atlantic and has arrived in Nigeria. Social media feeds are already buzzing with the challenge. While we can understand why Americans and Brits will engage in such life-threatening exercise, I find it hard to comprehend while a Nigerian bedeviled with litany of problems will want to fall off from a stair of plastic crates. After sleeping without light, battling mosquitoes and waking up to news of billions of dollars missing from the treasury-you still want to fall off and break your neck? Truly,wonders shall never end. Although overwhelmed at the moment, Western democracies have a functioning healthcare system with robust health insurance. In Nigeria, as always, our story is different.

The #MilkCrateChallenge is coming at a time when doctors are leaving the country in droves. Two days ago, a Saudi Arabian recruitment agency was in the country to ‘poach’ our doctors. Thousands of medical officers, registrars and consultants attended the interview. Medical brain drain is not new in Nigeria, however, in the last five years the medical exodus has increasingly become easier and is happening on a bigger scale. It is not uncommon to see a whole unit of doctors of a teaching hospital been recruited abroad. If measures such as improved working conditions, better welfare packages are not put in place for doctors, the condition will continue to worsen and there might be a time when there won’t have competent doctors to teach medical students and junior doctors in our Teaching Hospitals.

My unsolicited but candid advice to the coconut generation is to concentrate on challenges that do not pose a danger to life. We can create a #MosquitoNetChallenge to raise awareness about Malaria that kills about 100,000 Nigerians every year, mostly children under 5 years of age. We can create a #CleanNigeriaChallenge where people clean up their neighborhoods and encourage others to do same. As a matter of fact, we should be a country of challenges, because we have so many of them. We can create a challenge every month for each of our problems to last us a century. Ah, dem talk say ‘pikin wey no get helper, suppose get sense’. People in developed countries can afford to be foolish because they have a working system, we must not join them in their foolishness.As a reminder, we don’t have milk crates here in Nigeria, what we have are hard beer and soda crates that cause lethal damage even more than milk crates. For those in love with a challenge, there are various dance challenges by Nigerian artists on tiktok and other social media platforms that are fun and will not earn them a Philadelphia collar. I wish I could say Orthopedic surgeons will be the winners in this, but most people can’t even afford their services.The best most Nigerians can afford are traditional bone setters.The traditional bone setters still struggling with fixing a broken humerus and I am afraid a broken spine is a learning curve they might never master.Woo betide any person who despise good counsel and ends up with a broken spine.Trust me ,that’s when the real challenge will begin. A word might be enough for the wise but there will always be fools amongst us.

Parkwat Walkyes
26th August, 2021.

Healing by Fibrosis

Don’t break my heart ❤️
You probably have genuine intentions
But the heart doesn’t heal by primary intention
Its a rough process-it bleeds, swells and leaves scars.
Scars-lately my body has acquired them
Some well curated,others by chance
Like a mural on a wall , a new one is added every now and then
Like paintings in museum, of different size and colours-so are my scars
Some from friends
Some self inflicted
Some from bruised ego
Some I don’t even know how.
They adorn me from head to toe.
From body to soul.
So when you walked in through the door of that museum, you’re allowed to watch but don’t leave yours.
This canvas has had enough.

Parkwat Walkyes
8/14/21

A thousand words?

Is a picture really worth a thousand words?
Do the blurry pictures miss out a few hundred?
Are colorful pictures made of more words than black and white pictures?
Can we reduce the conversations and laughter and silence to just a picture?
Is it enough to capture the stray cat or the wild rose that grew from the cracked tile?
Is the frame large enough to capture the smile and the frown?
Does the colour scheme make blue appear lavender and black appear grey?
Does it really tell the whole story? Does is even tell half the story?
Or does it capture people focused on the camera rather than living in the moment?
Sometimes I think long and hard about it.

Parkwat Walkyes

HOT SHOWERS.

The type you have after a heart break

The long hot shower after a long day-and when you’ve lost your way.

The type of showers you have with your clothes and shoes on.

A razor can accompany you to that type of shower .

Dark clouds hang over your head like the tap in the bathroom.

The type of shower where you sit on your bathroom floor and curse your guts

Showers that make you doubt if there is a God.

Scrub all you may,it can’t wash your sin
Bleach and mortal hands can’t wash this stain.

It seems the guilt is part of your skin
The scarlet letter seems hidden beneath all that melanin.

The tears flow freely, all mixed with mucus and a tinge of blood from your knuckles.

After so many got showers,

Maybe is time for a blood bath-the type you have in Jesus name.

Parky.

Vanilla Villains

Click to access vanilla-villains-.pdf

Why Twitter is not for everyone!

