Blogging While Black version 4.0

Siblings Are For Suckers

2011-12-05T01:29:00.002-06:00

I almost killed my brother yesterday.

I was assisting my brother with making a supply run for his delivery company. He called me over a month ago and asked if I could help him with streamlining and modernizing his business for added profitability. I initially balked at helping him because he uses people and never reciprocates. That and plus we never got along.

We are polar opposites, I went to the military and school to educate myself on dealing with the world, my brother dropped out of high school and started hustling on the street. He became well known for his successes and has a large crew, I was known for my successes and power moves in the blue collar, then the corporate setting and by both main street and mean street standards, we both did exceptionally well.

He owns a delivery company that started out as a hustle about 6 years ago and he needs help to stay relevant and is overwhelmed and needs to expand. My younger siblings won't look in his direction because my older brother is straight gully with his shit. he is the epitome of 'ghetto'. He has ambition and good business sense, but he's absolutely the wrong cat to bring to a corporate setting for meetings and such. So he calls about six weeks ago and tells me that since half the company is mine, he could use me as the corporate face. He knows his limitations and understands that with my acumen used on the suit side, he can stay on the boot side and do his thing as I do mine, both of us enhancing the company profile.

I reluctantly decide to help his ass, and for three days, our travels to client sites, meetings and heavy work on deliveries and supply runs became nothing but shouting matches, disagreements and ended with me putting his ass out of my car on the way to a huge client supply pick up.

We argued over two dollars.

You see, he has a new employee (3 months in) that makes food deliveries for a string of Chinese joints in which he delivers the food timely, collects payment from the customer, gets in his vehicle and just rides off. he never speaks of change or gives change to the end customer. So the owner of the restaurants, Mrs. Kim calls and my brother puts her on speaker. She's irate as hell, shouting and cussing that this individual never gives her customers their proper change and this is a make or break habit he has to break or she's switching services. I immediately explain to my brother after the call that we must enforce a zero tolerance policy and release this man from his contract. He balks. He also made excuses for the driver to Mrs. Kim and then he insulted and irritated the FUCK out of me by calling the driver, apologizing to him for the inconvenience and stated "Aye, you cool, get that money man, I didn't think that lady would trip over two dollars man."

What.the.Fuck?

My brother has balked at every single suggestion made to either improve or enhance his business. He fussed, cussed, questioned my sanity, manhood and education whenever I made any critique or suggestion. He got gully with me, so I got gully with his ass. I let him know what time it was and how i absolutely cannot deal with unscrupulous business practices as the law. I questioned his integrity after he basically said 'fuck the customer, I need to get paid' He also confided in me that he doesn't know what integrity is. This negro done lost his muthafuckin mind!

SIDEBAR: We never got along as kids. We tried to kill each other on various occasions. We had a serious Spy vs Spy, I'm gon' kill your ass thing that went on for years. We never lost touch, but purposely kept out of each other's way since 1992 or 1993.

So I said my piece and we ended out night rescuing the thief of a driver because he couldn't finish his route because he ran out of gas. My brother grabbed money out of his own pocket and used my gas can to get dude about a quarter tank of gas. Never asked for reimbursement. Even fronted on me jokingly to this cat on how I've been gone from Chicago for 14 years and how I don't know the street system. This cat is only 16 months older than me, and other than my travels in the military, vacations, corporate training, me 'dragging' my ex across the country inconveniencing her by trying to establish a home base and make new opportunities for us to become a family as well as me me trucking across the highways of America, Chicago has always been my home.

This muthafucker...

So this morning on the supply run, he brings the shit back up. So I asked him: "in this moment, can I be replaced?" He said no, but in the same breath, he said that since thieving driver dude makes him over a thousand bucks a week, he would rather keep him on than to have me around at all because all I've done in the past few days is take from him.

I pulled the car over, unbuckled my seat belt and calmly told him to get the fuck out of my car. He started talking again, so I reiterated my position and asked him to un-ass my vehicle or there was going to be a problem. He stated that he didn't want a problem, got out, and I went on my merry way. I hope to GOD that i never see his ass ever again in my natural life. I could probably tolerate his ass at a funeral or something, but other than that...

I truly hate that dude.

Am I wrong?

///

2011-11-11T01:44:00.001-06:00

Eleven!!!

O.T.I.S. (Occupy The Intergalactic Spaceways) Movement: Journal Entry 1409.63 [AKA some science fiction shit I just made up sitting here because I'm bored as hell]

2011-10-29T23:22:00.017-05:00

Press PLAY, then read along...

So I'm cruising thru the Delta Quadrant in my C class spaceship the other day... Or was it night? I get stardates mixed up these days.

I see this black hole forming on my long range sensors. my droid assistant is going all 'DANGER WILL ROBINSON' batshit crazy about keeping my course set in that direction. I'm calm and in newly minted deep thought because I'm thinking to myself: what can possibly happen if I get caught up in that implosion? There has to be something on the other side of time and space intertwining into nothingness, right?

I have a right to check these sort of things out... Don't I?

Well after asking my on board computers to calculate the possibility of the ship and I becoming anti-matter if we get sucked into and become inanimate intergalactic trash, I decided to have the sensors zoom in, record the phenomenon onto the hard drive so I could watch it later. I need to see how close I could get to one of those things. I marvel at and wonder about what happens if I could survive the force and anti forces and get to the other side of a black hole. I personally think they are wormholes to inner space.

My gut tells me that there is more to all of this than just... THIS. Maybe I'll meet God.

I wish I could overstand things further.

I am bored. This much travel from Mother Earth has made me long to be back on the lakefront on the south side of Chicago, watching the sisters in the lycra outfits get fit to rhythms only they can hear and the joggers and bikers navigate the trails and paved and painted paths while enjoying the gentle lake breezes and sunshine. But I chose this. Hyperspace travel puts me too far to turn around. It's just me, a one man travel cruiser and a pretty decent food replicator heading to a planet we think has humanoid life and resources similar to ours.

I'm all by myself. Well, I have a droid and his humor is dry. He's a fucking droid, so...

All I need is the simple food generated and water formed from the moisture space provides. I have terabytes of data, entertainment and recorded memories loaded onto a cache of indestructible hard drives that I occasionally view to keep me grounded, to keep me... Human. I'm not supposed to be here, but after realizing that Earth had nothing to offer me in a mate, children or family that actually give a damn, the selection process unsnagged itself when I just plainly volunteered and signed all of the waivers.

So now I float thru deep space, chasing a signal that probably isn't one. The day we received coherent transmission from someone not of our own kind, we felt the need to respond. initially, we couldn't track the direction of the signal and remained skeptical of a frequency that seemed copied and sent from somewhere out of nowhere, but the world's collective space programs quickly put together a exploration program and needed someone to man the craft in following through to have first contact with extra-terrestrial life not of our galaxy. I wanted to go. I wanted to see how much my body and mind could take being alone in the vacuum of space.

Human contact had boycotted and then left me years before I went thru the training program. My commander referred to me as one 'of the droids' in drafting the mission plan he submitted to the powers that be. i was approved unanimously to go. I was thought of as the perfect subject for the Earth to lose.

I'm not insulted.

So now my 'days' begin with some bland tasting nutritional goo and kinetic movement. I create a morning brief via webcam from various angles to display my physical readiness for the mission and give the ship's condition and fuel levels to send backward to command. I receive transmissions of the goings on of the world about six weeks late from current time, and it gets later the more I travel towards the designated spot offered by the unknown alien committee. They now prepare my briefs on news, sports and pop culture in the old Movietime News format for a change of pace. Also added are female correspondents wearing low cut tops to keep me on my mental toes. Tit shots in space... Not bad. I manage though. Like I didn't bring a stash of my own porn. They say out here in space, no one can hear you scream. Very true.

Managing the ship's operations on the mission is the least of my concerns. Command made the vehicle easy to operate by incorporating a lot of 'driving' features which helps navigation by familiarization. The unit is solar powered and also has some nasty nuclear stuff at its core to make it travel faster than jet propulsion could ever push me. The five years I've been confined to the ship without space station porting actually feels like three. At some points, I've encountered turbulence that I thought would engulf me and rattle the ship to its core, but I survive and this little thing just pushes on.

The ship has four levels with a lounge and 'entertainment area' that I can retire to to observe incoming transmissions, any of the many movies, concerts and sporting events I have stashed away or family memories recorded for me. It helps to have space. It hurts to watch my nephews and nieces get grown and accomplish teen and adulthood without my hand.

The reason I get my dates and times mixed up is because I try to memorize the history script as I try to put the ways of the world out of my head. Cheeseburgers, politics and shit. Relationships. People irking the shit out of you. What to wear to a wedding. Hailing a taxi. The clog in the kitchen sink. Stepping in dog shit. I know we all must die, but to know that the world still turns, the stock market churns either with or against our economy and the White Sox still play ball games without me physically being on the planner but am still alive kills my spirit.

I have no idea what I'm getting into. Some think that the signal sent is no signal at all. Others think it's a trap. There are a chosen few that say that God Herself spoke to us in that transmission. Either way, we ended up building a long term travel vessel that I'm utilizing to go to where they've requested us to go. We have no knowledge of the way of life, features or intent of these beings deity or not, but because I deemed my life on Earth useless, I decided that my eyes should be the first to view either the friend or foe from the other side of the universe. We have time capsules for them chronicling all of our planet's history, research and triumphs.

There is also a presentation from the world league and our president, who was deemed to speak for the world with China's leader selected as second voice. We're assuming by the sophisticated nature of the transmission received that they are able to understand us. I also have monologue to recite in our extension of open arms, peace and good will.

I'm not afraid. I've studied the map and at least in the eye of danger or death will know where I end. I have no idea where this either begins or ends. I'll be on this ship traveling east towards the actual edges of the fringe of the universe to meet something I know not of what the outcome becomes. But I was the only one without reservation... A recycled piece of trash being used as a possible conduit to the other side of the immeasurable vast thing that we call space. If these beings don't want me, then my theory is confirmed.

Unwanted is unwanted, even in service to the damn universe. C'mon ship, hurl me to the unknown. I'm ready to get this over with. I'd shit a brick if they reveal themselves as little green men with big melon heads. I need a good joke right now anyway. The droid is dry, corny and has no timing.

Pondering My Parental's Petulance

2011-09-14T16:43:00.010-05:00

So I talked to my dad yesterday evening. He's not doing as well I expected. He keeps showing up at the emergency room with various ails and I know that this is his way of asking for someone on his medical staff to do something.

His heart rate is very low and they've suggested a pacemaker. Thing is, he's on so much stuff chemically that they probably can't do anything at this moment if they wanted to. He's pushing for the pacemaker as well because he knows (and feels) that the drugs are dragging him down, making him lethargic. Pops is an active guy. Hell, he's only 61. He also mentioned a few things that have the holistic healer in me angry as hell because he's still repping cheeseburgers as a way of life.

So we're knee deep in conversation and I'm quizzing him on his green leaf and water intake to which he answers 'Well I need to lose some of this weight and do like you said and get on my greens because I'm having a hard time moving around, you know?' Yeah, I know. The motivation to get off of dairy and red meat is there, and it looks good in theory, but let me at least finish this cheeseburger my wife made me and we'll discuss further after dinner. Honey, pass the milk.

I love my Pops, but...

Every time I think about or talk to both sets of my parents, I keep seeing the Tony Todd Coroner character from the Final Destination series:

Dammit! He's talking to me and I know he's right too.

So what about this whole 'calling' thing I mentioned the other day?

Well, I feel that I need to use myself as the example in gaining success and in getting healthy enough to want to sit down with folk face to face and possibly influence them with my story. Nothing more or less than that, no dogma involved, no hard pitch sales job on either a product or a service. I just want to show people that one can heal from various ills whether they be physical, mental or spiritual, and where there is no real formula developed that's what I want to show... That there is no formula!

Now I am back in student mode with an accredited healing institute paring what I've already learned and experienced academically and living thirteen years with diabetes/chronic kidney disease with what I'm learning now about holistic healing and its applied practices, and currently I can't tell you nothing but... I'm experiencing better results clinically by letting go of tradition that I ever have with the various teams of doctors and clinicians I've assembled over the years. And it goes beyond prescription medicine and a pill bottle discipline.

I just feel that if as long as I use myself as the example that my family and friends will probably take a bit of what I'm doing and will follow suit. I have a long way to go before I complete the educational and practical part of becoming a Holistic Health Practitioner, but just the practice on myself is enough to possibly motivate my parentals to want to emulate what I do and want to live.

Talking to my Pops the other night brought me down a bit. I was watching a webcast of Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue rip a venue I frequent a lot in NOLA called Tipitina's to shreds in anticipation of the new album he just dropped yesterday.

click the link, go get that

I could hear the defeat in his voice.

There was a sense of give in my mother's voice when I spoke to her last week as well. I think that they feel as if they aren't working or taking care of kids or grand kids that they have no worth and there is nothing further to do. like they have served their primary function and purpose.

In America we are culturally conditioned to believe that all things white are superior and all things black are inferior. And the manifestation of that cultural conditioning is that African Americans are undervalued, underestimated, and marginalized

My parents and their spouses have lived their lives in service to their children, their extended families and the community in service via employment, and have lived their lives thinking that there was nothing more to life other than being these things to these people. And even though my father has 26 plus years on the job and my mother has over 20 on hers, they feel as if there is no reward or additional meanings for life beyond their kids getting grown and moving out of the house and them reaching the age of retirement.

And because they are so bound to tradition, religion and the forced adaptation and integration to society at society's level and not their own...

There is no motivation to move off of fast food, traditional soul food dishes that rob them of their vitality and to keep the tune in the pocket when it comes to travel, exercise and meaningful purpose in being an elder in society. I want to help them unlearn this bad practice and let them know that there is so much more to life and living in America for them than to just just give up, wilt away and die.

It seems that society hasn't much need for African American elders. Hell, the Tea Party debates the other proved that certain folk would just let a 30 year old working man with no insurance just die if he didn't have coverage.

I may be too late. For them.

But I'll die trying. For them.

For you, dear reader... I'll continue to try to live the example and show you as well.
Now my shit ain't perfect. I will fall and fall off the wagon. I will get angry and probably head out for a three piece dark with mild sauce and fries on the side until I realize halfway to the Popeye's that it makes my legs go numb and tingle and that my lower back and kidneys will ache for damn near twelve hours and I'll be blind for four. As a matter of fact, my shit smells remarkably like...

Shit.

But I am willing to live and show you my shit. Not literally. I'm talking about my actions (and inaction for that matter). Thank God there is no such thing as smellivision.

Choosing To Be Chosen

2011-09-12T12:24:00.003-05:00

I'm not mad.

Nope, I am not angry.

"Knowledge is power, and knowledge can be the difference between life or death... You should know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

Intro - 'Who's Going Take The Weight' GangStarr

I am indifferent though. I thought I'd be long dead before folk got to the point where decisions were made for them and they would willingly accept it. I'm trying to ignore this, but the disease has seem to have spread to the family that keeps me at arm's distance and the 2 and a half people in my very limited inner circle.

I love y'all, but...

Speaking of the folk I hold close and dear, the subject matter of many a conversation about 'The Choice You Must Make In Maturity' has been had with litttle or no response on us actually making a choice. Aside from trying to get myself back on track physically, I've been strategizing and optimizing (hee Lee! *waiving*) on said choice fn either 'giving in' to my calling or continuing the chase of individual glory and its endless reward of finance and unbelievable happiness upon reaching the top of the mountain. Of course that's after stepping on and over folk using friendships, relationships and associations to get there.

Lord knows I have failed in the aspect of the latter.

You can't be sleepin'
cuz things are gettin' crazy
You better stop being lazy
There's many people frontin'
And many brothers droppin'
All because of dumb things, let me tell you somethin'
I've been through so much that I'm such
a maniac, but I still act out of faith

See, I've tried to latch onto it, be employed and employ it... Shit, I've tried to marry it, contract it out, direct market that ish and went on expeditions digging for it.

Fools gold.

All that time, my calling was in a holding pattern, circling around me just waiting until I exhausted all of the possibilities in chasing things that wasn't there.

I'm comfortable. I'm fine with the way things are. I don't have a want for much these days. I also know exactly what happens to those in the calm of tumultuous storms who chose to not board up and evacuate while watching the weather channel...

It took these past months for me to accept the fact that I might have a serious handicap in the coming future. After I thought on it, I figure that I need to accomplish at least one thing on my bucket list while I still have all my faculties, so I started a fast. Weeks and various two pound containers of wheat grass powder and fresh juices later, I realized that I was healing faster than the doctors' original forecast.

Not that I had much faith in the general medical doctors. Understood was that these cats are trained on general medicine and the implementation of chemicals to balance sickness and wellness. I trusted the word of my neurosurgeon and neurologist, having been inside my head and interpreting the various scans and things.

