I’m sexy and I know it

And now, a word to the budding (and established) bloggers, writers, comedians, artists, publishers, entertainers, actors, musicians, poets, dancers, teachers, professors, philosophers, ministers, scientists, mathematicians and businesspeople of this country who struggle every day to nurture their own odd ways of doing things, their own unconventional or unusual designs or artistic notions, their own original, risky approaches, to those who look at what Zimbabwe currently believes, enjoys, expects, embraces, and say, “I have a different idea of what this could look like”.

Stick to your guns. The day you listen to the know-it-all in the navy-blue suit is the day your soul fecking dies.

The most brilliant and original novels and works of art and ideas and discoveries of recent history were all greeted as idealistic, impractical, bizarre, delusional or utterly wrong at one point or another.

This is how good things come into being: someone listens politely to the opinionated asshole pulling the financial strings, shakes his hand, and forgets all of that priceless advice within seconds.

Unfortunately, the man in the navy-blue suit may quickly grow impatient. Whether you’re working on your painting or coming up with a new marketing model or writing experimental fiction or challenging the current notions about online buying habits, you may not have a lot of time to try out your approach.

And sure, plenty of experiments fail. But what’s the alternative? A nation of copycats and Chicken Slices and Chickenza Inns, playing it safe, catering to the lowest common denominator.

So, whether or not our innovators make a million every month, let’s give them a round of applause for their moves to stand their ground, to ignore lame advice about dumbing things down and making their complex weirdness more clunky and obvious, since Zimbos apparently aren’t smart enough to appreciate anything new.

But there’s nothing in the world that’s more gutless and chicken-hearted than assuming that your market is stupid, and serving them up something stupid to please them. Great products are created by passionate people who actually believe in what they’re doing. That’s why the great producers do it.

And that’s why I’ll always say no to shoddy service, and given the choice between supporting a large corporation and a small startup, I’ll choose the new guy every time.

Despite what all these selfish monopolies run by accredited geniuses assume, I’m not that stupid.

Excite me.