A common nursery rhyme we use to recite as kids went something like this; “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” .That may have been true in Nursery school ,but on Twitter, words have broken bones, they’ve led people to commit suicide and has made a great multitude develop low self esteem.On Twitter,words can be darts-poisonous darts.Is all fun and games until someone is inspired by the devil to arrange the alphabets into a formidable weapon that goes right through the chest and pierces the heart .
If you’re a 90s baby, your first exposure to social media was probably through 2go.The goal was instant messaging and for others a drive for star progress. A lot has changed about social media since 2go. The advent of Facebook and the likes took the internet by storm. If the world were a global village, social media has made it into a global living room. Facebook gave us, along with camera phones the ability to share pictures and interact in more ways than we thought possible.
However, among the plethora of social media apps including Facebook, WeChat, Instagram , Whats App and Telegram, one remains shrouded in mystery for many. Twitter is probably the social media app that stands out.Unlike its other counterparts, the Blue bird app takes a lot of mastering. Most people open a twitter account and don’t understand it,only to return a few years later as Twitter “addicts” .For most people, the app is a steep learning curve and many are not patient enough to reach the crest . For starters, twitter does not care how you feel.If you can still go to bed after someone describes your nose as a Blackberry charger,then twitter might just be the place for you.As harsh as this may sound, its just facts.

The app deveopers themselves have limited the number of characters you can send in a single tweet.There is no edit button, just like in real life. You only have the choice to delete the tweet and God be so kind someone did not retweet the jargons or typos you tweeted, otherwise it wll be there for ever.As you know, the internet unlike humans does not suffer from Amnesia.To be a tweep, you must first be creative. You must learn to say more by typing less.

There are normal Nigerians who wake up and mind their business and there are twitter trolls.Unlike Facebook where everybody pretends to like your pictures, Twitter is a rude shocker for many. A beautiful picture may end up without likes for days or worse still with obnoxious comments that can push a person to commit suicide. To be honest, it is not a place for the faint of heart, Most people have realized this and have soon abandoned their twitter accounts and remained on the other blue app where everybody is a friend to all.But as Taylor swift rightly said, “a friend to all is a friend to none”. Twitter may be savage, but at least it has a good proportion of people who tell the truth, even if that truth resembles an insult.

Maths may be the most challenging subject to most students in primary and secondary schools in Nigeria and the next challenging issue might be learning the diction of twitter. IFB is a common acronym which simply means I follow back. Because twitter is twitter, you need to follow people and you need them to follow you back-a sort of “scratch my back I scratch your own”.There are “seniors” on twitter as well, they go by the pseudonym of “influencers”.These elite group have thousands and tens of thousands of followers while following only a few themselves. They’re next in line to celebrities on the app.The help to shape public opinion by serving as ad agencies for various brands to promote their businesses.The entertainment industry relies on them to promote songs and movies and the tech community also relies on them to promote new products into the market. They leverage on the number of their followers to reach a mass audience within the shortest time possible.When times are good a single retweet and follow of such influencers can earn one a few thousand naira in their back accounts, airtime or free data.Needless to say, twitter is also home to a large population of coporate beggars. The comment section of most posts by celebrities will trick a new user to think it was that of a charity organization. If at this point I haven’t convinced you enough to not to make the switch, then this may be a good time to start learning the meaning of words/phrases such as “bomboclat”, “on jeke eng” ,”werey dey disguise”, “cruise” ,”vibes and InshaAllah” and “shalaye”.

Twitter like many other social media apps can be addictive.However, the problem with the addiction to twitter is that you might begin to alieniate yourself from your friends and love ones on other social media platforms and become “friends” with complete strangers.Twitter seems to be the farrago of the misfits and the misunderstood of society, There is an incredible amount of profanity that happens by the hour which may seem very odd for a new resident of the twitter streets.Knowing who to follow, what to retweet,who to fight and who to block are major keys.However, twitter is not all about violence and savagery.Incredible trends have been created that have shaped public opinion and yielded positive results.The #NotToyoungToRunBill an initiative of YIAGA Africa a youth based NGO was championed on Twitter until a legislation was passed to lower the age limit to run for elected office in Nigeria.On 31st May 2018, Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari signed the bill into law which effectively reduced the age qualification for the office of the President from 40 years to 30 years; Governor 35 to 30, Senate 35 to 30, House of Representatives 30 to 25 and State House of Assembly 30 to 25.
A few months ago what started as a trend on Twitter with hash tag #EndSARS took Nigeria and indeed the world by storm.For weeks the only thing asides the Covid-19 pandemic on the news was #EndSARS.Special Anti-robbery squad or SARS for short is a unit in the police force that was created to curb the menace of arm robbery.The unit has recorded it’s successes which has since be clouded with excesses.A greater percentage of the officers have abandoned their primary work of going after arm robbers to terrorize anybody with an iPhone, Airpod or laptop.The cases of police brutality and shooting was high to the heavens and thanks to tweeps on social media, the #EndSARS movement grew from “little kids seeking attention,” to a global movement with protests in more than 10 States in the country and major cities across the world.With major news channels like BBC and CNN carrying the news,the government finally agreed to the demands of the #EndSARS protesters.The government disbanded the notorious SARS and replaced them with “a better unit known as SWAT”. Perhaps the darkest day of the protest was on the 20th of October,2020,when soldiers shot at peaceful protesters at the Lekki tollgate and killed a handful of protesters and injured others in the process.The flame of the #EndSARS protest may have died down,but the smoke is still there, a reminder that a fire can start at anytime.Twitter gave millions a voice when their government played deaf.That birdapp became more reliable than the NTA news at 9pm.Through retweets, quoted tweets and likes, money was raised on Twitter, disbursed and accounted for.Anybody who still holds a doubt about the power of social media as a means for positive change need not look farther.Between 2010 and 2012, several Arab countries rose in unison to demand positive change from their government Nigeria’s neighbors in the North, Egypt and Tunisia where able to use social media to demand change and organise protests which eventually led to peaceful disintegration of regimes in the two countries. Nigeria’s version of the Arab spring is beginning to yield results although in small quanta.Several Judicial panels of enquiries have been set up to hear stories of police brutality with the aim of reforming the police force , punishing erring police officers and paying compensation to victims and families of those who suffered police brutality.Only time will tell how impactful the #EndSARS protest was but for now we move (another Twitter vocabulary).