I needed someone to defend my position
Decisions I made, cuz now it's time to get paid
And ladies, these rhymes are like the keys to a dope car
Maybe a Lexus or a Jaguar
Still, all of that is just material
So won't you dig the scenario
And just imagine if each one is teachin' one
We'll come together so that we become
A strong force, then we can stay on course
Find your direction through introspection
And for my people out there I got a question
Can we be the sole controllers of our fate?
Now who's gonna take the weight?

After dropping over forty pounds of useless fat, I figured that I would walk the walk that I promised my dearly departed friend that I'd do. I was in the process of saving myself by getting off of all of the drugs they had me on months after initially injuring myself. That shit was making me sicker and more dependent on them and others for me to live.

I kicked the drugs, went out and found a job here in Green Country and decided that when I reached maximum medical improvement, I would go where I am both liked and needed most and set up shop, using myself as an example of healing by nature of resistance to societal influence.

In that time, i lost a few friends along with the weight and chemical influence along the way.

I also blogged, texted, tweeted and facebooked myself through a very imbalanced stupor, meaning that I've been faking the funk to those I communicated with from about January to about May, speaking as if I was okay and was in my right mind.

I probably wasn't.

The weight of the world is heavy on my mind
So as my feelings unwind I find
That some try to be down just cuz it's trendy
Others fall victim to envy
But I'll take the road less travelled
So I can see all my hopes and my dreams unravel

1990 - Keith Elam Album: Step In The Arena - Chrysalis/EMI Records

I'm very sober now, The haze has dissipated and I know that I've been guided to make my choice in 'giving in' to my calling. That was easy. Placing all of the moving parts together and liking who likes me will be a bit harder seeing as I have to place myself into an undone, living puzzle.

And no, I have not chosen to evangelize...

Although I'd be very financially stable and have an army on hand to do my bidding...

The Emotional, Clingy Finger Pointing People

2011-09-08T12:22:00.000-05:00

I was going to compose some long, drawn out diatribe on what I think the President should say/do tonight but...

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I wanted to see the Republican debate.

I watched that shit, and I must say love him or hate him, if any of these guys end up with the Republican nomination, Obama should win the general election by a mathematically embarrassing landslide.

I noticed something about liberal-minded folks these days: These MFers are STILL celebrating the Obama victory from November of 2008. Folks in 2011 still speak like Jesse Jackson was looking election night in Grant Park but also walk around with selective memory.

I shouldn't have to get into it, but if you don't know of the damn near 300+ accomplishments of the Obama Administration but know all sorts of other sordid details about basketball wives, celebrity marriages, water cooler gossip and random sports fact, shame on your low-information having ass! Even if you don't agree with this man's politics, you should know what him and his administration has done, so to turn on one of the few mature adults in the room is beyond my understanding at this point.

Or maybe it isn't.

I get it. I really do. America was already falling further into the depths of hell which probably caused you libs to vote for Obama just to get out of the Bush Administration. Y'all wanted to make history and really thought that by electing this particular harmless negro that somehow, magically HE could make everything better by osmosis.

You mother fuckers forgot that the banks, wall street and other major players in the free markets were deregulated and let loose to run amok, and you let them take all of your money and fuck your 401k up.

You also let them tell that Muslim lie to your face a decade ago, so you mindlessly chanted USA, took your shoes off and threw away your 3oz liquid containers at the airport and let these bastids listen in on your phone calls.

You also fell for the jumbo mortgage bullshit and actually applied and was given 20 and 30 year mortgages on houses that should have sold for less than $250k and then you got laid off because demand dwindled because other fuckers got laid off too and no one could buy shit on the open market... And plus your savings went bye bye with the fall of the capital markets.

These things could not have just magically ended with Obama taking office in 2009, and they certainly did not. One man and his administration cannot dictate control over the free markets, and because of our greed, ignorance, warmongering and deregulation of many things, we're all suffering the consequences.

Add that to the emotional connection most liberal minded folk have with Obama and mix in talking points, sound bytes from cable news and unchecked, irrational overexpectations from his base and you get folk angry that the president hasn't flipped a table on the GOP, thus not giving them the emotional satisfaction they demand from a gentleman who is continuously marginalized, undervalued and underestimated by his opposition.

Its not enough that his opposition obstructs his legislative proposals at every turn. It's not enough that he isn't respected and most folk that oppose him are as racist as they are nationalist, needing his marginalization to be constant and ongoing because they just refuse to believe a dark-skinned man of African descent is the Commander-In-Chief and THEIR leader of the free world.

I'm only in my 40s, but I remember when voters were the best constituents, picking up signs, making phone calls, protesting and boycotting when they had to.

Dumping your unfettered emotions on the President is cowardice.

I hope he drops Congress like Harry Truman tonight and unveil a massive works program upwards of $700 billion, call folks out by name and dare them to say no in the same cool, calm manner that he always seems to have when he's doing his thing.

And when those job applications hit the streets (because something will get approved by Congress), I hope you get off of your critical asses and put some work in and pay your fair share.

I left my mother's house at 17 with the money I saved up from my first job at a car wash when I was 13. I joined the Army and kept moving forward. I've had setbacks and I fell (and failed) more than a handful of times, but I never blamed my failures or shortcomings on anyone else but myself.

There's a chance he won't get re-elected next year.

You'll miss his ass then. Mark my words.

Where In The World Is Hassan San Diego?

2011-09-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

What the hell have I been doing?

Recovering, thank you for asking.

I guess I gotta fill you in, huh? Wrote a blogpost about it, like to hear it, here it go:

On Jan 8 I fell on my head. I didn't fall and hit my head, I actually fell on my head causing me to have a subdural hematoma and brain swelling. I was affected to the point of motor skill failure and vision loss. I still can't properly see. Breaking blood vessels in the back of my eyes isn't how I wanted to address my vision problem while going through the motions of having diabetic retinopathy. Such as life.

So I shed myself of Chicago and relocated to slow-moving, boring-ass Oklahoma. I wanted to rehab at the Muskogee, OK VA Hospital because traffic (in all aspects) is slower. Contrary to what a friend or two accuse me of, I am here in Oklahoma to recover from my injuries and rehab quietly. That I have done. I am not quite to the point where my medical staff will rubber stamp me MMI (maximum medical improvement), but I am very damn close. That means that I have already packed my bags and am in transition to be in transition. Again.

Now I couldn't live off of worker's comp because I depleted my savings in coming here and setting up shop, so fortunately, I fell into a job as a fleet manager for a large trucking company. Things were comfy and they accommodated my disabilities by having me work extended operations overnight (less traffic but busy all the same) until a capital management firm bought the company two months ago. I never planned on making a career there but I did see writings on the wall. Before I could jump ship, they provided me with a life boat.

I now sit in Tulsa with partially packed suitcases a mere visit away from a closed head injury specialist and a team of eye surgeons who can green light me to leave and go on with my life. It has been an odd eight months. I've counted the days... Had to. I injured myself in the same moments on the same day that Rep Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), her staff and a few constituents were shot. I remember coming out of ICU seeing the coverage hazily on TV. I've been rooting for her and the others ever since.

Your problems are nothing compared to someone elses'. Don't forget that.

I know this, so I worked my way through things to this point. I still need a lot of work done to make things right with my body, some of that will never get done, so I have to find new ways to work with what I have right now. The one thing I battle with the most is balance and living with limitations in my eyesight. I've lost 27% of my eyesight and I have adopted a few new tools to help me get around and do my thing. I am not legally blind. Yet. I am hoping that there are things that I can stick to holistically in the time that The Creator gives me on this plane that will help me stay above the sighted Mendoza Line.

It took a while for me to get here (the blog). All I want to do now is get back to as much regular as humanly possible because I still have a voice. I cannot remain quiet in these times where it seems that our youngest and brightest remain silent due to dumbfoundedness, our elders have been lavishly muted by corporate interests and the agents spout off lies and inaccuracies in the name of the forsaken just to keep the meek from inheriting the earth.

God gave me a big head because he knew by the time they got to me, there would be no life preservers left to hand out...

And so I float.

Someone special continuously tells me: Head up, heart open.

I have no choice.

Keepin' your head above water,

Making a wave when you can.

Temporary lay offs.

Good Times.

Easy credit rip offs.

Good Times.

Scratchin' and surviving.

Good Times.

Hangin in a chow line Good Times.

Ain't we lucky we got 'em

Good Times.

Today, my condition. Tomorrow, pre-speech coverage and what folk want to hear.

Not Yet Free

2011-06-04T04:50:00.001-05:00

Hey...

By the time you read this, Wesley Snipes would have been in jail for at least 24 hours on a misdemeanor conviction.

I hope you caught that.

And he's not actually charged with what you think either.

But if I hear one more brother or sister make a joke about this man without doing even a tiny bit of research (cause public trials, minutes and notes of charges and testimony is public record), I'mma smack some damn body.

A misdemeanor charge that gets you 30+ months in a federal prison. If Wesley can get got, imagine what can be done to your stankin' ass!

Imagine that...

When Your Condition Is Conditioned, Where Is Your Sense Of Duty?

2011-06-02T02:47:00.005-05:00

I'm being kept away from blogging because of stuff I've been into.

These past few days commemorates the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 of which I have a vested interest in. It seems that there were family and friend's family that were a part of what we call 'Black Wall Street'. I'm sure you've heard of it, and I'm sure you have heard or have studied in history the destruction and whitewashing of this and other incidents in American history. For those not in the know, let me give you a little Wiki on it:

The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale racially motivated conflict between the white and black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma, including aerial attack, beginning May 31, 1921. During the 16 hours of the assault, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries,more than 6000 Greenwood residents were arrested and detained in a prison camp, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire caused by bombing.

The Tulsa race riot occurred in the racially and politically tense atmosphere of northeastern Oklahoma, some of which was a growing hotbed of anti-black sentiment at that time. The Ku Klux Klan made its first major appearance in Oklahoma on August 12, 1921,[1] less than three months after the riot.

As in several other states and territories during the early years of the twentieth century, lynchings were not uncommon in Oklahoma. Between the declaration of statehood on November 16, 1907, and the Tulsa race riot some thirteen years later, thirty-one individuals — twenty-six of whom were black — were lynched in Oklahoma. During the twenty years following the riot, the number of lynchings statewide fell to two.

The Greenwood section of Tulsa was home to a commercial district so prosperous it was known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street"). Ironically, the economic enclaves here and elsewhere — bounded and supported by racial separation — supported prosperity and capital formation within the community. In the surrounding areas of northeastern Oklahoma, blacks also enjoyed relative prosperity and participated in the oil boom.

Certain folk didn't like that property, so they destroyed it with little to no retaliation.

Wikipedia

Right now I'm in Tulsa, OK and I've been around town talking to folks about what kind of legacy the 1920 race riots have left us with. It's strange because not a lot of people talk about it. Now you see that I didn't say that folk either liked or didn't like to talk about it, I just stated that they aren't talking. Most folk here feel that there isn't much to talk about.

So much to the point that the newspaper that initially reported about this has absolutely NOTHING in their archives. Period.

So much that citizens either black, white or native under 40 act like they know nothing of the largest and most destructive race riot in America's history.

So much that North Tulsa still doesn't have shops, bodegas, providers of goods and services or resources in the entire area affected 70 years ago (Save for one grocery store and one bank).

So much that no one addresses the isolation and desolation that North Tulsa has.

Hey y'all, I'm from Chicago and I am not used to this shit. There isn't even an ounce or inkling of agitation due to the aftermath of what happened here this time 70 years ago. And in the heart of my research of the riots, support of my uncle, who is the city councilman for this district the past 8 years, my support and funds raised for multiple non-profits in Chicago, my mentoring and tutoring, there were questions raised about my commitment and action when I expressed outrage over the amount of gun violence Chicago suffered this past Memorial Day Weekend on facebook Monday.

I grow so tired of the finger pointers and talkers just pointing and yapping about what's going on without putting in work to ease our self-destruction. Inactivity is even more destructive than the folk, scenarios and situations set up to actually destroy.

An old chum from high school just took to the streets of the Englewood district of Chicago (South Side, shawty!) with his program and just like my brothers, sisters and I do, he walks up to the so-called gang bangers and dope dealers and addresses the concerns that some neighborhood residents have about their commitment to either the game or the advancement of our people. Brother had cameramen to document names, faces and responses. Along with looking out for these kids thru mentoring, after school activities & programs, scholarships and job training, this is how we do.

I'm hanging out in Tulsa for the summer to make sure folk my age and younger actively participate and are in the know of my uncle's platform. I just ran into one of the most dynamic young graphic artists Oklahoma has to offer and he will help us create a viable and informative web presence during this summer campaign. We're looking to facebookize and twitterfy my uncle as well, we had over 100 elders show up to a town hall meeting Unc had a couple of weeks ago and I am excited to have been invited to be a part of the team that will put the 2.0 stamp on my uncle and his platform.

I just wish others had the energy and motivation to come out of the house and actively participate. What in the hell are YOU doing to speak truth to power and following that up with duty in your responsibility to help us as humanity edge forward?

I ain't never scared. I am not afraid to get my hands dirty. The ignorant and criminal do not scare me. I come from that environment, I am not a product of it.

I now head to Chicago to be at my mother's side as she observes with the rest of us the condition of my step-dad, who had another heart attack damn near one year to the week of his last one.

Your work is never done, regardless of what condition you're in or what conditions you choose to live.

.

'Starting Over From Zero' - Hassan's Plight

2011-05-15T03:39:00.006-05:00

I, Hassan Olumoroti Ntimbanjayo hear by say will all willfulness and with a sound mind that I am afraid to branch out (with all of the traveling I've been doing) and start from zero.

Again.

I absolutely hate the fact that i have to build things from the ground up once again in my life. I don't want the big screen TV (it's only 60Hz, I need 240Hz... You know why). I don't want the sofa. Okay, I might want the king sized Ikea Malm bedroom joints with the Tempurpedic jawn because that som'bitch feels guuuuud.

I will need my personal effects and other stuff, but other than that I think I'm good. I can afford new trinkets (and even more after the Six Sigma cert), but its time to be a lil' more basic and enjoy more open space. It's time to build a home once again. The house of cards I've lived in the past couple of years is waterlogged at least. I refuse to step in a weak point in the floor and fall halfway through only to get stuck and have the cards dry with me in it.

What in the hell is he talking about?

Very, very soon I will select a new city that i will call home. It will have to be a place where culture rules and personal politics amongst my friends will be at a minimum. It will also have to have rich soil and access to an international airport. The ability to connect with Corporate America is a must have and I need some space to roam, possible on a lawn tractor if I wanna.

Snow during winter months is not an option.

I will need to be able to ride this place out until the adventure calls for more space (sandboxes and swings) or I decide to retire and can get lost in the urban shuffle. And last but certainly not least, I need to be someplace my so-called family doesn't want to travel to for any reason.

I'm still scared though.

Some of y'all scare me... With intent.

I strategige in these moments... In the middle of the night, wondering who will have my stankin' ass after all of my errs, misdeeds and miscalculations.

Starting over from zero is hard. Don't ask me why I'm doing this either. I hear re-invention is a good thing. For some. Lord I hope and pray one of those folk is me.

An Ode To A Lollipop

2011-05-05T04:04:00.001-05:00

You would have thought by now that I would have said something...

Nah...

To be honest, there isn't anything that damn interesting going on right now to actually speak on. To be perfectly honest, right now my health is the most important thing for me, and to be completely honest I'm failing in that department. But don't worry, the Creator has a master plan, so I'm fine.

I do find it peculiar that the same folks that defended Dear Leader are the ones tearing him down right now. As a former member of the intelligence community, I totally overstand what has been done, why and why it is to be this way. Shame, the same folk that needed a long form birth certificate were dancing in the streets after a death announcement, just like their so-called enemy.

I also have complete and utter doubt in supporters of our Dear Leader. The time for gossip, rumors and innuendo are over. I am ashamed to even have affiliation with those that live on hearsay when we live in the 24 hour news cycle as well as having access to bloggers, You Tubers and the like as close as their always-on cell phones to get real and pertinent info... They doubt the individual and blindly follow the news agencies.

Sheeple. That's what they are.

I've even seen a fake-ass Martin Luther King quote go round the email, Facebook and even the Blogger circuit. Everybody seems to be an expert because they have a Twitter account. It's funny, those closest to me never even asked my opinion, AND I WAS OVER THERE!!! I conducted background investigations and processed info to have DoD grant security clearances to those worthy of our nation's trust. That's all I can say. Those in my circle know that I've seen shit. On purpose. They don't have to know what and I'll never say, but do know this: Most of the stuff y'all think you know you never will.

And that info still ain't going to help you get a better job.
It has nothing to do with oil speculation overcharging by OPEC for fossil fuel
You've been so distracted that prices for processed foods are equal or exceed that of organic
Foreclosures are still happening because the rent is TOO DAMN HIGH!

