Before we begin exploration of the Art, we must first establish the first principles that the seeker must abide by. These are the tenets on which the Art is founded. Let every seeker examine his heart truly to determine if indeed he can meet the requirements of the first principles.

The first principle a seeker must know is that by choosing to practice the Art, the pool of available females reduces drastically. There are two primary reasons for this. The main requirement for successful application of the Art is an intelligent woman. Let no one fool you, these women are indeed in most ways more challenging than the remainder of their sex, but ultimately more rewarding. However the main reason for the focus on intelligent women is that, they are the only ones that could possibly respond to the Art. This leads on to the second factor. The pool is narrowed further by the need for said intelligent woman to be susceptible to application of the Art. Not all intelligent women fall into this category. This is evidenced by the number of times you may hear phrases like “you do not flirt (toast) like other guys.” You would come to realize as time goes on, that the tone with which this is said basically separates women into those that approve and those that want you to keep on walking. As a central tenet of the Art is to keep on walking if required, we must necessarily work with a smaller pool. Also seekers who have face and figure requirements must necessarily work with an even smaller pool, but we will get to that area in the more advanced classes.

The second principle is that a seeker must come to terms with the realistic approximation of how he appears to the opposite sex. Now the seeker does not have to be an Adonis, after all an Adonis is a delicacy and therefore does not need the Art. However he must be sufficiently attractive enough that his looks do not impact the decision of the woman. That means that the woman in summing up the qualities of the seeker will not have his looks affect adversely on her decision to be blocked. In the Art this is known as looks neutrality. We have found that depending on the woman in question the figure that approximates looks neutrality varies from a 5 to a 7.

The third principle is that a seeker must possess money neutrality. The seeker’s money should not have any impact on the woman’s decision to be blocked. Even if the seeker is able to influence the decision with his financial status, he is advised not to go down that route. The standard rule of thumb is that the woman in question should be comfortable enough to know that you can take her out, but not so comfortable that it becomes the reason she says yes. Unfortunately the Art does not speak to positions of monetary lack, as that is on a case by case basis, and does not speak to the generic seeker.

The last principle is that the seeker must like women. Women are not notches on a bedpost, or high fives in the locker room. Seekers must realize that to practice the Art you have to actually like the company of women. It is not a requirement that a Seeker be a feminist (in the sense that every woman deserves self determination) but it is seen as an added advantage in application of the Art.

Application of these principles is difficult, and there is tendency to stray from them. But be warned young seeker, the principles are time tested and ignore them at your peril.

Welcome to the first session of the Art of Sideways Blocking. You have chosen to journey down the road less traveled. You have left the beaten path, and are forging ahead down a new and ultimately more rewarding path. The Art is not something that can simply be taught, it must be lived.

I will start with the tale of how a young one realized that he needed to walk the path of the Art. Prior to this point in his life, the Art would have been a foreign thing to him. After all, he was one of the few black people in an all white town. As one of his fellow blacks put it, “black men were a delicacy in this town.” Just by existing the young one could get a member of the opposite sex to actually focus her attention on him. As all the world knows once this occurs most of the actual battle is won.

The young one started his university career in that small town in the Southern United States full of hope. Approaching the dawn of the new millennium and basking in his newly found freedom. No more climbing into windows stealthily left open before jaunts up town. No more having to be sent back to the dorm by the teachers “uptown busting” on a weekend night. Liberation had arrived in the form of college, and the young one planned to be emminently hospitable.

Courtesy of his foreign accent (and probably not much else) the young one found himself at a party in a fraternity house that was normally populated by athletes. The boy alighted on a woman whose poise and confidence radiated “upperclassman.” Buoyed with the experience of a couple of years of being a delicacy, the young one approached with a confidence that would have to be seen to be believed.

As he expected, the sophomore (he was right) in the Nigerian parlance “gelled” for him. She laughed at all his jokes, her hands trailed lingeringly as she balanced on him to gather herself after a particularly impressive gem. In keeping with the playbook he inherited, he escorted the sophomore to the dance floor. After a decent interval, in which the “Next” effect came into play, the sophomore took the young one by the hand and started to lead him off the dance floor. The young one was dreaming dreams inspired by countless college movies and so he was barely paying attention when he was asked

“what sport do you play?”

