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Normally, at Regional Events we tell you all the going-ons in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. This time, we are just going to tell you to check out an Ethiopian website we really, really like that refuses to update itself (part of its charm.) It is the irreverent Seleda.com. Here's a sample from the "humble editors"...(there is a lot of inside information...and it helps if you understand Amharic.) Consider this our "people-to-people" dialogue, which VOA stole from us without any attribution...
Hey! We dont wanna hear it! Yall just save the drom ekos for somebody else whose ylunNta sensibilities are not as contemptibly limited as ours. They say its hard to completely kill off ye GorE moyalE and ye Abadr kosso. Well, we are the former and have the latter, so, were baaaaaack! Oh, sure dying a quiet and distinguished death is ye abat some would even say reflective and intuitive. And, seriously, we were just about to disappear into the cyber equivalent of WubE Bereha when reality brought our flights of whimsy to a screeching halt: But if there is no more SELEDA, we ruminated, where would we (a) deposit our trademark hostility and (b) release all the hafrete-biss-ingly unsound hatetas that hobble about aimlessly in our overpaid under-worked brains? Answer: Nowhere. You would think that in a big place like the Internet there would be a safe house for recovering compulsive-obsessive-compulsive-obsessive meSihaff aTabiwech like us? Wouldntjathink? Wey-hay-hay-hay helllll! We tried. We tried to file our whole hazily nauseous SELEDA experience as one of them things that will one day get us on a particularly dreadful episode of Jerry Springer. Unfortunately, who knew even Jerry has standards. Hence, medresha yaTach intin intin ..mnamn qbrTisiyo indylu, were back on this forum. Well, were kinda back. We tried to distract ourselves and satiate our SELEDA nafqot by engaging in pastimes thatd sure get us two-to-five from even the most firde-gemdl kefiteNa chilot judge. Alas, nothing worked until relief finally came in the form of yet another portentous memo from upper management. (Ironic haaaa?) This time they threatened to mewress our hard-earned, hardly earned SELEDA stock options if we didnt report back to work pronto. Ahhhaiiii bynachinma memTat aychalm. Those stocks are just about the only things we can show for the metaphorical whiplashes zig-zagging our backs. We couldnt let some hodam, psychologically neutered bullies with Freudian complexes de-nuss kebertE-ize us! Wegidu, we said as we scuttled back to work. Zeraffffff! Zerrrr. Waaaaaaitaminute! Waitagoddamnedminute! What SELEDA stock options? According to our last comptrollerwhose primary job it was to disagreeably roll his eyes the way the disgruntled diiyaqon does every time we ask, Excuse us, GashE DiyaqoniyE, what is the expiration date on the Tsebel you are serving today?SELEDA Stocks have been gone longer than CHisseNoch and the M- EE- G-MA Tsfet bEt they were made to dejj meTnat to learn how theyre no longer CHisseNoch right after they were briefed on what a CHisseNa was and how not to be one. Heeeeeeey! Damn them! (SELEDA upper management not the CHisseNoch) Unfortunately for us, the What SELEDA stock option? revelation hit us right after settling into our old routine and moments after promising to re-start the Abiy Tsom that had to be, umm, interrupted in order to nurse our ameleNa triple-shot latt suss. Stock option-iiiii? Yemin ere stock abatachew yTfa OK. Well. So, the dignified response to such properly vile wretchedness would have been to summon up what righteous indignation is left in us, spout off the few fading meffekiroch weve retained from niqat, then swear blood vengeance in the name of all vanquished workers around the world (where world = the Tri-State area), and then storm off CHewa lij-idly, leaving upper management slack-jawed and livid. Awo. But, as they say at Marxism Agotachin Neber tej bEt, Essuuma esu neber Be comforted, oh gentle readers, that wistful thoughts of storming out in a huff did actually cross our minds. Neger gn, we, er, already had our feet up. And, and we were hopelessly hypnotized by the sweet sound of our shiny new cappuccino machine whirring in what we swear is a Tizita melody ECH! ECCCCCHHHH. Maybe they were joking about there being stock options to mewress maybe we were being hyper sensitive about real and/or imagined subjugation Oh, abol time? What the hell. Wezader schmezzader! So, here we are. And, incidentally, April is our fifth anniversary. Did we get any ye Harer Senga, ye CHanCHo qibE from any of you? Abess geberku! And haYOUdoin, SELEDAmawech? Before the spirited