These happenings aren't meant to be distractions. The current administration has a job to do. Don't let the rumors of rumors keep your attention away from what's really going on. Or birth certificates. Or who demands them. I feel like one of the few out there actually focusing on what really matters. I should feel shame and disgust for those that waste their time on non-essential things. I'll just wait until my people have that 'aha' moment and realize while they were in a daze where their time, effort, emotions and money went.

Your kids need you.
Your mama is calling.
Your health, wealth and knowledge of self is wavering.

And your ass is worried about long form birth certificates and the status of a dead man.

Suckers.

2011-03-02T03:53:00.000-06:00

Sorry about my infrequent posts.

I look okay, but I haven't been well. I've been dealing with the reality Post Concussion Syndrome throws at you. I have a healthy respect for head injuries and brain damage these days. I thought it would go away. I thought I would be ready to get back into the swing of things, but no.

I ain't ready.

Most of my days are hazy, where time slips away and I forget both big and little things. The headaches are still there as well as the eye pain due to sensitivity to light. I've cried myself to sleep damn near every night. The vision is still blurry and double... Like someone superimposed the world over itself and moved the one in the rear over to the left. I've had a few seizures. I spend most of the day hiding from the sunlight. I'm depressed. I want to do better, so I've hopped in my car (not recommended by the doctors for obvious reasons) and I try to get my driving skills back to standard. I have to. I've figured out that riding with folks is a serious no-no for me. I'd rather push hard to stay between the white lines to drag myself places rather than hearing people talking shit. Noise sets me off. The phone always rings, and that shit makes my ass hairs twitch.

No reason to complain though. I'll post something crazy on either Twitter of Facebook to distract me from the bullshit ways I feel most times. The neurologist and neurosurgeon cannot touch my neck or back, I haven't been treated for that yet. My endocrinologist called me to remind me that my kidneys still need tending to. To say that I'm in a bad spot is an understatement. I figure that one day while out experimenting with my new style of driving (one eye, head cocked to the side, anti-glare glasses over my prescripts) maybe a fellow trucker will do me the honor of plowing into my ass and putting me out of my misery.

Don't feel sorry for me either. Just try not to fall and suffer a closed head injury.

The only thing that burns my ass about my current situation is that I made the critical mistake to extend myself and depend on one person to assist and that person left me high and dry and talked shit to my face to boot.

The crazy thing is... Folks I know demand things of me that I haven't even given thought to. From love to finance, even helping someone pack and move... I want to get well, I want to be able to do regular shit but... I don't get the chance to heal. People see or talk to me and think that I'm good enough to give into whatever the hell they want and can't understand that I'm failing inside literally and figuratively right now. I deal with so much selfishness and bullshit to the point where I hope that I never heal.

So I got people that wish me well to my face actually harboring anger in my direction because they don't get what they want out of me, whatever that is. I do have a plan though.

I made the mistake of checking out of the hospital without addressing my organ failure. Yeah, the rest of my body just can't be ignored. I plan on heading back south and checking myself into a rehab facility so I can get my shit together.

A mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste... Try to keep yours.

.

Steele Here?

2011-02-06T23:15:00.000-06:00

This is even funnier:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Michael Steele Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on
Facebook

See what you'll be missing in the future RNC? Someone who gets it and isn't afraid to go where needed to win hearts, minds and votes, even in the face or ridicule.

You can never have either my ear or my vote.

Don't worry though... I hate Democrats too.

.

Former Puppet Michael Steele

2011-02-03T05:43:00.000-06:00

I like Michael Steele. He says funny things.

He puts his foot in his mouth towing the party line, only because he loves the principles. He lives by them. He is a genuine conservative. Its just during the past two years as party chairman, no one in has ever taken him seriously.

Shame. He said some things for the sake of the party that had him ridiculed, ostracized and outcast. Looks like he'll get the last laugh though.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Michael Steele Pt. 2

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

This guy is funny!

January - How I Spent The First Thirty One Days Of 2011

2011-01-31T11:18:00.000-06:00

Damn, has it been a month since I've put anything here? Funny how time passes. The operative word here is HOW, not funny.

I had no plans on this being my first post of 2011, in fact I felt I had a lot to contribute. A month ago during the last days of 2010, progressive minded folk were reveling in the triumphs of the so-called 'lame duck' session of congress for getting a bunch of bills passed due to having strength in numbers partywise. Most of us common folk were flat out exhausted and was just glad that we made it to the end of another year. Some counted our money (or the little that we had), while others counted our blessings. Me, I just kept it moving, not knowing that a greater deal of change was waiting for me in the first thirty one days of 2011 that I could ever expect.

On Saturday morning January 8, I slipped and fell, landing (more like crashing) squarely on the back of my head. I remember the fall in as vivid a detail as I can, this memory to stain my mental rolodex to be played over more than other hurtful memories, death or other tragic moment I had been a part of, and there had been a few of those moments randomly rambling around in my 40 year of mind.

I remember the fall, I heard the crashing noise of bone and gristle coming together violently from the back of my head and neck and I remember the pain as well as the incredible flash of light that I saw as I hit the floor. Somehow, two hundred and forty-six pounds upended itself and landed on its smallest point, its most delicate spot and I was in a heap of trouble.

Not only did I black out and lose time, I didn't bleed. I would have been better off if like Bernic Mac used to say I would have 'busted my head open to the white meat' but alas, I did not meaning that all of the damage I was to suffer would be internal. The latter is always worse than the former.

I was taken by ambulance to a great hospital and it took more than a week or so in ICU to get me to the point where I would be released into assisted care. I had suffered a subdural hematoma as a result in my fall causing my motor skills, eyesight, equilibrium, sensitivity to light to be limited and for me to have serious, severe headaches. Even my walking has been compromised. As I sit and compose this right now I am in the dark, holding my head about 4 inches from my computer screen with my right eye and speaking into the mic, utilizing dictation software I bought myself some time ago to help with my writing when I wanted to be lazy. I hadn't used it much in the past, but it has been a Godsend for me now, Facebook, Twitter and such.

Every day since my hospital release, I've been trying all kinds of rehab techniques to get back to normal. I have a neurologist and neurosurgeon that I work closely with as well as rehab techs that are helping me get back as close to normal as possible. I have assistance at home, have access to the passenger seat of my car and have a want for nothing at this moment. With time and continued care, I should be close to the way I was physically and mentally. I wanted folks to know this because one of the things I didn't do in that last week of 2010 was take stock of what I had in blessings and people outside of the sacred circle who care.

For the most part, I know that this is workplace fodder. I am cubicle entertainment for most on most days.

I positioned myself as a man alone late last year because I knew of my health decline due to Chronic kidney Disease and Diabetes a early as late summer. There were folks around me at that time that said that the loved and cared for me but spent more time questioning themselves and their purpose, and that made me suspicious and nervous. I spent most of 2010 in some kind of weird, bad teaching mode, giving more of myself when I should have opened myself to receiving in order to heal. Earlier last year, I closed myself in and had given a lot of my space to try to maintain balance inside of a negative equity position spiritually just to be around some folk.

Bad idea.

Sometimes, you surround yourself with an odd band of yes people, folks that will say or do anything to have a piece of what you have but don't yet know how to do anything in offering even a bit of equitable return. Some folk are still on their path of finding who they want to be and it's damn imperative that A-alikes be alike. I cleaned house and distanced myself from folk that needed me to do for them when I most times I spiritually couldn't even do for myself.

As I did this, it was easier for me turn to the folks that have been by my side in the past couple of weeks. It has been quiet, drama free and I have been able to heal and rehab without distraction. It hurts a little because some people really mean well, but...

I never gave thought to head injuries and the results of actually folks that suffering through this agonizing process, in fact, I had not respect for them.I could have died from this event, but I came out with a few scars, and now the influence of the folk I chose to keep in my inner circle will pay off in their assistance in helping me heal.

How have you spent your first thirty one days in this new year?

Have A LadyLee New Year!!!

2010-12-31T13:13:00.002-06:00

I thought I had the capacity to blog with regularity, and then...

I didn't.

Same stuff, too much to do and not enough time. I thought I would type something here, not because it's the last day of the year, it's just that I wanted to express something. I still don't know what that something is. Yet.

Looking back at the past 12 months, I can say that for the most part I put my head down and worked on relocating by building up some moolah, which I did. That's it. Nothing else of major interest has come up. The fact that I got sick and shortened my lifespan wasn't really that major. It's just a reflection of poor habits.

I go off and on with my vegetarianism, and I like alcohol. Lots of it. So I get what I deserve. No problem with that.

I do want to give a special X-Clan type, vaaaaaanglorious shout out to someone that cared and looked out for me this year. From check-ins, keeping me in prayer to actually sending me herbs, I want to thank my BlogSister The Original Oldgirl LadyLee for just being you.

THANK YOU!!! I LOVE YOU SIS!!!

I know that you constantly keep me in prayer and give a damn about my health and well being. You have gone above and beyond the call of duty for lil ol' me, and I have no words on how that makes me feel going through my transition.

I have no clue what the new year brings... I have no clue what condition I'll be in and where I'll convalesce... I do know that the bayou is what I like as far as my surroundings and this is a great place to rest, recover and live as well. There are of course more folk than just Lee in my life that care and are helping me heal, I just wanted to single out the Oldgirl for just doing what she do.

I'm just thankful that I got people, few as they are...

Other than that, there's a local radio personality that said something the other day about entering the new year:

Spend the first six months of the new year minding your own business, the other six months staying out of others...

Nuff said.

When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

2010-12-24T13:51:00.004-06:00

I got a phone call from my older brother yesterday. Out. Of. The. Blue. Didn't even know he had my number. Neither did he.

I haven't spoken to this cat since June.

We talk about general stuff for the first five minutes and then he tells me that Mother is going senile. Haven't spoken to her since July. It was her birthday yesterday. He wondered if I called. I didn't.

After further conversation, big brother revealed that folks were hoping that I would revert back to the old me, dissociated from the perverted world that had me claiming myself as a non-christian and come to my senses and celebrate and rejoice in the upcoming birth of our lord and savior.

Barack Obama?

He laughed and then joked that little brother asked him to call. We haven't spoken since the 4th of July.

Notice a pattern here?

And then he joked: "What the fuck is wrong is you? You need a kidney or something?"

I then asked him to go to the VA hospital and identify himself as next of kin and to request the test to see if he could be a donor match.

*crickets*

He then threw another joke at me about coming up with $250,000 to make that happen.

The conversation then went askew towards other things. He wanted to know how I was dealing with life in general. He asked me about my quality of life. I answered honestly, wished him a happy belated 40-something like a birthday (something I never do) and then told him that it hurts every damn day to be me.

We then set up an appointment for him to get over to the VA and get tested.

This mutha fucker has never done anything for me. EVAR. Even though we might not be a match, I was brought to vaklemptness for big brothaman to at least come in and give it a shot.

Humbled, shocked and thrown for a loop.

He had to swear to not tell anyone else in my family in order to set the appointment next week. We ended the call with me saluting him for just having the nerve and him telling me that he wouldn't try to hit me up for a quarter mil.

He said he could get down for about ten thousand.

Festivus... For The Rest Of Us

2010-12-23T10:43:00.003-06:00

"Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated... For now."

This is my airing of grievances, according to the guidelines of Festivus.

Look that up. My brother hipped me onto it during Sienfeld's run. The simplicity and odd-ball-ness had me intrigued after watching the Festivus episode. It's not that I never paid attention to Sienfeld before the finale (and subsequent reruns), it's just that I am probably the only Spiritually Grounded Atheist/Agnostic Sci-Fi Supporting Skeptic you'll ever know. Festivus gives me something to play ritual to, just like everyone else.

Odd that I have no other grievances to air, especially in this politically charged economic downturn of a climate.

Where in the hell have I been? Working. Plotting. Managing my time.

A couple of months ago, I found out that I need extensive work done under the hood, but because I'm not an automobile, some of that basic routine stuff that needs to be done will cause me to slow to a stop earlier than most. So I decided to manage my time a bit better and that meant limited blogging, working longer hours during the warmer months so I could have the opportunity to do a few things before I'm physically unable to do that stuff during the cooler ones.

And plus, I don't have that much to say these days. It is kind of cool to watch how things play out.

I think I want to use blogging at this point as more of a journaling tool as to what happens to me. I know, I know it seems like I'm talking in code but come back more often. I promise I will be more direct. I think I need y'all to see how things play out for me. I've always wanted to explore the concept of ars moriendi from a distance but...

I pray for the right amount of time, healing and understanding of my method of madness to take place so I can get a chance to do a lot of the stuff I promised myself and others that I'd do.

So I'm switching up the blog a bit. More observational stuff as it pertains to life processes and less ranting and complaining about stuff that doesn't reach so far down the rabbit hole to affect me.

I do promise to keep this place very disjointed and kind of weird in the upcoming days/weeks/months. Until then, there are always things like Festivus that I can get into and actively participate with limited energy. I still respect your faith, traditions and all that you do in this shared festival season, but...

I gotta erect my Festivus Pole!

Tomorrow: The Feats Of Strength!!!

Oh, Maker

2010-11-20T00:15:00.002-06:00

I hear the drizzle of the rain

It's falling from my window

And in the corners of my mind

I hope that I'll get to see you again.

La da die da die da die da die my friend

I heard the colors in the flowers

Just like the candle snugged at dawn

You're here, you're near, you're there and then you're gone

La da die da die da die da die

Suffering in sinking sand

All the hurt

See I'm really lost baby

We suffered a rare, rare blue

So much hurt

On this earth

But you loved me

And I really dared to love you too

Perhaps what I mean to say is

Is that it's amazing that your love was mine

Oh, Maker tell me did you know

This love would burn so yellow

Becoming orange and in its time

Explode from grey to black then bloody wine

La da die da die da die da die

Oh, Maker have you ever loved?

Or known just what it was?

I can't imagine the bitter end

Of all the beauty that we're living in?

Suffering in sinking sand

All the hurt See I'm really lost baby

We suffered a rare, rare blue

So much hurt

On this earth But you loved me

And I really dared to love you too

Perhaps what I mean to say is

Is that it's amazing that your love was miine

Lost inside a lonely world

where lovers pay the price.

Barely get the sound of music

to love and go dance to.

Now, it's time for us to go

and no one ever has to know

your love was in my pocket

and your eyes, eyes are in my, my soul....

No one will know it but me...

- J. Robinson

Gone

2010-11-15T23:56:00.001-06:00

You get lost in other people's misery and confusion...
You find a way out. Even when they hold you down in it.

You just grab some of your shit, get up and go.

This is the point when you're at your lowest.
It ends up being the best time to start over, but our training
gives us that blanket of fear that prevents us from ever
applying for a passport.

If you don't break out now, you'll never know.
You'll end up the pushover victim of every one's unrealistic
expectations of you.

They'll even make you think that something is wrong with you...
Just to get from you what they want.

And that is some sick, lonely shit.

And selfish.
And uncaring.

So just go.

They won't really miss you because they never really wanted the you that you know.

It's only you.
But you love you...

Right?

Then its nothing for you to love yourself enough
To get the fuck up and just get into the wind.
Let it blow you away.

Go.

Get lost in yourself.
Eventually you will figure it out

That the misery and suffering had been brought on by you refusing to go.

2010 HassanOlumorotiNtimbanjayo

The Rent Has Been Too Damn High For A While Now...

2010-11-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

I can't believe that its been more than a month since I've posted something on my blog.

To be honest about it, I haven't abandoned BWB, its just that... I've been busy. Unfortunately, I haven't been busy doing anything that I want to do. And that sucks ass. If anyone that reads me now that read me back in the day, then you know how I feel about participating in the matrix that we call the rat race. It is not for people such as myself, even though I benefit from certain aspects of it. Like owning web sites that make me a couple of bucks...

Never mind.

I'm not mad or angry or depressed. Some of you have asked me via email and offline and I haven't responded. On purpose. No need to respond. Nothing doing over here. I subscribe to what many o' grandmothers have told many of us a many of times: If you have nothing good to say, then say nothing at all.

I'm exercising that right. Hard for a blogger to do but...

I'm still wondering why it irks the fuck out of some of y'all, me not saying anything. When I was complaining about the socio-political landscape, I got a lot of grief (and rightfully so, we're all entitled to our opinion), when I gave my sideways commentary on the state of 'us', there were journalists (both real and blogger - there is a difference) that contacted me to go on record about current happenings... Nope, not going to do it. That's what the blog is for.

It's just seems that when I hollered about something, folk tried to shut me down and now... Oh boy tomorrow! A bunch of folk that have EVERYTHING, pissed that they must serve under this mysterious, secretive plotting black dude and his minions (even though we already have for 2 years now and I still haven't seen the stormtroopers hit the streets) will attempt to change the political landscape without one poly-sci class under their belt.

You can run for whatever office you want, this is a free nation BUT... Read a book and study about shit first. We all have realized through life experiences that when we make emotional decisions...