“Nothing” was the reply

The next series of events came as a complete shock to the young one. His sophomore was continuing to lead him out, however they had to release the hand clasp once they ran into some traffic. The sophomore took that opportunity to vanish somewhere else into the party. The young one was too shocked to think, and so it took him a little while to realize that not being an athlete consigned him to empty palms. To realize that just being black was not enough to be a delicacy, you have to be an athlete too.

The young one realized that he had to find a way to survive in this jungle without being a delicacy, and thus the Art of Sideways Blocking was born.

So having written somewhat extensively on my various views on relationship theory (this is what I call the whole dating or mating thing). I have decided to frame the next few posts as a series. It is highly unlikely that the posts will be on sequential days, but I aim to finish the series this month.

This is the overview page. It will contain links to the other posts in the series. There will also be a link to this post on the sidebar. After all it's time Sunday Corper had a little competition :D

I suppose the first question is what is sideways blocking? Well I suggest you read to find out :D

The Art - Origins

The Art - First Principles

The Art - Confidence

The Art - The Myth of The Long Girl

The Art - The Secret of The Successful Approach

So the reason why I am so down on the local governments in Nigeria is that they are one of the primary reasons why the macrostability that Nigeria has achieved in the last 8 years has not been felt at the micro level. In terms of revenue allocation, every local government earns between N50 million to N100 million a month. These guys then proceed to do very little if anything with the money. So I got to thinking, if I was named local government chairman what would I do. Here are a few of the things I came up with:

Schools

I would set up a 600 student primary school and a 600 student secondary school in the local government. Fully equipped schools (for Nigeria at least) will cost about N50 to N100 million to set up. I am sure that you could probably even get a matching grant from the World Bank or some NGO to work with. I will also try and get maybe 10 experienced teachers to run the various subjects, and develop curriculms and stuff. Then I will staff the departments with youth corpers. So every year you get a supply of teachers from the NYSC system.

Clinic

I would set up a 50 bed clinic in the local government, which will run a full out patient service, and be able to perform simple procedures like maternity and such. I will also recruit 3 experienced doctors and staff the rest with NYSC doctors. You could also put the hygiene department under thse guys. So stuff like mosquito nets and boreholes would be their purview. Total cost should be about N50 million (if you have to refurbish and not build) and I bet you can get a matching grant for this as well.

Bank

I would encourage a microfinance bank to set up a branch in the local government complex, providing loans to the people. The total cost for this is miniscule.

Agricultural Extention

If I was a rural chairman this is an essential. This is the guy that wanders around the farms telling people about fertiliser and seed improvements and farming techniques and all that. You would also fund all the improvements to start to ensure take up otherwise you will run into the situation they did with mosquito nets when they tried to give them at subsidised prices instead of giving them away for free. Another thing to do is to communalise the sale process as much as possible, especially for the cash crop production. Establishing a mini-commodity board would be a good idea. The entire operation will be quite costly, and finding the type of people that can talk to the farmers and get them to adopt the new ways will be cruicial. Getting traditional rulers on board with this would be a cruicial step. Getting a grant for seeds and stuff should be easy, especially from the Europeans who are into this sort of thing.

Traditional Rulers Council

This is essential to get the buy in of the whole area. Meeting regularly with the community leaders to advise them of my plans and seek their advice as well. I got the idea for this from the real estate developers in Lagos who are constantly visiting the Oba of Lagos and the Ikoyi traditional rulers to aprise them of developments.

Pot Hole Squad

This applies to cities. All those small roads and stuff that have pot-holes that should really be called ditches will be the portfolio of this squad. It would literally go around the local government and fill up pot holes. You can have one squad in which case you will need about 5 people. You will also need refurbished machinery that is about N20 million.

So these are the immediate impact things that I thought of as priorities of a local government chairman. So what would you do if you were local government chairman?