SELEDA bashing about punctuality commences, lets just say, We told you so. Inna baCHiru, we told you so. This time we cannot be held fully responsible for pulling the plug on SELEDA. And dont you ere bakih us! Hadnt we asked nicely for articles in order to sustain SELEDA? Hadnt we sacrificed countless gebsimma doros to yalls gagrtam muses? And what do we get? A series of woolly Wuy!... ye lijE videogame gemed TelefeN excuses from you about submissions. Tadiya? Believe us, you couldnt be more stunned than us at an actual SELEDA Shutdown that was not entirely due to our nzihilalinet! We found the twist in that fact the iroooony, if you will, weirdly sweet in a sickly, noxious, saccharine-y, molten fructose-y kind of way. In the words of a staffer in our marketing department (whose entire demeanor can only be attributed to an unfortunate year spent at St. Mary): This is sooooo not our fault. Like, totally, so not our fault. Like, ohmgod, I swear on a stack of credit cards its not our fault. Like ok like daddys new girlfriend tmooot dbinnn tbel, its not our fault. Roughly translated, that means it aint our fault. So, before the Tat Tnqolla commences, oh SELEDAwi, look inside yourself. How have you contributed to the Great SELEDA Dkmet? Hmm? Come hither and lets gmgema-ize. Bygones. Welcome to the Irony and Platitude Issue. First order of business is to ke lib-anjetachin ke wede kulalitachinm thank Ephrem M. Girma, the liqe mekuwass of Blen Graphix--THE premier graphics design company this side of the tiliq sew world. Ephrem very graciously pinch hit as our cover art designer this month. We are awed and humbled by his talent and wish that we could show him the Ephrem Girma Monument that now graces SELEDA Headquarters. All to say, thank you, Ephrem, for your benevolence, and a round of entuff, entuffs for your exquisite work! We have sacrificed one of the last remaining SELEDA virgins in your honor. [Wed like to take this opportunity to inform Ethiopian artists out there that we are sans a regular cover artist thanks to pixie Interns who keep scaring away our in-house artists by insisting onstroking your canvass, if you know what I mean Bicha wusTun le qess So if theres someone out there whos willing to take up a few assignments for upcoming issues, please contact us ASAP.] Second order of business is to send a public apology to one of our most beloved regular writers, Ato G.T. and his very able agent/handler, the Divine Ms. Tezita, to whom we had promised a pair of SELEDA T-shirts in gratitude of their long service to SELEDA. A promise not followed up on thanks to a a mndin-new-simmu wardrobe malfunction incident. GT and Tezita, we hope your be quna mysefer magnanimity will allow you to accept our most profound apologies. Rest assured, heads have rolled, Interns have suffered, and the situation been rectified. OKK. Neck-ist We have another important tenk-tenqiew to ooze out. Of course, to all our writers, past and present, to you men and women who are tireless in your wordsmithery, to you ladies and gents who make us want to do SELEDA even when we think we cantthank you for leaving us breathless. lEloch mitimesegennu Tnd Tnd teselefuln ezich gar So, whats new at SELEDA? Please help us welcome our new webmaster who, hey, we just dont geddid, insists on getting all resentful and confused whenever we ask pointed computer-nek questions such as: Can you upload the thingamabob blinky blink neger so that the logo is intin? What? Whaaat? Why is that so hard to do without copping a tude? (Makes you wonder what they teach them at Webmastery School these days.) Anyway, we hope the sleek new SELEDA look pleases you... it took the skill of several alu yetebalu medhaneet qemmamiwech to wean us off of the garish icons of yesteyear. You like? Also, check out the ibid yalech search feature courtesy of new webmaster. Yay. Now you can search all past articles in a slightly selTen yale way. Use it wisely, embrace it wholeheartedly, and please note that is a work in progress, so, before you U U tay it to death, give us some time to work out the kinks. We'd appreciate your help pointing out errors you might find. Err.. We've been asked by new Web-gEta to tell you a couple of things, and we warn you, geek-speak follows: Tell em [thatd be you who is being mezerTeTed here, gentle readers], tell them that SELEDA no longer uses tables. Only CSS. So they will need to upgrade their browsers to the latest version. Hmmm We fleetingly thought about asking what that CSS was but got distracted by Webmassas flaring nostrils. We think it means that if you have a fara browser you might see all kinds of lines where there shouldn't be, but hey, whaddoweknow? Tell them also that