Fuck you! Don't tread on ME!!!

Tune in to any network tomorrow, you'll see what I mean. And I hope you vote. Bullshit needs an equalizer.

Anyhoo, the last few weeks have been a blur. It's hard to be engaged when you're not sleeping, running back and forth to hospitals and trying to relocate as well as care for things you still have working in your current location in attempts to move and pay it forward. Mostly, I've just been nodding my head (even if I don't agree), gathering info and dealing with a myriad of unrealistic demands placed on me. I've learned to prioritize though. That seems to be working.

It's still hard though, observing people who have shit complain about how they can't function within the shit they have. And it's not like they don't realize that they have a ton of shit! They just want others to ignore their own personal shit to deal with the shit they have because somehow, their shit is more important.

And that's a bunch of bullshit.

We live in a very lazy nation where most wealth (heal, wealth and knowledge of self) is inherited. We also live in a place where people from other places are very eager to do what we don't want to do. We're also still a very privileged nation. I guess our SUVs, big TVs and Playstation-Wiis take priority over who we be.

Protest requires walking. That means you don't spend $3 a gallon of gas to get to the town square.

Whatever, man.

Most people are ridiculous in how they spoil themselves and turn around and complain when you spoil yourself (even if you're not)... Because at that moment, you ain't paying attention to them.

Same shit, different day with not room for self improvement.

I just try to live outside of all of that bullshit. That mostly makes me silent.

The Worst Thing...

2010-09-29T03:20:00.000-05:00

The worst thing you can ever do is get lost in doing for others when you've done nothing for yourself.

-Hassan Ntimbanjayo

Eyes Wide Shut, Superior Silence And The Refusal To Acknowledge

2010-09-27T07:46:00.001-05:00

Just as I thought.

A whole lot of talk and no one said anything.

Understand that no one had to say anything to for for me. Religion is the tool used to divide and place fear within the masses. People that look like me have been practicing traditions that aren't native of us. I believe that this is the reason we are so damn destructive towards each other.

I just had hope that certain folk would have the courage to open the door. Obviously, the doors of the church are not open, Neither are their minds or hearts.

You see, because we need to be accepted and validated by folk that look like us as well as those that don't, black folk will continue to go to church, unchallenged and uninspired, blindly following whatever charismatic leader has their heart via their ears. In modern society (just like over history), the messenger gets all of the attention, the message fades away...

Meaning for all of those folk that go to church will never have that conversation. Certain folk will be now seen as the enemy and those that side with them will be buried under mounds of litigation and hearsay, lies and the non speaking of truths.

And folks like me have to live among this foolishness. It's starting to get harder and harder to claim some of y'all.

This is going to be better than pay per view, this fight. Sad, but exciting.

Saturday Supplement: Chuuurch!!!

2010-09-25T08:36:00.005-05:00

If tomorrow comes with an announcement and some truths are shared, it would be a great moment that will spur greater moments that will bridge gaps, heal wounds and improve communication not just in the sanctuary, but at dinner tables and water coolers everywhere.

Y'all know what the hell I'm talking about.

I used to go to church. I felt as if I was driven out of church because I never fit the 'mold'.

I am a free thinker and just can't conform to everydamthing
I question authority and everything that comes down off the mountain
I want tradition to meet modern... Best I can explain that
I am also open minded and socialize and fraternize with every damn body
I travel and learn as well as bring things back (fact, opinion, more questions) from my journeys

And I also gravitated to the silently outcast, the 'looked down upon' and the weird, bad and somewhat nerdy crowd that wanted to celebrate, participate in the eucharist and worship just like everyone else. We are gay, lesbian, transgender, agnostic, bookworms, odd fashionistas, alternative health nuts, worldly and traveled and open minded to doctrine and scripture other than the bible.

But we still attend the 'Black Church'.

We have never been included in the conversation about church growth, never considered when it came to large decisions about the future of the church and silently suffered right along the side of 'normal' church going folk, but was still asked to volunteer, give financial support, serve on auxiliaries, executive boards, direct the damn choir and some of us even have the mitigated gall to want to lead in ministry, get 'the calling' and be pastor to a flock.

Imagine that.

Because I have had the blessed opportunity to travel and I actually asked questions and got answers, look the way I look and think outside the realm of Judeo-Christian thought, I will never be expected to lead in the 'black church'. Because I have a host of gay friends (and have a few transgendered individuals that I have known for 20 plus years now), there is a stigma that is placed my way.

So much that I no longer associate with, nor attend church period. My people and I have been driven away. I have no intention (because of non-modern doctrine, the current end all-be all belief of this new American traditional religious jazz set by folk OUTSIDE the black church and just plain old ignorance) to ever go back. I love all people and I now OVERSTAND that religion (to me, my opinion) is bullshit.

That doesn't mean that I don't believe.

BUT...

If a certain person speaks truth to power tomorrow from the pulpit, dialogue can be had and a new beginning can occur in the 'black church'. Inclusion can be had. Forgiveness can be executed in a manner that will cause some of the old, Uncle Ruckus types to balk, but that portion will break off and die anyway.

Some of my people could, over time go back to church and or no longer have to silently suffer.

WATCH THIS!!!

It's up to dude to make the right call and speak on it with thought and regard to nerdy, worldly and well traveled cats like myself but especially my gay, lesbian and transgendered cousins and em' regardless what happened in the past. This is our moment to come together.

The streets are watching.

And so are the outcasts.

September

2010-09-01T08:21:00.000-05:00

I'm very happy that this month finally got here.

August will forever haunt my ass like I've permanently desecrated an gravesite by building a house on it after pissing on headstones.

It has been a difficult year after losing a dear friend. Staring my own mortality in the face after watching a peer pass on is not something I was expecting for another twenty years or so.

I've grown to hate certain people/places/situations during this time. I've also learned to love myself more.

It's hard to not have the urge to extinguish the things that want to hurt me. I really want to lash out and do something but I know that jail isn't quite the right thing for me at this time, and who am I to be judge and jury and regulate what lives or dies?

So I manage. I've documented here in this forum how I've done so, even if my last post was August 6th.

Other than that, I go to work, put in long hours, come home, stare at the ceiling at night because I no longer sleep overnight, get up and do it all over. Today is my off day and guess where I'll be? At work suppressing my thoughts to lash out and finding ways to continue to respect other's lives by not bringing harm to their asses.

I'm not watching much TV these days but I know what's going on. Fucking idiots have a Mormon leading their Jesus following asses, telling to bypass the Christ Messiah and... Never mind. My unit was one of the first to go into Iraq and people are pressing the Prez to thank Jr the Warmonger for the trillion spent and the damn near five thousand that have died over a friggin' lie. From gaming the oil for food program to accessing yellow cake uranium to actually having WMDs... Bold face fucking lies.

And like you're going to do all of them jobs that a certain folk have no problem doing by sending them away? When the grass gets tall, hotel beds never get new bedding, the food on the menu never gets served and the diapers don't get changed... Stupid.

And my brothers, sisters and cousins still can't get off or our asses. We are a bunch of dumb asses. Even I know when the time to strike is.

I hope September brings the change not only in season, but a change in my mentality and outlook on things. I am so ready to shoot this horse before misery brings more people to my house.

Expectations

2010-08-06T14:59:00.002-05:00

You know what's funny? When you become the sheer hindarance to your own progression.

I am fine. I am enjoying myself and life as well. Don't let that last post motivate you to be concerned over lil old me OR start finger wagging. I have yet to have regret about any decision I've made.

Another thing... I have always told you the truth. Now I may not have always told you the indepth story bout thangs, but I have yet to lie to you, the dear reader.

So when my wife just blurted out that I 'told the world that I was an alcoholic' I had to correct her. First, I've covered my love affair with liquor many times here on this forum. So to quote myself, I specified that I was STILL an alcoholic.

Still.

That's not a lie.
I'm not judging. I also don't see the concern from the recent or distant past form anyone as well. Either you're with me or against me here, I don't plan on judging folks or giving the side eye on what they do. I expect the same treatment.

Expectations are bullshit though.

For the first time in my life I am having fun because I have finally learned not to expect anything from any one.

I can only believe in me.

Especially when people tell you that they 'just took life off for a while'.

And you just expect me to sit and take the weight?

Nope.

I am going to enjoy myself with no regard like I'm doing right about now.

Talk about crashing and burning.

Drinking Myself To Death

2010-07-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

My name is Hassan, and I am still an alcoholic.

I secretly drank very heavily back in 2007 and I see that I'm matching an/or exceeding my output in 2010. There is no real reason for my drinking like back when I was in Houston, everything is calm and cool.

I'm still good with my eating discipline, I just have the urge to drink a certain amount of alcohol to provide stimulation or satiation. There is no trigger, I just love the taste, the feel and the vibe I get when I overdrink.

Drinking without meat flooding my colon is much more hazardous that a few years ago when I was a taco eating, burrito munching bloke.

I think I'm on my way to drinking myself to death.

I think it's the most perfect way for me to end all of this.

I don't want to stop drinking. I'm hedging my bets on leaving this realm in this manner.

I think its fitting. Hell, I'm drinking right now.

Idiocracy

2010-07-23T09:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, let me get this right...

Something that had nothing to do with nothing was put into the mainstream

Everybody saw it, then MOST pushed it even further because of how neck-snappingly awful it was

NOBODY investigated

When all of most people's business can usually be found in the most obvious places

Never mind investigating the subject... NO ONE questioned the source?

That means you're the idiot.

Seriously.

If you pushed it. added critical comment on it and/or filed grievance against it in its initial stage... You are an idiot.

Because we're smarter than that.

Wait...

Are we?

2010-07-16T09:04:00.002-05:00

Sigh.

So much has happened since Monday.

When Mondays Feel Like Sundays

2010-07-12T07:23:00.002-05:00

Normal weekend.

Left work early Friday and got home at 2pm. Called my wife with an evening idea for entertainment. Sat on the edge of my bed and ended up falling asleep as she watched on-demand programming that she just could not miss. Ended up sitting around for seven hours waiting for my other half to make up her mind as to if we were going to the drive-in theater and catch a flick.

We didn't go. I went out and hit a few old haunts and ran into some drinking buddies from the nineties.

Saturday was my first day working a weekend day at the gig. Exciting. Challenging. I'm a marketing guy, I got a chance to see em' knock down what we set up. At $140k a month in marketing and advertising... Good job crew!

I came home and sat around until I fell asleep. She got tired of texting and IMing all of her crew and turned off the TV around 10pm. I cannot sleep nights for a bunch of different reasons. I faked the funk both Saturday and last night and just laid there. Felt like 3pm Friday. And 4pm on Sunday. Except that I sit and watch nothing happen. Her laptop is attached to her thighs. Headphones in, ignoring all things outside of her bandwidth.

I'm tired and hungry. I'm understimulated.

I counted and wrote things down this past week for an exercise. My wife initiated less than 20 conversations with me in the past week. Less than 100 words. The questions were mostly her asking me if I wanted something from the store or letting me know that she got me a muffin or a bowl of fruit for breakfast. I indicated this to her last night and she mentioned that all I ever said to her was stuff about LeBron James, but I wrote things down. I only mentioned LBJ 3 times last week (including me watching his program, where she was busy IMing and tweeting and listening to whatever) out of the 224 times I initiated other convo with her.

224 to 18 excluding conversation in the car. Not that I'm counting though. She said that she doesn't talk to me because she believes that I wouldn't be interested in having a conversation with her.

Wow.

And I covered everything from the BP spill to the missing kid in the Northwest.

I spend my weekends faking like I'm sleep, just laying there in silence. Very similar to how I spend my daylight hours at home. I'd rather be at work.

I'm heading there now. Have a great Monday.

Fear And Loathing Of My Footprint And Reflection

2010-06-29T12:40:00.001-05:00

A while ago, I curtailed my frequent blogging in order to have the time (since I had more of it) to spend with family and friends and to please certain folks that said that I lived way too much in this virtual world than in the real one. I also chose to shut the hell up about political things because early on (like when I went to work on the Obama campaign in 08'... That early), I saw a pattern.

I didn't predict anything. I didn't go out and warn anyone. I made snide comments to my wife and close friends about it and for the most part, they agreed because they saw some things too. Things changed. It was more visual and industrialized. It began to manifest itself in legal circles and in the water cooler conversations of folk that had kept long quiet over other things... They always had questions and opinions, so did it really change? The questions were simple:

questions about my hair (?)
religious beliefs
what I did in the privacy of my home
what I read and listened to
what my influences were
about my patriotism
where my parents and their parents came from

Stuff like that. Questions based out of fear... Fear of the unknown. The moment a certain event happened in the scant first days of November of 2008, that fear lead folks to realize a permanent change in the look of the structure of history which could lead to (in their minds) catastrophic levels of failure and destruction based on who now held the reigns. All of this was based on what someone looked like. It no longer mattered, even though the majority of folks that looked, spoke and acted like this one person had a major hand in building, legislating, raising of the children and fighting for the spot where you read this. The cubicle, your sofa, your bed, laptop and wireless internet included. But because some folks didn't know...

I'm sure somewhere down the line in my last 25 years or so of adult life there was an invitation to my book club meeting. Or barbeque. Or baby shower (I've hosted 3 at my spot). Or even bidwhist and fish fry night. I invited a lot of folk only to have a chosen few actually take me up on the offer and come through the crib. I'm also sure over the last three to four hundred years when were were having sex, secretly baring each other's children and living like families, lusting after each other totally taking advantage of and disavowing all of the laws taboo in those gray areas of the red and blue states from then to now by participation, you've seen how we were livin'.

Even though I know that probably wouldn't have mattered in your eyes seeing that a lot of times when it came down to striking the record, they were firmly shut. Names, places and deeds were never recorded.

I'm still paying on (and have defaulted on 2) student loans that I used to educate myself. A lot of folks I personally know are either somewhat or very heavily educated as well. I've bought and sold a piece of real estate, the majority of folk I frequent own and have owned property as well. I'm not a churchgoer, but dammit, if I ain't invited to Sunday service (as well as holiday food fests) by every sibling, cousin, co-worker and neighbor. I am also a veteran of the United States Armed Forces, and I spend maybe a quarter of my time with the men and women like myself who have served. I know a lot of blood relatives as well as folk that are no relation to me that have folk laying in the ground because they chose to fight to uphold the freedoms of this land. Looking a lot like me.

Yet I am still marginalized.
Yet I am undervalued.
Yet I remain underestimated.
My brown cousins to the south are seen as 'mostly drug mules'

How am I supposed to take the passing of one on the longest sitting senators in our country's history when I know, but can't raise holy hell about his Civil Rights Bill filibuster when a true fucking idiot with a black board ridicules and calls himself correcting the words, intent and purpose of Martin Luther King Jr.?

When in confirmation hearings just yesterday, the recently departed senator's peers questioned, belittled and made political farce out of Justice Thurgood Marshall's intent, interpretation of law and impartial decisions?

You see, what had happened was... Racism never left. It never died. It was always taught and carried forward. It manifested itself in the dangling carrot of TV mini-series and open slots for shows in my youth and teen years of the 70s and 80s. It became the bottom, open bid space for negroes and boriqua who had the courage to step forward and offer a service over the years. It is the token spots on the board, the magical million dollar negro who scores touchdowns or could dunk a basketball that saved many corporate structures and created brand new ones, industries perhaps because that one person put asses in the seats.

We are the bronze spectacle. We have become equivalent to all three rings in the damned circus. The wonderment of what powers us and the curiosity on how and if we could do it again is still very present, as if the billions of autopsies from hung, beaten and shot descendants of the diaspora had not given enough answers.

And now my peers feed into the superhyperniggerisms because that rent is due. Gotta get your hair and nails done. Gotta have the latest must-haves sent down on that last memo from corporate... And then I chuckle when the clueless cats plead for peace on the newspaper and internet comment sections, wondering why we still isolate ourselves and have the mitigated gall to want to brand our own because that propels racism.

Simple: If Hollywood, corporate America and the like actually included brown folks back in the day... If history, art and science didn't shun the native peoples and immigrants from the diaspora and then teach it as if our ancestors had nothing to do with the advancement of anything... If a plaque honoring the slaves and free men (of all nationalities, because there were more than African descended slaves) who built the current capital of our great nation was placed in 1910 instead of 2010... If history, religion and legend were taught without an ounce of arrogance...

There would be no need for my Twitter timeline to still be scattered with bullshit observations of the BET Awards.

But I overstand. With the spending power ranked 11th in the world and with $2.3 billion spent on commercial advertising (just on the major networks and terrestrial radio), I get it that it is up to us to finance the exact systems that suppress us and deny us. And to think, most of em' still don't know who we are.

Wait... Does that mean that we're the scared ones?

Hassan's Pre Pride Weekend 'Coming Out' Announcement

2010-06-24T12:41:00.007-05:00

At one point, my best friend told me that I was in a 'rut'.

