On screen love sours

By Port Moresby freelance satirist Biga Lebasi
“WHAT is satire and humour….you chuave or natin?” Shpik said, addressing her computer screen.
Shpik is aka Jinnie Kero, as in kerosene. Her own spelling style is Gynnie.
Yes, as always, whenever I pass her News Editor’s desk in the National editorial department on Waigani Drive, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, after panting up the steep rungs leading from the library, I would stop behind her as she concentrated on deciding whether or not she had copy suitable for a potential page one lead or not.
She would rather see the screen than count the wrinkles on my face – and washboard stomach! She could hardly count, even by using her fingers and toes as counters – so that to us is quite comforting indid. That’s because she would never count how many wrinkles we still have on our 76-year-old face being tarnished by our ongoing health issues of many varieties!
We had discovered Gynnie or Jinnie or Gennie, is terribly addicted to staring at computer screens so much so that she had refused eyeing our 76-year-old face being continuously disfigured by cancer of the prostate gland!
No, it doesn’t absolutely. It’s just that our face is on the last downward slide to the grave all through the natural aging process. Your face and mine all do get old, come rain or shine. Skins peel away and new growth comes alive with a glow, brightening up your whole body.
Good clean skin goes well with body language, revealing vibes or coded messages saying a million things: we use body language to communicate, and a beautiful well-kept skin surely goes a long way in telling the world: look at me, I’m beautiful, buy me a beer and we dance into the vanishing tropical sunset forever!
So, to confirm there’s something alive like me and needing to talk to Gynnie, I would kinda give her a grunt or better still, loudly clear my mealy throat to attract her attention!
Shpik, still gluing her eye balls at the flipping computer, would calmly say: “Yeh. Yu tok!”.
And I would wonder how the hell did she know a human being was right behind her back and not a skinny and mangy Koke market street mongrel.
Then I’d go into high gear talking non-stop and making it terribly difficult for her to even get a word in.
Then just before I say my last word that retarded Morobe scribe still waiting for inspiration to write his page one lead story said: “Hey, I must have a word with you. We’ll be back. Wait for me.”
And he vanished down the dangerous steps to the library.
Then Shpik told me this, still staring at her computer screen: “Em giaman. He won’t be back.”
“Forget him…go home.”
I did! I forgot him, but I didn’t go home until I was computer-educated by the computer whizz called Barbara, who I quickly nicknamed Barbie Doll, an’ my Features boss Alphonso Barianso (AB) he yelled at me in no uncertain terms not to forget to remember Barbara’s name, because the IT gang could very easily kick me out!
Hello? How can we forget that name, now that we associate it with Barbara Streisand.
Remember Streisand? She’s the white singer with a very noticeable funny nose with a hint of a slight rise in the middle.
I once tried to kiss her in my dreams but her nose was always in my way. Noserub? Nah, can’t do that without written consent from the NZ Why Tangi Native Mauri Protocal Association based in windy Wellington!
Hey, next March we’ll write about somebody who loves CORRUPTION and is permanently in love with buai and popo (Motu-Koitabu for mustard) and ahu which is lime).
He used to live with didgeridoo inventors on the banks of the Hawesbury River, somewhere near the big smoke that is Sydney, Austrylia. Then he made the worst error in his life and moved to the Laloki River/Sapphire Creek region of 17-Mile along the road to the Sogeri Plateau. Ooroo.