SELEDA is now printer friendly. Friendly? Ma? INya? Nyyyyver! OK. Consider yourselves told. Oh, and since we go through webmasters faster than a Merkato kiss awlaqi can cavity search a distracted journeyman, get ready to welcome a new webmaster in the very near future. Eskeza dress if loving our webmaster is wrong, we dont want to be right. What else is new? Oh, sooo new this month is the SELEDA Blogger. For those of you who have not maraqoted your life out of countless hours by voyeuristically gluing yourself to some cyber-wefefEs on-line diary, well, blogging is all the rage in the cyber alemthese days... or so were told. Throughout the next month, our first blogger, Zemzem, will post her thoughts on well, whatever strikes her fancy; you then can post your responses gini qulquwal. Anyway, it is the SELEDA interactive weve been promising you since before ye Addis Aba azmariwech started using the word Monica as an adjective. As always, we will depend on your CHewinet to help us navigate through these unchartered waters. Esti temelekaketut. Ahun esti Trazz neTeqinetun titachihu, you ask in a bored, Debebe Eshetu-esque voice, when is the next issue coming out? As the ticket collector at Legehar says when asked what time the lonchina to Debre Zeit departs, Bota simolla. So, article simolla. If you are one of those stickler types who insists on more specific time frames, ok, end of May-ish. OK, June 1 abo! We hope to come out on June 1, hope being the operative word. It all depends on you. That makes the deadline for submitting articles May 20. Ingidih the rest is up to you. Our wheneverthehellitgetshere next issue will examine the complex, stirring, vexing, overwhelming, painful, sober, thrilling, frightening, beautiful, charming and volatile relationships between, Fathers and Daughters; Fathers and Sons; Mothers and Sons; and Mothers and Daughters Quite a mouthful, we know. This is an issue weve actually wanted to reaaallly do for a while now, so were glad its turn has finally come. We look forward to your brilliant tracts examining, deciphering, lamenting and celebrating these relationships. So, settle down, roll up your sleeves, stick the kiddies in front of the tube, take one-two-three gunCHfulls of that gush Tella fermenting in your laundry room and write then spell check, then click send, then resentfully ask your kids what the matter with them is, why are they spending so much time in front of the TV?? na ante! na ko new mlew! Na inna esti igrEn eTeb, qzen yTebih inna! What else? Something you might or might not look forward to in the next issue is the return of the SELEDA Mail Editor... We have been expressly instructed to welcome Mail Editor in advance because if we dont well have yet another inconsolably beshqaTa editor roaming around looking for an excuse to stab something/one. Even though we havent featured The Mail in a bcha mn asqoTeren let's just say in a long time, we hope you know how much getting your feedback, erroro and zacha means to us. We'll warn all St. Joseph temariwech in advance that thanks to a particularly yetekoffesE letter from one of your more belligerent alums, the Mail Editor's goradE is now glimmeringly sil... innatem atarfu. We welcome your comments on this issue and whatever ye bawaT ye qwaT you're ruminating these days. What else? What, you ask, is the future of SELEDA? Mnnew itE! To make a short story excruciatingly long, we hope to at least make SELEDA a quarterly zine, depending on how well we are treated. We promise to hold up our end of the bargain if you hold up yours. Its been such an exhilarating and extraordinarily overwhelming ride, this SELEDA has, and for that, dear readers, we will always be mind-numbingly indebted to you. Lets hope we can get it going for a few more issues. And finally, we end on a sad note. SELEDA lost a dear friend and generous contributor, Robel Mamo, who died on February 14, 2004 from a brain aneurysm in Washington, DC. Robels camera became our eyes into life in Ethiopia, capturing the agonizing beauty and sometimes hysterical absurdity of what so many of us have left behind. With every appeal from us, Robel went above and beyond the call of duty on SELEDA assignments, sharing his vision, his quiet insight and moving imagery. Weve truly lost one of the most unique voices of our generation, and mourn his passing. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife and son, and with the rest of his family and friends. Heres to the sheer ibdet that helped us breathe again. Well see you in article simolla. Selam hunulin. The Humble Editors
http://www.seleda.com From Awate Editor: Seleda, come on, could you lift your humble selves and update the website? Please.... |