Funny thing though, I never actually feel like I'm ever in 'ruts' or ends up stuck in something. Everyone is entitled to a dry spell of sorts. I think this most recent episode with me is that it was self imposed.

Sometime last year, I decided that I wasn't going to get all poly-sci with y'all anymore. I figured that there was much more for me to blog about as some random Af-American cat trying to make it do what it do in America. I mean, I got married, took myself off the road and successfully started a business. I figured that there would be TONS to talk about here in this forum.

I was wrong on a few points. I'll explain in a minute.

One of the things that kind of drove me away from blogging on the regular is that some of us through blogging picked up the notion that because we were blogging and talking about certain stuff ad-nauseum that we were experts in the matter of, well... Whatever we were blogging about. So not true. I started to find a bunch of folk in newspapers, online forums and of course on facebook and twitter dropping more so-called knowledge than Morpheus on Neo. Their blogs themselves became almost unreadable. I think what happened when there was a more honest, open account of Brown Bloggers blogging back in the day (circa 2003-2004) is that no one politicized simple opinion.

Then Barack Obama ran for the office of president.

Since then, so-called pundits, opinion makers, simple bloggers and talking heads unleashed a sustainable wave of hate, dislike, lies, slander, racism and just plain untruths. Some made money by loading up affiliate marketing API on their sites, others sold ad space and some other took to forums like BlogTalkRadio to further get their points across and cash in because some folk on both sides of the fence started making money uttering and typing bullshit.

I still wanted to be the self-centered bastard that only wanted to talk about my flaws and whatever satellites floated around the self-made planet that was Hassan. To me that became unreadable and I truly understand. Once I settled down and got off the road, there was no more scandal and heartbreak (whatever that means) that I could involve myself in. Even though there was one person angrily blogging about me (and rightfully so due to my actions) and two others through facebook and such spreading rumors and gossiping about my marriage through facebook status updates (one is actually a fb friend... friends close, enemies closer, right?), the popularity that was once this blog waned (thank the lord) because I would not give into politics, bullshit, gossip and hearsay.

There was even a point mere months ago in 2009 where I was angry with a close friend and my wife and I cryptically blogged my angry thoughts to them and it was misinterpreted by my former, angry blogging friend. I shrugged my shoulders and kept it moving by not blogging because I just didn't have the energies in engaging in an online battle. Of words. What was done is done and there is no going back to fix broken things once they were left in that manner. Time slips away and I felt that walking away from unnecessary conflict was the right thing to do. I never looked back even if hindsight told me that I should have. I normally stick with my decisions albeit difficult sometimes.

So in the last year or so where I've totally gotten of the socio-political blogging bandwagon a lot of things have happened. Racism is alive and well and is a focal point of all things politics because of the election of our commander in chief. Race politics is also front and center in most of the rules making committees because certain folk feel outnumbered and afraid and want the way they did things back in play. I guess the systematic outnumbering of the native peoples from new settlers from Europe and the like becomes meaningless in the history of how the continent becomes...

We learn from history.

I never wanted to repeat or regurgitate what so many others have and are doing with their blog platform. I also didn't want to play into certain folks rumor reports with me putting what I would normally think a blog would be used for: My many disagreements with my wife, my life philosophies as taught by history and my elders, life plans for this black man and his family and how I am to execute them in the midst of the over politicization of every damn thing in early 21st century America. Why? because it would be me putting my business in the street for the sake of getting folks to read it.

I never want or wanted to one-up anyone. Not my goal or purpose, but it seems that for the most part, a lot of folks blogging plays into some sort of life's game where the only point to post anything is to compete against someone who's goal is to outpace you. Well, I know that life is no game. I also know that for the most part, a lot of folk of color aren't fully equipped to play the game because we're short of vital game chips needed to place a proper wager. Some of us fall short of overstanding the intricate, finite rules of playing the game because they were never issued a handbook. Bootleg copies do not count because there's always something missing when you half ass things.

I am not here to compete with you. I also have no desire to overstate gain, loss, disease, sickness and the hills and valleys of my relationship. This here is my forum to speak on shit I know. I also sometimes need to express frustration, anger and to ask folk very common to me how they do what they do so I can gain better understanding on how to do mine. Some of us have completely cooned the fuck out just to gain attention from cubicle dwelling gawkers that will contribute nothing more to their lives (or yours) than a giggle, hand clap or even a junk mail e-forward because they were entertained and not edified. I never wanted to come off as shucking or jiving. I think by not blogging, I managed to remain dignified.

But I also missed blogging and connecting with the very folk I used to build with, so... I guess in a sense I can say that I feel comfortable with me blogging here without emotional or situational censorship. What does that mean in English? That I might visit and post to my own blog more often.

Am I hoping for a ton of traffic? Nope. I ain't selling nothin'. I can only count on one hand the bloggers I respect and read that have transformed their love of writing and being introspective in sharing what happens on the other side of their monitor as real and true. The rest of them... Well, remember when folks got all up in MC Hammer's grill for 'selling out' to PepsiCo? Well:

It's funny how money changes situations
Miscommunication leads to complication
My emancipation don't fit your equation
I was on the humble, you - on every station
Some wan' play young Lauryn like she dumb
But remember not a game new under the sun
Everything you did has already been done
I know all the tricks from Bricks to Kingston
My ting done made your kingdom wan' run
Now understand L. Boogie non violent
But if a thing test me, run for mi gun
Can't take a threat to mi newborn son
L's been this way since creation
A groupie call, you fall from temptation
Now you wanna bawl over separation
Tarnish my image in your conversation
Who you gon' scrimmage, like you the champion

You might win some but you just lost one...

L Boogie - Lost Ones

Yeah, I'm coming out... Out of my so-called 'rut' and back onto my blog typing whatever the hell I want to write..

Because I can.

I do like how I avoided that one urban bloggers conference appearance because I lacked regular updates and heavy op-ed styled political material... Some of us have better things to do.

Muddy Monday

2010-06-21T13:27:00.001-05:00

Sup y'all.

I am all over the place right now. I can't believe that once I gave into having a couple of drinks yesterday (only 2, I mean, I was coerced!) with my stepdad, I am hung the hell over.

He's on vacation all week and my mother is somewhere in Florida with my sibs and their kids. I'm supposed to be house sitting for my brother between work and errands and hanging out with my stepdad and stuff.

Um, okay.

I shouldn't have had that drink. That tiny amount has me sluggish and dragging ass today.

I'm going to lunch.

A Copy And Paste Moment: Reading Random Newspapers At 3 AM

2010-06-20T05:35:00.000-05:00

Secure the border first, then let's talk immigration reform...

Here is another way to consider the problem: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a leader in the anti-immigration movement and acclaimed as America's toughest sheriff, cannot secure his own jails. Every year, despite armed guards, electronic locks and video monitors, inmates smuggle drugs in from the outside and sometimes even escape.

No one would blame Arpaio. All penal institutions, regardless of security measures, have breaches. Yet imagine if America adopted a position that no new laws could be passed regarding prison reform "until the nation's jails are secure."

NEW MUSIC!!! - DEEP WATER HORIZON - LISTEN NOW!!!

2010-06-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

I am alive and well, y'all!

I'm just waiting by the radio with my cassette deck on play and record for the new 2pac joint to come on with him rapping about the BP oil spill.

Any minute now.

Random Thoughts

2010-06-07T07:06:00.002-05:00

I haven't really had the urge to blog.

Nothing is wrong, I have no block... I just haven't had the urge or motivation. I do have a bunch or random thoughts running thru my head that i feel the need to type.

Whatever.

I have had some difficulty with my kidneys as of late but it seems like I'll make it to the other side somehow, some time in the future. I'm continuing my learning process and application of all of the natural processes of things. Adapting a vegan diet living in the midst of a processed food society seems to be a great way to combat the disease and sickness caused by the over consumption of it.

Funny how whenever someone says ANYTHING about Israel... Helen Thomas does have the right... Wait. Does she? What exactly did she say again that has the world coming down on her like this?

Funny how certain folk know EVERYTHING about folk like the president... Hell even Oprah, Lil Wayne or even Elvis but know little about Allah, Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, Jesus and so on...

Funny how when folks disagree with you on something, or you say anything that just doesn't agree with them, THEY get all emotional and accuse you of over emotion... What the fcuk?

When did Barack Obama gain the power to plug up a hole dug by a multi-billion dollar corporation to drudge oil out of and when did everyone get so angry about his lack of knowledge about drudging oil via governmental response?

sidenote: it seems that the government had video and on the scene reports about oil leakage days before any explosion and urged BP to post this info to the publi... yadda yadda yadda. So whose angry over the response again?

Did y'all hear about the announcement from 'The Black Church' addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the community by opening its doors wider to greater numbers of people in an new and extended effort to support the community and find a cure... 30 plus years after running folk up out of the church and shunning/supressing faithful, churchgoing gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual members?

Really? Seriously?

When it was probably churchgoing, tithe paying duty enabled HETERO members of the church that participated in the spread and downward spiral of HIV and AIDS if you wanna get all historical and point fingers and thangs. Them folk didn't get singled out. HIV and AIDS is and always has been a heterosexual problem more than anything else. So... 'The doors of the church are open!'

Getthefuckouttahere!

I am very much convinced that a lot of folk all degreed and titled up running thangs around here are totally fucking clueless. We're getting dumber by the minute and actually have the nerve to tout braggadocio/swagger about it at that.

Oh yeah... Drill Baby Drill. How's that drilly oily thingee working for ya'? BP, Exxon/Mobile and Shell are really effing up the etoufee jones I got, seeing as I'll be in N'awlins in a couple of weeks or so. Have you any idea what raw crude smells like?

Who in the hell cares WHERE LeBron James plays? Back during the Jordan era, my girlfriend had to win the office client entertainment tickets in order for us to get up in to see a Bulls game. It just so happened to be game 71 in the Championship 72 win season against the Pistons. Boring shit. NO ONE could get a damn ticket. 99.999% of the general public's viewing of MJ, Pippen, Rodman and company was done by watching the idiot box. Same shit, different era if the King decides to make Chicago his new playing home.

Whatever man.

Celtics in six - Blackhawks also... In six.

Great Day For Old War Stories

2010-05-31T16:55:00.000-05:00

Tuskegee Airman tells of crashing behind enemy lines in WWII

by MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA - Chicago Sun-Times

The 90-year-old South Side war veteran still vividly recalls the crash landing as if it were yesterday.
It was during World War II when Welton Taylor, a liaison pilot and member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, America's first black military air squad, was serving in the Pacific Theater of Operations, flying L-4 and L-5 aircraft with the 93rd Infantry Division.

Taylor saw combat on the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Philippines.
On a non-combat mission, delivering mail to the troops, his plane crashed behind Japanese lines.
"I was criminally attacked by a Japanese mountain 33 miles into Japanese territory, while flying a mission of mercy for my troops," said Taylor, who later was to become a world-renowned scientist and educator. In 1985, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta named a bacterium, Enterobacter taylorae, after him and a British colleague.

"I was carrying their mail, and I managed to deliver all my mail and was on my way home when I saw this horrible storm building up," he said.

"I was trying to climb over the last of the mountains when I hit the mountain. But instead of hitting on my nose, which would have exploded the gas tank on my lap, I slid down a grassy slope, losing parts of the plane as I crashed.

"I had an observer in the plane with me. We both survived," he recounts. "I was able to walk away with only my kneecaps showing, and so I pulled my skin up over my kneecaps, sprinkled some sulfa on it and two band-aids, and kept moving. I took the compass out of the plane, because south of the equator, you cannot walk in a straight line in a forest or jungle.

"We walked for two days, and made it past two Japanese camps. On the second day, we were rescued by our troops on the beach."

Taylor, a descendant of President Zachary Taylor, is one of several members of the 332nd Fighter Group, commonly known as the Tuskegee Airmen, living in the Chicago area.

Huge WWII success

Members of the Chicago chapter, who will be marching in the annual Memorial Day Parade downtown today, were among the 450 fighter pilots who were trained at an air base in Tuskegee, Ala., to fly and maintain combat aircraft as a segregated unit. They broke barriers for African Americans.
"We'll have our own float, with a large model of the P51 airplane, which is what the Tuskegee Airmen flew in combat in Italy," Taylor said proudly.

The unit, which became one of the most successful flying squadrons in U.S. military history, protecting Allied bombers over some 200 escort missions in Europe, never lost one bomber under their protection to enemy fighters. They destroyed or damaged more than 400 German aircraft and more than 1,000 targets.

But despite their distinguished record, they faced discrimination back home when they returned and were never recognized until much later. In 2007, President George W. Bush collectively awarded some 300 members and their widows the Congressional Gold Medal.

"It was 61 years late. But I'm glad I stuck around and waited for it," said the retired bacteriologist.
"Many of us are gone now. Another died yesterday at age 90, so I don't think we'll have as many on the float as in the past, but it's been an unbelievable ride."

Seriously

2010-05-26T06:16:00.001-05:00

I absolutely hate it when I speak to someone and find out that they haven't after all this time taken life seriously.

For a moment in time, I had a whole lot of people reading this lil' old blog just to see what or where I ended up next. A few folk emailed, IMed and such to tell me that they were vicariously living thru my exploits a couple and a few years back.

I didn't mind. I was focused on my life. I took what I did (and still do) and where/how/whom I positioned myself with very, very seriously. Something a long time ago told me that I was only going to get one chance to do things in this realm and that my time here wasn't going to be as long as others. I've held that thought and it has guided me to do some things that others perceive as cold or hurtful. I only have seen this as taking my life (emphasis on MINE) very seriously.

I have made bad decisions. I've trusted the wrong people sometimes. I've gone to places that weren't as welcoming to me and when I got a chance after realizing the situation, I quickly corrected them to the best of my ability. I want you to know something. When you try to make things out as if the entire universe revolves around you as its center and energy source remember that it isn't all about you.

You still have to live and thrive, and you definitely have to live with the decisions that you make. You will affect your immediate circle and in turn, it will affect you. You get out of life what you put in it, so where you put yourself, when and with who are important because what you do and don't do affects your life. You have to take this thing seriously if you're going to actually cash in your value.

I have some physical issues that will probably take me away from here sooner than the most of you. I am at peace and satisfied with where I am because I understand that I only have control over what I have control over. I'm cool with knowing that I'll probably struggle with a few things while my peers go to work, raise their children and go about life in the manner they see fit. I just wish that certain folk took things a bit more seriously though. Procrastination and hope only gets one so far. Waiting for opportunities only to never partake in them is a very foolish thing to do.

I hope that folks understand that not making time and passing time is wasting time.

So on that note, I'll probably be around here more often. I probably won't get too deep into politics and pop culture and that nonsense like I used to do because in these moments when I'm not managing my healing process or working either for fiduciary responsibilities or artistically, I'll be enjoying life. Whether that be traveling (yes, another road trip in on the schedule) or simply jumping out of airplanes like I used to do when I could fit in the uniform, I'll be knee deep in doing something other than sitting at home, wasting away tweeting of facebooking about the normal he-say/she-say.

Speaking of that, I posted a few normal, every day pics on my FB page just to remind myself that one can go thru a healing crisis and still get out of the infirmary to bring home the bacon, even though pork is a big no-no on the eat to live list. I was surprised in the normal response to my abnormal situation.

Oh yeah. I need to mention that I'm letting go of the nine to five in order to 'live the adventure' full time.

Well, that and heal. Healing is important. If I keep up at this pace, I'll heal up mighty fine.

Don't worry, I'll come around here often to let y'all know where I be.

Seriously. I will.

.

Please Stand By

2010-05-15T01:42:00.001-05:00

I'm using up a ton of sick days away from the blog, huh?

Is It Friday Yet?

2010-05-06T23:13:00.000-05:00

Dammit, my week is busy.

Work is busy. Outside opportunities keeps my phone a ringing. Siblings need assistance and Mommy called me like 4 times so far this week. There was a death in the family and the way young folk doing things regarding that are irking the elders. I had to tell mother dear to take two steps back because all of the cousins (her kids and her sibs kids) minus a teenage boy are all very grown and can handle theirs. I think they still think this is the eighties or something coming into our own as adults. That was thirty years ago. Damn near.

Damn. We done got old, burying our kids and thangs.

Life gets better, it really does.

Do I It When Somebody Is Looking, That's What I Say

2010-05-05T14:25:00.000-05:00

I've never had to wonder why certain folks have things go well in their lives and others don't. It's pretty elementary to me. It ain't about planning and practicing the laws of attraction, even though the practice of those things help. It ain't who they know either. That's a definite help when it comes to getting stuff done. I tell you, it's not always the fear that controls you. It's the motivation to move beyond that fear.

You are so comfortable right now and that is literally killing you.

I know a handful of folks that have said to hell with all of this foolishness and just DID what they had to do to get what and where they wanted to.

What's holding you back?

Why is that?