In conclusion, twitter is not for everyone and that is a fact. Howver, when used judiciously, it can be a great avenue for business,exposition of talent and a tool for social change.Depending on what part of Jack’s bird app you fall, Twitter can be a battlefield, church, school, marketplace and even a relationship matchmaker.If the insults doesn’t make you leave then I bet the memes will keep you. If you are still adamant at this point to my piece of unsolicited advice,you are welcome to do otherwise.But when you sign up rememeber to follow me at my handle @talk2parky and I promise to follow back.Should incase you decide to unfollow me at a future date, you will suffer for 600 years or Ogun will kee you !

Parkwat Walkyes
26th December,2020.

HOW YOUR PAIN KILLERS MIGHT BE HARMING YOU.

If humans had to eliminate one emotion from their lives, it will be the ability to not feel pain. No one will have to bother about toothache, menstrual cramps or even the loss of a love one. The human mind struggles to deal with pain, it’s no wonder we do everything possible to avoid circumstances, people or lifestyles that will end in tears. That’s why we hate to fall ill, it’s the reason why we leave relationships that may harm us .It explains why some people abuse substance to stop or at least numb pain.

Our phobia of pain is what has driven some of us to take painkillers like candies and pop paracetamol like cookies. Pain whether phantom or real is not easy to deal with. However, the irony about the Asprin we take for a toothache or the Dicofenac that comes in handy for ladies during their menstrual periods, is that it does not really kill the pain. Painkillers are hardly assassins of pain, they just affect our perception of it.

Several analgesics can be found in drug stores, however the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDS are becoming increasingly popular and a choice for people to deal with pain. We love NSAIDS because they stop inflammation by blocking prostaglandins-which are chemicals that mediate inflammatory processes within the body. Where there is inflammation there is also pain. NSAIDS are used to manage diseases like osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis associated with inflammation and pain. They are also used to deal with pain from muscle sprains and menstrual cramps. However, these painkillers jare becoming an important risk factor in acute kidney injury especially with long term use.

In recent years the number of people coming down with kidney problems is becoming a thing of great concern. The mechanism of action of NSAIDS may explain the link of NSAIDS ingestion and acute kidney injury. NSAIDS block prostaglandins which are vasodilators. The kidneys gets about 25% of cardiac output , NSAIDS reduce renal plasma flow and disrupt compensatory vasodilator response of renal prostaglandins to vasoconstrictor hormones released by the body. To compound this issue, decrease fluid intake while sick and the fact that the kidney is the major organ by which drugs are excreted further compounds the problem.
Another mechanism by which NSIADS can cause AKI is via immunological reaction after NSAID for about a week leading to Acute Intestinal Nephritis. AIN is now a major cause of drug induced AKI and accounts for about 15% of all patients with unexplained AKI.

It is important for the general public and especially young people to be wary of long term use of NSAIDS, since they’re the age who are likely to get injuries from sporting activities. Also, NSAIDS have been recognized to be a major risk factor in developing peptic ulcer disease. Pre-menopausal women must avoid indiscriminate use of NSAIDS especially Diclofenac which they frequently use to help with cramp pains.

Where will we be without pain killers? In a lot of pain is a good answer. However, we must be careful to avoid resorting to pain killers as the only solution to pain. Recent rise in AKIs among young strongly suggest it might a very important risk factor. Physicians must weigh the benefits versus the risks before prescribing NSAIDS. So next time before you swallow that pain killer, make sure it is worth it.

Parkwat Walkyes

28the July,2020