You still sitting there reading my shit?

I'm tired of hearing all of the bitching, whining and complaining... I got stuff to deal with on my own over here. What I really need all of some of the closest people in my life to do is just that: DO. I mean, for real. How many years is that business plan gonna hold up? The million dollar idea? That thing you've been talking about for like, how many years now? I hate watching people wait for whatever they desire to just fall out of the sky. Here's a hint homie: It ain't gonna happen.

I get a little flush and kind of aroused when I see you take it.

C'mon, you can do it.

Grab that thing kid...

You got it?

Let's be out! Hurry up!

Mash son! MASH!!! Hit the turbo boost in this thing!

If we get caught, I don't know your ass, but I will bail you out if I get away and they catch you.

Damn. I need a cigarette. Yo, I was bugging out when you just grabbed that thing and just ran out there like that... You are WILD!!! Now see, that's what I like about your ass. We gotta hang more often.

Just taking it! Wasn't that fun?

Nice.

Words

2010-05-04T06:46:00.000-05:00

Today is my Monday. I had a very quiet three day weekend. I got a chance to sleep in yesterday and did little of nothing both Saturday and Sunday. I really had to rest, going into a mini-fast and all. It almost seemed like I was having a vision quest or something watching CNN and FOX's coverages of the Times Square 'kinda bombing' thingamabob because I was on straight vegetables, cranberry, dandelion, horsetail, charcoal and lipoic acid. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

My kidneys were on FIYA!

You would think that folks would be more attentive when it came to certain things.

I was partially watching 'Law & Order' when I cut to CNN and found out that a real life episode was happening over at JFK. By the time I grabbed the laptop to read all the details Senior Holder didn't want to tell, I had to read a bunch of smarmy comments from the peanut gallery.

The 'Law & Order' ep was about folks posting silly-ass comments on certain board and newspaper sites where folks either condemned, passed judgement on or went out on a log and said that certain folk should be killed and such, having no clue that folks read this stuff and go out and actually do harm based on said comments.

I read a bunch of newspapers daily as well as go onto other news sites and stuff like that to stay informed on stuff. I also dibble and dab thru the comments section and read some smarmy shit. Nationalism, racism and straight out uninformed ignorance fuel these anonymous commenters, usually egging folk on or just spewing opinion based on bullshit. Key thing about the TV ep is that folk that took time to spread the ignorance out there had no clue that some folk picked up on those comments and actually acted on them.

Revolt or regret or do folks really give a damn?

I'm still squirming in my seat as a cat that has some knowledge in munitions, watching folk from the average on location reporter to the former deputy director of the FBI (on the phone from Columbia) correct every single bomb making mistake the Times Square wanna be bombers made. Add that to anything else you can find on the interwebs, field manuals available and common knowledge, then add a dash of anonymous ignorance found in the comments section of random newspaper X or blah, blah blah dot com with a pinch of religion, nationalism and/or hatred...

Whatever man.

Imma go Huey Freeman/Tea Party/Conservative/Farmer Bob and just blame the damn president for all of this mess.

If its one thing I've learned is how not to make a car bomb. Now all I gotta do is find the inspiration... Hey, I got an extra tab open...

Lemonade Was A Popular Drink And It Still Is...

2010-04-29T03:49:00.014-05:00

It comes to this:

The fact that even though you've lived in four different decades but you don't feel it. The fact that some of your peers actually took that shit seriously and still hit the clubs with the reckless tenacity of a twenty five year old when you've realized that it ain't that much vodka and tequila in the world...

And the fact that the ass you're fixated with that's rocking to some banging ass rhythm track in staccato and seizure infused lighting, as well as the drink you're consuming has been created, crafted, written, mixed and in the tight, firm housing of a twenty three year old.

Times have changed. So have you.

I still love Hip Hop and all of its elements the same way I always have. A good record still feels the same in my head, causing me to nod incessantly as I wonder what in the world possessed the beat maker to sequence that joint like that! I still try to picture in my mind the processes that caused that particular jam to be irked out of the composer's soul. It still feels the same because that's how I approached it as a kid. I still try to figure the record out by letting the lyrical content paint its picture and the accompanying track provide rhythmic guidance.

It doesn't feel like 35 years ago when I first heard "DJ Riz is in the house and he'll turn it out without a doubt" on a bootlegged reel to reel over my uncle Butch's house, but I did. And it was. I also remember sitting in my friend John's bedroom in Colorado Springs watching 'Pump It Up' and checking the video for 'Who's Gonna Take The Weight', going ape shit over both the monotone, polemic lyrics from the emcee and the DJ's awesome cutting of the 'This Stuff Is Really Fresh' whistle/break in the chorus. I've always thought of my former rap partner/DJ MorninMan (nee: DJ Guillotine back int he 90s) as the 'Primo I knew' in the Midwest because of how he studied how he crafted his breaks. We tried to be GangStarr. No one can duplicate either Guru or Premier. They cannot be touched. That was 19 years ago. I copped that rap group's first tape more than 20 years ago. The group reshuffled and this was the second album of cuts that defined my listenership of Hip Hop as a young adult. It defined who I was back then.

Come to think of it, it still does.

We'll never get another GangStarr record again.

Keith Elam was 48 when he passed the day before my birthday last week. GangStarr had been on life support since 2003. I was a grown man before the first album came out.

Funny how time flies.

And now, like many more that have passed before me, I must find a way to continue to nod my head to them funky-ass break beats... With one less person to rock out with. One of my close friends lost someone personally closer this week as well. A distant friend also lost someone both distant and close at the same time a few weeks ago and my brother from another mother still grieves for a love supreme, lost mere months ago.

We find ways to push on.

I got chances to see Keith perform. We never met, but he found a way to get in my head and express what I absolutely could not more than 22 years ago. He still had the right gathering of lyrical content to keep me feeling like that little kid who had no earthly clue who in the hell Coke La Rock was when he spit that famous verbal gem over a Kool Herc break.

Keithy E The Guru kept me young. Guru of GangStarr kept my ass lively on older legs. Guru's Jazzmatazz refined me into maturity. Baldhead Slick kept me street by keeping my ears firmly pressed to them. DJ Premier kept me connected by perfecting what DST and Grand Wizard Theodore innovated all the way back in 75'.

I may be older and a little broken down, but I am still, without a doubt and forever will be Hip Hop.

Let me be the first to give the Master his props:

God bless you Grand Master Guru. Rest in peace.

.

Nothing Really Matters, Nothing Is Forever

2010-04-28T01:17:00.010-05:00

I haven't been that damn busy, I just haven't written anything.

I must admit that during my down time the last couple of weeks I've taken the characteristics of a lot of my friends and fam's emotional output to cover my own. It's been rough trying to rationalize the cold, hard fact that a doctor has put your life on a clock. Or have they?

It didn't take lone for me to realize that things can't go well for me if I sit and do nothing. It was the last week of March when I found out that I have chronic kidney disease and I had an idea about how things would go if I reacted instead of thinking about being proactive in how I want live the rest of my life. I knew that I would have to fight habit, naysayers and deal with emotions from other family members when I revealed it to them, but I didn't know how I would react to myself.

And then about 2 weeks ago, I reacted:

Not a whole lot matters.

Naw, y'all... Not like that! I meant nothing outside me, mine or our happiness matter.

As much of a news junkie I am. As much Hip Hop I consume. As much as I travel and work my little business thing, nothing is more important than my health.

That's it. Nothing really matters outside of you unless...

And that's that piece. Roll credits.

Sorry, I gotta try and get some sleep now. Gotta go work.

More about Dorothy Height, Arizona, what if the Tea Party were black, the national guard possibly holding down Chicago's streets and other stuff that really doesn't matter to me later. I gotta get back in the swing of blogging for purpose.

I just wanted to say hello.

I just figured I'd upload a video I shot while hanging on Frenchman Street in NOLA a few weeks ago around 1 am. Good times, good times.

Oh, and I love most of y'all.

So Many Tears

2010-04-20T00:38:00.001-05:00

I shall not fear no man but God
Though I walk through the valley of death
I shed so many tears (if I should die before I wake)
Please God walk with me (grab a ni*@# and take me to Heaven)

Back in elementary, I thrived on misery
Left me alone I grew up amongst a dyin breed
Inside my mind couldn't find a place to rest
until I got that Thug Life tatted on my chest
Tell me can you feel me? I'm not livin in the past, you wanna last
Be tha first to blast, remember Kato
No longer with us he's deceased
Call on the sirens, seen him murdered in the streets
Now rest in peace
Is there heaven for a G? Remember me
So many homies in the cemetery, shed so many tears

Ahh, I suffered through the years, and shed so many tears..
Lord, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears

Now that I'm strugglin in this business, by any means
Label me greedy gettin green, but seldom seen
And fuck the world cause I'm cursed, I'm havin' visions
of leavin here in a hearse, God can you feel me?
Take me away from all the pressure, and all the pain
Show me some happiness again, I'm goin blind
I spend my time in this cell, ain't livin well
I know my destiny is Hell, where did I fail?
My life is in denial, and when I die,
baptized in eternal fire I'll shed so many tears

Lord, I suffered through the years, and shed so many tears..
Lord, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears

Now I'm lost and I'm weary, so many tears
I'm suicidal, so don't stand near me
My every move is a calculated step, to bring me closer
to embrace an early death, now there's nothin left
There was no mercy on the streets, I couldn't rest
I'm barely standin, bout to go to pieces, screamin' peace
And though my soul was deleted, I couldn't see it
I had my mind full of demons tryin to break free
They planted seeds and they hatched, sparkin the flame
inside my brain like a match, such a dirty game
No memories, just a misery
Paintin a picture of my enemies killin me, in my sleep
Will I survive til the mo'nin, to see the sun
Please Lord forgive me for my sins, cause here I come...

Lord, I suffered through the years (God) and shed so many tears..
God, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears

Lord knows I.. tried, been a witness to homicide
Seen drivebys takin lives, little kids die
Wonder why as I walk by
Broken-hearted as I glance at the chalk line, gettin' high
This ain't the life for me, I wanna change
But ain't no future right for me, I'm stuck in the game
I'm trapped inside a maze
See this Tanqueray influenced me to gettin crazy
Disillusioned lately, I've been really wantin babies
so I could see a part of me that wasn't always shady
Don't trust my lady, cause she's a product of this poison
I'm hearin noises, think she fuckin all my boys, can't take no more
I'm fallin to the floor; beggin for the Lord to let me in
to Heaven's door -- shed so many tears
(Dear God, please let me in)

Lord, I've lost so many years, and shed so many tears..
I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears
Lord, I suffered through the years, and shed so many tears..
God, I lost so many peers, and shed so many tears

Tupac Shakur

.

The Devil Made Me Do This

2010-04-09T06:15:00.002-05:00

I'm up and cannot sleep (just like any regular night) because of the Devil.

I was asleep a few hours ago, but I've been fasting for the last three days only eating one 'solid' meal per and it's been a vegetarian meal at that.

Anyhoo, I've been supplementing with dandelion and horsetail root mixed with organic, unsweetened cranberry juice 4 times a day along with activated charcoal twice daily. Last night/this morning is when the fun began (faster's crisis).

The circulation in my legs below the knees was non-existent and I usually have them massaged and then throw on a pair of compression socks to keep my feet warm when I sleep but last night I decided to forgo that... Ever since I've been on this kidney flush things have been better, or so I thought.

There was immense pain going on in my toes and feet and I couldn't wake up to correct the action. Instead, a dark force came over me and asked me if I was willing to trade off the souls of a few people I know in order to stop the pain.

I tried to bargain and reason with this dark force because I immediately noticed that it never identified itself but was asking me specifically to offer up something I had no control over. My reasoning was right and correct in my assessment because I told it (not verbatim) "How can something not of this world (and I knew that it wasn't from round' these parts) ask little old ME to bridge something of this world off of this plane of existence just to ease an insignificant amount of pain?"

Whatever it was that had me immediately let me go and I was awake, sitting on the edge of my bed, rubbing my feet and needing to go to the bathroom to release.

What the hell?

And then I knew that 'it' was the devil, or some form of it/him/them.

It took three days of fasting (and those blessed herbs) to get that out of me. I knew it was always there. I know that there is more. I'm glad I'm doing the things I need to purge the unhealthiness out of me.

I know I ain't crazy... As crazy as this note sounds.

I just needed to document this and give a little testimony about faith, healing and herbs at 6 in the morning. I mean, really... What if I would have given into that train of thought? Would I have been healed of pain?

Did I mention that I'm not currently in any pain even after I refused 'the darkness' offer?

So lucid.
So real, that experience was.

I know I'm not bugging. This fasting and purging is REAL!

After going thru what I believe is my FIRST faster's crisis moment I can safely say that the Devil made me write this note.

Or whatever that was.

Thursday

2010-04-08T13:33:00.000-05:00

I hate waking up in the morning in pain.

Okay, I hate that I cannot sleep until damn near 7am and then waking up at 8:30 in pain. I also hate that when I go to bed (whenever that is) that I can't sleep because of pain. I don't like drugs because I'm up a lot and I either want to remember things or want to learn. I don't like the concept of sleep because I feel like I'll miss something.

I love having news radio, public TV news and the internet news sites going on at the same time while I'm up overnight. It takes my mind off of 'stuff'. I then watch Better Mornings Atlanta and Monsters in the Morning here in Chicago before I turn in. I have to.

It's frustrating because of the shit I have to drag myself through with the affects of having what I got. I used to say that I'd be better off dead until I lost my writing partner and close friend. I don't understand death anymore than I did a year ago but I do know one thing... I wouldn't be alive if I were dead. And that means no travel or learning stuff that I could only use on Jeopardy.

Plus, I wanna continue traveling. Getting off the plane as well as standing out of the car justifies the pain when I stretch. Plus I expense acupuncture, reflexology and massage sessions. That's a perk I guess.

I'm tired now. I guess I'm going to lay down. It's a scheduled part of my day.

Going Green?

2010-04-07T15:00:00.007-05:00

I wake up mornings knowing now that some goals will never be accomplished.

It just is what it is. Nothing is perfect, nothing lasts forever ya' know? I've never been the guy to scare easily but it just hit me a couple of days ago that my current state of health and my plans on working with, around and pushing this disease around determines how much longer I live.

If I do nothing and keep the same diet (which is pretty light in the ass right now whenever I actually feel like eating) then it's probably a wrap in 24 to 36 months. Just add dialysis and mobility issues. What the hell kind of life is THAT?

Yeah, I plan on doing something. Matter of fact, I've been a little proactive in how I treat myself by taking courses/classes in naturopathy and herbalism. That's the new direction, green. I figure after damn near 4 decades around the sun immersed in soul food - fast food - genetically manipulated - instant grown foods was probably too much. I knew back in the day before I got all gaunt and sickly that the human body wasn't designed for what I've done to me.

I just hope I get a chance (like 40 more years at a minimum, right?) to reverse ~~all, no most,~~ some of the damage Ive done to my pancreas, kidneys and liver by eating like a damn billy goat.

There is no guilt or anything, just pumping my brakes in order to get my ish together and live... Eating to live. I know now and accepted the fact that I can't eat and drink like I used to. I sat for a couple of days and teeter-tottered over trying to eat clean and then 'treating myself' to alcohol & sugar and the like and then I thought - it goes against everything I've learned and applied so far with vegetarianism.

For a moment it snapped my neck and made me pause when I knew that going vegan and totally detaching from the standard American diet version or vegetarianism. I didn't want to go so far down the green hole that I couldn't enjoy 'stuff' until I realized...

I am going to die because of what I put in my mouth, so I decided to go green. That's right, I'm embracing vegetarianism en route to going vegan. I set up another blog to journal my experience. Check me out over at

http://bloggingwhilegreen.blogspot.com

Pray for the folks around me...

Unplug

2010-04-01T16:24:00.004-05:00

Neglected this blog is.

Sometimes.

I could rant about the loss of Marvin Gaye on this day 26 long-ass years ago with no heir apparent in sight...
I could write about all of the wonderful April Fool's jokes played on this day...
I could review the smashing mini-slate of a phone I copped (the HTC HD2 if you're asking) and how I got 3 places in line for iPads Saturday morning...
The term 'Negro" actually existing on my census form...
How now we gotta prove (in more ways than one) that racism actually took place Sunday before last and that our sworn representatives aren't lying just to drum up unwanted political and racial firestorms...

Not going to do it.

Instead, I'll be brief and go on about expectations.

Everyone wants to be rich. Either that or real nice-like. Good job. Nice home. Kids that won't rebel against you and will do you proud. A good tax attorney. Some people have dreams and write, sing, dance, slang crack rock or has a wicked jump shot just to reach what most consider the unattainable.

Some of us get close. Some of us actually score the touchdown. Others serve and help others up and receive rewards greater than a check in their mailbox with a whole lotta' zeros...

What happens when in all of your hard work and sacrifice you get upended by the very last thing you think would trip you up? What about your health? What if you had everything you wanted in life, only to know that eventually, sometime soon that would come second to you giving up everything in order to have a proper healing moment?

All of those other things don't really matter anymore, huh?

I spent much of 2009 witnessing my closest friend detach from the 'world' to concentrate and focus on her health. She never lost love. She never lost family and true friends. She even had the fair weather folk extend their hand in comfort as she slowly lost the ability to achieve all things material and then she lost her life.

It's hard to watch. It's easy to participate because you want to comfort a friend. You never think anything like that could happen to you even though it hits so close to home. I now have my moment. From this point, my focus no longer resides on the track with the rat racers. I now have my own health battle to fight.

Funny thing is, I am so prepared for this moment thanks to being a part of experiences (yes, multiple) that ended some lives and forever changed others. I no longer exist to compete with my contemporaries. I have a home and all of my necessities, I am able to get the things I want on top of that but this is no longer my priority. My longevity depends on my ability to learn from the past and adapt (and change) to live in comfort health wise. It will be a challenge because of cultural conditioning...

But I'm up for it.

If you've read this far then I have an assignment for you. Diabetic Nephropathy . I gave you a freebie by linking the Google Health page to the name of this dis-ease. Look it up, then look at a friend or family member. If there is someone with diabetes in your circle, then do something about not letting them get to this point. The feast of materialisms and our participation in it is a reason we get to a point where it feels like bricks are crashing through your roof onto your living room floor.

But alas, I was prepared for these moments. Not many have been prepped to leave the Matrix, embrace change and apply the opposite of what we've been taught. I got a feeling from all of my waiting room visits, peers and total strangers I come across carrying heavy, life threatening burdens out of sheer ignorance (like I have) I won't be the only one affected.

What are your expectations in life, about life... Once you're forced to unplug?

Know The Ledge

2010-03-25T13:56:00.000-05:00

Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives

18 USC Sec. 115 01/05/2009

-EXPCITE-

TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

PART I - CRIMES

CHAPTER 7 - ASSAULT

-HEAD-

Sec. 115. Influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a Federal

official by threatening or injuring a family member

-STATUTE-

(a)(1) Whoever -

(A) assaults, kidnaps, or murders, or attempts or conspires to

kidnap or murder, or threatens to assault, kidnap or murder a

member of the immediate family of a United States official, a

United States judge, a Federal law enforcement officer, or an

official whose killing would be a crime under section 1114 of

this title; or

(B) threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder, a United States

official, a United States judge, a Federal law enforcement

officer, or an official whose killing would be a crime under such

section,

with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with such official,

judge, or law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance

of official duties, or with intent to retaliate against such

official, judge, or law enforcement officer on account of the

performance of official duties, shall be punished as provided in

subsection (b).

(2) Whoever assaults, kidnaps, or murders, or attempts or

conspires to kidnap or murder, or threatens to assault, kidnap, or

murder, any person who formerly served as a person designated in

paragraph (1), or a member of the immediate family of any person

who formerly served as a person designated in paragraph (1), with

intent to retaliate against such person on account of the

performance of official duties during the term of service of such

person, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

(b)(1) The punishment for an assault in violation of this section

is -

(A) a fine under this title; and

(B)(i) if the assault consists of a simple assault, a term of

imprisonment for not more than 1 year;

(ii) if the assault involved physical contact with the victim

of that assault or the intent to commit another felony, a term of

imprisonment for not more than 10 years;

(iii) if the assault resulted in bodily injury, a term of

imprisonment for not more than 20 years; or

(iv) if the assault resulted in serious bodily injury (as that

term is defined in section 1365 of this title, and including any

conduct that, if the conduct occurred in the special maritime and

territorial jurisdiction of the United States, would violate

section 2241 or 2242 of this title) or a dangerous weapon was

used during and in relation to the offense, a term of

imprisonment for not more than 30 years.

(2) A kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, or conspiracy to kidnap

in violation of this section shall be punished as provided in

section 1201 of this title for the kidnapping or attempted

kidnapping of, or a conspiracy to kidnap, a person described in

section 1201(a)(5) of this title.

(3) A murder, attempted murder, or conspiracy to murder in

violation of this section shall be punished as provided in sections

1111, 1113, and 1117 of this title.

(4) A threat made in violation of this section shall be punished

by a fine under this title or imprisonment for a term of not more

than 10 years, or both, except that imprisonment for a threatened

assault shall not exceed 6 years.

(c) As used in this section, the term -

(1) "Federal law enforcement officer" means any officer, agent,

or employee of the United States authorized by law or by a

Government agency to engage in or supervise the prevention,

detection, investigation, or prosecution of any violation of

Federal criminal law;

(2) "immediate family member" of an individual means -

(A) his spouse, parent, brother or sister, child or person to

whom he stands in loco parentis; or

(B) any other person living in his household and related to

him by blood or marriage;

(3) "United States judge" means any judicial officer of the

United States, and includes a justice of the Supreme Court and a

United States magistrate judge; and

(4) "United States official" means the President, President-

elect, Vice President, Vice President-elect, a Member of

Congress, a member-elect of Congress, a member of the executive

branch who is the head of a department listed in 5 U.S.C. 101, or

the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

(d) This section shall not interfere with the investigative

authority of the United States Secret Service, as provided under

sections 3056, 871, and 879 of this title.

-SOURCE-

(Added Pub. L. 98-473, title II, Sec. 1008(a), Oct. 12, 1984, 98

Stat. 2140; amended Pub. L. 99-646, Secs. 37(a), 60, Nov. 10, 1986,

100 Stat. 3599, 3613; Pub. L. 100-690, title VI, Sec. 6487(f)[b],

Nov. 18, 1988, 102 Stat. 4386; Pub. L. 101-647, title XXXV, Sec.

3508, Nov. 29, 1990, 104 Stat. 4922; Pub. L. 101-650, title III,

Sec. 321, Dec. 1, 1990, 104 Stat. 5117; Pub. L. 103-322, title

XXXIII, Secs. 330016(2)(C), 330021(1), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat.

2148, 2150; Pub. L. 104-132, title VII, Secs. 723(a), 727(b), Apr.

24, 1996, 110 Stat. 1300, 1302; Pub. L. 107-273, div. B, title IV,

Sec. 4002(b)(9), div. C, title I, Sec. 11008(c), Nov. 2, 2002, 116

Stat. 1808, 1818; Pub. L. 110-177, title II, Sec. 208(a), Jan. 7,

2008, 121 Stat. 2538.)

-MISC1-

AMENDMENTS

2008 - Subsec. (b)(1). Pub. L. 110-177 added par. (1) and struck

out former par. (1) which read as follows: "An assault in violation

of this section shall be punished as provided in section 111 of

this title."

2002 - Subsec. (b)(2). Pub. L. 107-273, Sec. 4002(b)(9),

substituted "or attempted kidnapping of, or a conspiracy to kidnap,

a person" for ", attempted kidnapping, or conspiracy to kidnap of a

person".

Subsec. (b)(4). Pub. L. 107-273, Sec. 11008(c), substituted "10"

for "five" and "6" for "three".

1996 - Subsec. (a)(1)(A). Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 723(a)(1),

inserted "or conspires" after "attempts".

Subsec. (a)(2). Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 727(b)(1), which directed

insertion of ", or threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder, any

person who formerly served as a person designated in paragraph (1),

or" after "assaults, kidnaps, or murders, or attempts to kidnap or

murder", was executed by making the substitution after "assaults,

kidnaps, or murders, or attempts or conspires to kidnap or murder"

to reflect the probable intent of Congress and the amendment by

Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 723(a)(1). See below.

Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 723(a)(1), inserted "or conspires" after

"attempts".

Subsec. (b)(2). Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 723(a)(2), substituted ",

attempted kidnapping, or conspiracy to kidnap" for "or attempted

kidnapping" in two places.

Subsec. (b)(3). Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 723(a)(3), substituted ",

attempted murder, or conspiracy to murder" and ", 1113, and 1117"

for "or attempted murder" and "and 1113", respectively.

Subsec. (d). Pub. L. 104-132, Sec. 727(b)(2), added subsec. (d).

1994 - Subsec. (b)(2). Pub. L. 103-322, Sec. 330021(1),

substituted "kidnapping" for "kidnaping" in two places.

Subsec. (b)(4). Pub. L. 103-322, Sec. 330016(2)(C), substituted

"fine under this title" for "fine of not more than $5,000".

1990 - Subsec. (c)(4). Pub. L. 101-647 substituted "the Central"

for "The Central".

1988 - Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 100-690 amended subsec. (a)

generally. Prior to amendment, subsec. (a) read as follows:

"Whoever assaults, kidnaps, or murders, or attempts to kidnap or

murder, or threatens to assault, kidnap or murder a member of the

immediate family of a United States official, a United States

judge, a Federal law enforcement officer, or an official whose

killing would be a crime under section 1114 of this title, or

threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder, a United States official,

a United States judge, a Federal law enforcement officer, or an

official whose killing would be a crime under such section with

intent to impede, intimidate, interfere with, or retaliate against

such official, judge or law enforcement officer while engaged in or

on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished

as provided in subsection (b)."

1986 - Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 99-646, Sec. 60, substituted "section

1114 of this title, or threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder, a

United States official, a United States judge, a Federal law

enforcement officer, or an official whose killing would be a crime

under such section" for "18 U.S.C. 1114, as amended,", "while

engaged" for "while he is engaged", and "official duties" for "his

official duties".

Subsec. (b)(2). Pub. L. 99-646, Sec. 37(a), inserted "for the

kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of a person described in section

1201(a)(5) of this title".

-CHANGE-

CHANGE OF NAME

Reference to the Director of Central Intelligence or the Director

of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Director's capacity as

the head of the intelligence community deemed to be a reference to

the Director of National Intelligence. Reference to the Director of

Central Intelligence or the Director of the Central Intelligence

Agency in the Director's capacity as the head of the Central

Intelligence Agency deemed to be a reference to the Director of the

Central Intelligence Agency. See section 1081(a), (b) of Pub. L.

108-458, set out as a note under section 401 of Title 50, War and

National Defense.

"United States magistrate judge" substituted for "United States

magistrate" in subsec. (c)(3) pursuant to section 321 of Pub. L.

101-650, set out as a note under section 631 of Title 28, Judiciary

and Judicial Procedure.

-TRANS-

TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS

For transfer of the functions, personnel, assets, and obligations

of the United States Secret Service, including the functions of the

Secretary of the Treasury relating thereto, to the Secretary of

Homeland Security, and for treatment of related references, see

sections 381, 551(d), 552(d), and 557 of Title 6, Domestic

Security, and the Department of Homeland Security Reorganization

Plan of November 25, 2002, as modified, set out as a note under

section 542 of Title 6.

Sedition is a term of law which refers to overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (orresistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.

Typically, sedition is considered a subversive act, and the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where the history of these legal codes has been traced, there is also a record of the change in the definition of the elements constituting sedition at certain points in history. This overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within the study of state persecution.

The difference between sedition and treason consists primarily in the subjective ultimate object of the violation to the public peace. Sedition does not consist of levying war against a government nor of adhering to its enemies, giving enemies aid, and giving enemies comfort. Nor does it consist, in most representative democracies, of peaceful protest against a government, nor of attempting to change the government bydemocratic means (such as direct democracy or constitutional convention).

Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or state, giving aid to enemies, or levying war against one's state. Sedition is encouraging one's fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one's country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.

Live From Beale Street

2010-03-24T20:33:00.003-05:00

The Least Of These

2010-03-22T12:04:00.004-05:00

On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, "Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"

Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Opening statement given at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC Thur, 3 Feb 94

Please don't think that you have to put this behind you. This will be an issue that you will continue to speak of until you hit your grave.

In my eyes, it's nice that somewhere around 32 million more Americans will have access to healthcare, and that most Americans (if they want) can have federal subsidies pay for healthcare. It's also not all gloom and doom that there is a mandate requiring all to have at least a minimum of catastrophic health insurance or one has to pay into a pool which would be used to pay for the massive healthcare overhaul whenever the president sings the bill into law. We have used our military, intellectual and diplomatic might to help put other countries in a similar position over the past 100 or so years. All of the countries we assisted in tearing down (Germany, Japan, France to name some of the major players) we also suggested and constructed their version of universal healthcare as well as ways of government.

I urge all of you that haven't taken the time and don't know to check out Roosevelt's Second Bill Of Rights. While this never came into existence, it would have shut down any conversation we're having now about what is a right versus what is privilege. Our country has taken a hard turn downward and to the right since FDR passed.

This leads me to my belief that the passage of HR 3590 is one of the most important bill passages in civil rights history.

See, most of that 32 million that will have access to healthcare when that bill gets signed are some form of brown skinned person. Access and affordability when it comes to healthcare has been one of the most pressing issues along with obtaining a proper and equal education, the unbalanced bias of the justice system, overall freedoms of citizenship and access to resources that are readily available to all Americans.

It's not that this is overly complicated. It's not that it wasn't explained properly and thoroughly. In repeated attempts to marginalize, discredit and slander the African American president over suggesting a very tattered and used policy that we've seen before (even with the kickbacks, payoffs and back room deals) and his administration as well as the politicians and civilians that assisted the crafting of the 2010 bill, a certain group of Americans chose not to understand and have been and will continue to use hatred, racism and nationalism to paint the process and continued actions in a negative light.

They purposely misinterpreted the words and actions. They lied and slandered their way to an argumentative point with no real counter. They rallied millions against their own personal interests in continued efforts to marginalize, undervalue and underestimate the president, and those that would receive access once healthcare would be overhauled using the excuse of overtaxation and the emergence of a welfare state.

Racism by way of nationalism and white privilege. There, I said it.

Now of course, it ain't everybody, just that fringe 15% that has the power to infect the masses. The fringe has done well. Whereas the internet, newspapers, television and plain old word of mouth have worked out well in informing the masses and giving us access to research we can do on our own accord, it was a certain fringe that flooded the airwaves and reading periodicals, the internet and spread lies and gossip about a certain 'so-called' communist, Marxist, socialist, Muslim's evil agenda.

They taught me as a kid (in those old history books that still had MLK alive and under terror watch by JEH) that we were a nation of a mixed beautiful mass, hellbent on helping our fellow citizen thus forming a more perfect union. Unless you're brown skinned, of course. I live with the overstanding that in this country, our cultural conditioning teaches us to consider all things African American inferior and all things Caucasian superior and based on our cultural conditioning, African Americans are marginalized, undervalued and underestimated.

So mad some folks are over this black man at the helm of our country and that policy has been raised, voted on and enacted so that more folk that look like him will be able to remain healthy due to access to the same freedoms that they have been since the establishment of this union...

I urge you to not put this behind you. I beg of you to not forget these moments. I can tell you with all certainty that they will not.

Wealth's True Joy

One of the greatest joys we can experience is that of knowing that we are secure enough in our resources to do our part to ensure that others can enjoy blessings similar to our own. There is a sense of impotence that comes with being unable to share our limited wealth with people in need. When we achieve a level of abundance that allows us to make use of the richness of our lives in a charitable and selfless manner, we come to understand that money and possessions have little value beyond what they are used for. Used philanthropically, our resources become a blessing more profound than any we’ve enjoyed in the past because we understand that we are not the only ones positively impacted by them. As you use your resources to do good in life, you will feel, for the first time, truly appreciative of your abundance.

- Djehuty Ma'at-Ra

Live From Frenchmen Street

2010-03-20T04:28:00.002-05:00

Happy Saturday morning...

Sunday! Sunday!! Sunday!!!

2010-03-19T14:46:00.004-05:00

I was denied healthcare coverage January 2008 by Blue Cross/Blue Shield while working for JB Hunt Transportation in its lease program due to me having diabetes. I was also denied term life insurance and disability by some other company I cannot recall right now as well. It was cool though, I'm a veteran of the US Armed Forces. I got my back covered.

Funny thing is that I went out and bought my own coverage from BC/BS which cost much more than the Group Universal prices I was used to paying along with contributions from my employers over the years when I was an employee. I've always had some form of Blue Cross in my adult life. I also have been a federal employee most of my adult life until 2004...

So I was given less than a million dollars of lifetime coverages and my deductible back in 08 was high as hell...

I've had my setbacks since I was diagnosed as a diabetic in 1998. Most of my problems came in late 06 and throughout 07. In 07, I was in Houston and my host suggested that I go to the VA Hospital to care for pneumonia-like symptoms I displayed when I got down there from Chicago. It took 6 weeks to get an appointment because the Houston VA system is a bit crowded, I was skeptical about the VA, but I had no other choice but to go.

I went and was taken care of. My portion of care for me to pay for was minimal, right around 20%. There is a flat rate for prescriptions... If I weren't a married man first quarter of 2008, I would have never wanted to buy into the insurance system. I know that my other half was used to a certain amount of care plus she wasn't eligible for the VA CHAMPUS system.

So over the past damn near 25 years I've been aware enough to know, this health care shit (and I really mean that... it's bullshit) has worked against the people that attempt to support it in order to live.

My dad has been with his company for 25 years this summer, he has that Cadillac ish...
My moms works for a hospital system 21 years this fall...
My step-dad is 11 years in the City of Chicago's workforce and health care system...
My sister is a BSN and her husband is a financial broker. The money and care is there...
Little Bruh, 5+ years management with big energy. His wife, board licensed Chicago school teacher
Older brother like myself, business owner and med policy wrangler (for now) because there are employees...
My wife is self employed and also teaches in a university system and is married to me...
Mother in law is 17+ plus years deep working for a private hospital in Oklahoma...
Father in law is retired military...

I've only witnessed the bullshit from afar, mouth agape after listening to co-workers and friends off the old block. I'm fortunate to have basically all of my family covered either financially or coverage-wise that I have never had to wonder about paying for care as we receive it.

I don't know what feels like, and I don't ever want to know.

But I know that it exists. I worked for both Hewitt Associates and Mercer HR, two of the largest healthcare administrators in the country. The providers make, keep money and pay out to facilities, doctors and administrators when coverages can be cut. Nothing else has to be said. That's the business, literally. If you have the stomach to see this movie, see the latest SAW flick. If you have to hold your hands over your eyes and plug your ears from hearing people die in the various scenes...

Wait. No. Watch that shit. There is a message sent there.

Because no one cringes or covers their eyes when coverages disappear from your loved ones and friends. No one seems to really care if you're sitting there, blood pressure rising not because you have a medical condition, but because you're sweating over how to pay for this shit as you or momma or someone is being treated.

We have to worry about being able to afford to live. Now that's some shit right there.

Now I ain't nobody special. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth or didn't come from money, but I don't have to worry much if and when someone in my immediate family gets sick. We have money to pay the outstanding balances, have the coverages to cover and some of us have legacy dollars going towards health care into retirement. We worked for that, and we do not want it to be taken away. Now imagine if I were some conservative cat from the other side of the tracks, never once being knee deep in the shit at the postal plant, the US Army or in a dank, sweaty call center making sales calls with NO insurance on a shitty hourly wage.

Imagine if I never had those friends and co-workers that had health care episodes. Imagine if I never had to go to the county hospital as a kid, waiting 14 hours for some fucking cough syrup for bronchitis or ampecillen for strep throat. Imagine that I never drove a truck and seen dudes out there for 7 or 8 months straight, just driving because their kid has spina bifida. This is real. This may not be the package that some desire, but the current health care adjustments (because both bills passed already) is necessary or else we will not be able to afford to survive sickness.

Having a political stance and walking lock step into a vote about the welfare of the people is an absolute wrong move. Talk about out of touch and uncaring? Like I said, it's been about 25 years since I've been in the know about these things only because I watched the cowboy president and his administration work people up against their own interests, take away regulations that would have safety netted us financially these past 20+ months or so and also break unions.

This Sunday afternoon about 2:30 pm eastern daylight time is too damn important to let roll by without 216 yea votes for approval for the Senate's revision of the health care reform bill. Keep that on your mind. It's imperative that we at least take first steps so we can afford to live.

Woulda' Coulda' Shoulda'

2010-03-18T13:50:00.003-05:00

So a few weeks ago, someone asked me a very tough question to answer. I was asked:

When is it time to realize that age, missed opportunity and passed time has set in to the point where you just give up and stick to cubicle or factory dwelling?

I don't know how to answer this question.

I know that there are tons of us with great ideas, inventions, pending patents, internet schemes, investment opportunities, franchise thingamabobs and such that needs maybe a little time, additional funds, investment or maybe even the kids moving out to take shape, but... I cannot imagine a scenario where I can just relax in the fact that living in my cubicle or holding my place on the factory floor is what I need to do in order to realize my dream. I know that for most of us, we understand that hard work and investment makes material things happen such as homes, fashion and vacations but this country and our mindset doesn't rather work in that manner.

Hell, I left corporate America in 2005, and I did struggle when I came over to the trucking industry. My health and access to proper and timely healthcare as well as the diet I chose hampered my ability to stay in a truck in 2006 and 2007. Once I got my shit together at the end of 07 and stayed my ass in the truck, I began to realize my potential as my own boss, which lead me to exit the rig first quarter of last year. All of the ideas I had as far as running my own business that didn't roll over the interstate formed in my head as I drove, and I wrote them down and researched my ass off during my down time at home. I decided to experiment on some of my ideas and a few small successes led to where I am now.

If I never would have met this guy that owned a handful of trucks while I was on a break during my cubicle dwelling years, maybe the motivation to branch out would have died with the thoughts and rants I used to blog about right here in this forum back in the day. I guess what I'm trying to say is no one has to be chained to a desk or slave in a more labor intensive position; I believe that we have a choice in what we want to do. If we gravitate to what we love, the money will definitely follow, it just takes dedication and follow through, right?

So, in answering that question, I must say that I don't know if I could ever give in, relegated to the fact that working for someone else is what I want to do. I could never give up on my own dreams. If the past couple of months have taught me anything, it's that worrying about outside factors and how they could prevent you from doing stuff is a total waste of time. You spend time worrying about what others say, financial factors, politics and all things external and you realize that time has gotten the best of you and your ideas have not grown, just grown older and have become outdated because your attention was focused on other stuff.

I have other things to do... There can't be time dedicated to me thinking about failure and criticisms from outside my circle. I could never give into the thought that I am too old to do anything, so I put blinders on and just keep humping into old age and death, inundated with woulda, coulda and shouldas... That to me sounds like torture from the first moment of the initial thought.

To hell with that, ya dig?

We Ain't Going Out Like That Mane...

2010-03-17T13:55:00.002-05:00

Not by any means, even if I wanted to, I just couldn't go like that.

I realize that in some instances, I cannot take my ball and just go home. I was reminded this the other day by one special person in particular and a few from a great distance that still hold me close that both they and I blog for ourselves, and it is cathartic. It helps. It lays the mind's thought patterns out for it to re-map myself, nuff' said.

I also understand that folks that come here understand some things about my mindspill and relate them to their own. Commonality in our uncommon ground actually makes a reader or two actually overstand what the hell I share in this very public forum talking in the form of about my private shit.

I am not troubled or in a rut, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I just didn't like being in the middle of family drama playing out while certain family members were ill, leaving me with the upkeep of caring for their immediate family member while I have my own issues to deal with minding for my own. That and work, home life, death and taxes...

I had to get the hell away and I did.

A funny thing happened on the way to NOLA last week... I stopped in Mississippi to meet a couple of dear friends. Schedules got jacked up and I ended up sitting in the sun for a spiritual moment and I got a long, quiet nap. My head started to clear.

I never wanted to write about the same things, whining and complaining every damn day. I never wanted to be on the hook for someone else's life if it wasn't my momma, pops, wife or child. I never wanted to look at my life and say that I wasn't enjoying it because I was worried about superficial things... I began to worry more about 'stuff' and less about living, so I detached.

I reopened my facebook page and looked a time or two at my twitter feed. There are quite a few folks I would absolutely lose touch with that I just don't want to if the social media thing ends for me. There are also a handful of folks no longer with us that I need to 'see' every now and again as well. Not ready to close those chapters yet, and no one can make me.

I also overstand that I myself am an intercessor for a few and I pledge to never stand down for those who need me. I absolutely cannot disappear from from those that have held me up when I was too weak to hold my own. I was wrong to shut folks out with the social media feeds, because some of y'all to include myself at times just aren't reachable by picking up the phone or walking around the corner.

I've been in New Orleans since the middle of last week and don't plan on leaving until the middle of next, and the warmer temps, the seafood po'boys and the music has rattled me back into reality in realization that certain folks spirits intertwine, and certain bonds are never broken. So I picked myself up, enjoyed my time with new, special friends and family and can now see beyond petty bullshit, family drama, healthcare reform and other political dramas based on racism as well as business dealings.

If you do what you enjoy, the money will follow. And so will the opportunities. Sometimes you just gotta break free of the self imposed restriction you've created in order to properly function with the dysfunctional.

And plus, I really enjoyed watching T-Pain's 'Freaknik' on Cartoon Network the weekend before last. I gotta cop that book: 'Behold A Pale Horse 2: The Black Donkey Edition'. Everything you need to know about the Boule, Tavis vs Rev. Sharpton, the Obama Conspiracy and whether health care reform actually passes either thru deem or reconciliation is in that book. Yeah, and if you cop that joint that from me in the next 60 minutes, I'll throw in a non water damaged bungalow waiting to be moved into somewhere in the Lower Ninth ward, right here in the NOLA. Untouched since '05.

I'm giving away free snowballs too. My ice machine is working today baby.

I Think I'm Done

2010-03-06T05:48:00.003-06:00

Facebook closure... CHECK
Twitter logout... CHECK
Blog wrap-up... CHECK

I write. A LOT. I just don't think it's anything I'd like to share anymore.

I really love where my life is at the moment. I am satisfied with things, even though I keep dealing with death and sickness. The finality and destruction of things teaches me that this is a cycle. Life itself of this plane of existence s just a circle.

I remember when I started truck driving. I didn't have an eyeglass prescription or a GPS... I started wearing glasses and bought a GPS in 2007. A couple of years after I started seriously driving cross country, I attempted to function without my specs recently... and I couldn't.

I could not see, but I remember when I did, and very well. And I remembered when I didn't use that damned GPS to get from Jersey City to Compton... On the interstate... In a truck.

I want to go back to that.

There was a time not long ago when Blogger and Facebook did exist, but I was not in it.

There was a time not long ago when the matriarch of my family wasn't all twisted up on her left side because she didn't have a stroke.

There was a time where I didn't have to stand with doctors and discuss me signing a DNR form.

There was a time where my mother did not see her deceased mother as much, pondering her own death.

There was a time where my wife thought she understood my heavy burden dealing with life's shit, but she really only empathized.... And never really understood.

There was a time when I just went to sleep and didn't give a minute to pondering my own death.

Death and sickness is all around me. It consumes most of my time. There is no blogging, twitter time or facebook play, although other people find way too much time to dive right in enough not to ask me about my day...

Because they avoid not only the reality of social standing, politics and fake-ass religion, they avoid the reality of the time we actually have before death or sickness drops out of the sky to get their asses.

So as much as I want to take the time and share my shit, I realize that it's only that... Shit. I mean, really... I get a good amount of hits on this forum and I even have a nice handful of folk who follow or RSS this blog and I appreciate that you stop by but... I know in the reality of things that I'm just weekday cubicle fodder for most. I help you waste away the day like a whole lot of other bloggers. While I never write to entertain a mindless mass, I thought I'd share... And I have.

Know that my life is no joke. Yours isn't either.

Since I started bloging in 2004, I've shared a lot about me. I never provided names or detailed shit out of respect to girlfriends, partners in crime, classmates, co-workers even enemies because they all deserve respect, and I feel that I have given that. I even had an relationship-esque episode that I absolutely have not talked about right around mid to late 2007 because the past is the past. Even though she brought and continually brings me up. Methinks I awakened something back in December when I made reference to some folk my wife and I dealt with that caused the innernetgossipfolk to stir some shit up.

Funny thing is, when I'm thru with bullshit (the ordeal became a he said she said) I am thru, and this is the first time I officially actually addressed shit since that time. I'm sorry if you thought I was talking about you because I wasn't. I left that shit alone in 07' I really did. You have the right to be angry at me because I cut you off while I owed you money, but I do not owe anyone, including you an explanation. My actions were my actions, you don't have to indict my wife so get offa' that shit. You and her were truly innocent in my dealings. I did notice (because I never did look back until December when folk were EMAILING old blog passages (along with my December rants) from both me and you... Imagine that?) that you painted her and another person wrong when it is me you have the beef with. I see that you're still angry and you have a right to be. Keep them energies on me, not anyone else. I have no anger or beef with anyone because I saw through all the bullshit kinfolk told me after I got back to Chicago. And for the record, I've always thought you were cute. That one line you threw in there about not being beautiful, please cut that shit out! That is SO not cute.

See, I was involved with some folks and it turned into bullshit. I feel like since this should be my last blogpost (and that's how things got started, thru blogging) I'd address thangs. I did. That's all I got.I'm done. Bullshit has happened before. Will probably happen again to someone else. Whatever man. Might happen to your ass when you get personal in your blogging and other people try to get into your shit. I just maintain that you keep it moving. Trust me. At least no one in my current or former circles faked death to evoke emotion from the Brown Blogosphere. If you don't know about that one... My name is Bennet... And I ain't in it. Ask around and do a little research on that one. Some of y'all old heads remember that foolishness.

I think because how my life is full these days that my regular blogging thing is finished. I really feel like there isn't much for me to give these days. Maybe I'm wrong, but my writing has gotten very unfocused and all over the place, well what I've delivered here and it might be time to do other things or do things in a different manner. I love the connections I've made through this forum, and I really don't want to leave... But I feel like Twitter is a better forum for me (even though I haven't tweeted in a minute) because you only have 140 characters to get that shit right. Control seems to work better for cats like me. That and it doesn't take up too much time.

I guess this would be the time for me to announce that I have a radio show in the works, huh? Oh, and none of that BlogTalkRadio stuff... I'm talking about syndicated stuff (because money from commercial sales and affiliate marketing is real nice) that'll make me visible. I don't like the concept, but I signed on last year to an idea that is finally launching in the next quarter. Obligations.

Writing and speaking commentary are two different things, huh?

I am so shameless.

But know that what I really want to do is have more time. Time to continue travelling. Time to raise babies into adults. Time to deal with life. I gotta take care of my parents now like they have me. I have to deal with siblings like adults, very unlike freeze-tag and fake wrestling. I gotta' deal with my wife, invest more time into my equitable partnership (and let her mother know that she can only be a spectator and not a player). I have to care for the sick, fallen and the ill. I have to attend more of my classmate's funerals (one last week, another next). I have to complete my Holistic Health Practitioner designation so I can better understand how to unfat and decholesterolize (I'm making words UP in here) my family and friends as well as myself.

As much as life drags me down and burns my ASS.... I wanna' live.

And that may require less blogging and more doing... Other stuff.

I think I'm done.

I think.

Where The Last Shall Be First

2010-02-28T11:49:00.000-06:00

I came across this article in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday. I thought it was worth a re-print sort to speak. I never got Black History Week when I was a kid and I didn't get it when they made it into a month, so let's hear it from black history herself...

BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter

"I have a scar on my back I got when I was a slave. . . . You got people out there with this scar on their brains. . . ." -- from the 1974 movie "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,'' now on DVD

Throughout this month, we asked Chicagoans and prominent visitors their thoughts on Black History Month. Most said it is still relevant, though many questioned relegating the celebration of a people's history to any specific period.
We close the month with 110-year-old Ethel Darden of Hyde Park, tied with another supercentenarian as Illinois' oldest resident.

Born in Dallas, Texas, on Feb. 17, 1900, to Ella Mary Allen and Charles Boswell, two schoolteachers, she is a pioneering educator who helped establish the city's first private, nonsectarian school for blacks, the Howalton Day School.

Founded in 1947 by her sister Doris Allen-Anderson and two other women, the school operated until 1986. It was responsible for educating many of Chicago's black elite, including the children of boxer Joe Louis, U.S. Rep. Ralph Metcalfe, historian Timuel Black, Judge R. Eugene Pincham and Mayor Eugene Sawyer.

In 1996, she donated the school's archives to the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library's Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection.

"There were five of us girls. The whole darn family became educators," said Darden, laughing as she smoothed out a brown ruffled dress with her long, slender rhinestone-ringed fingers.

"She's sweet as pie, always full of smiles and laughter," said her caretaker and close friend, Betty Miller. "She still has that southern genteel. Occasionally, she'll ask me, 'Honey, is he colored or white?' "

Darden outlived her siblings and husband, Lloyd Darden, a successful accountant she married in 1942 before the couple moved here. She lives at Montgomery Place, a retirement home staffed by University of Chicago Medical Center physicians.
Her doctor, William Dale, said he's in awe at the health of Darden, who occasionally enjoys a glass of wine.

"She has no diseases, takes no prescriptions and looks decades younger," he gushed. "And while her short-term memory is poor, her long-term memory is very intact." Darden attended Dallas Colored High School, graduated in 1921 from the historically black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas -- featured in the 2007 movie "The Great Debaters" -- taught 20 years in Dallas schools, then 40 years here.
Here's what she had to say:

"You know, sometimes I don't like to look back. It's hard enough to look front. When I think about the past too much, it knocks me down. "I came up with Jim Crow. But I didn't let it bother me. I was just living. We didn't have money, anyway, to go places they didn't want us. In the South, we knew where we could go and couldn't. Didn't have to hear them say it. It was written loud and clear, 'Whites Only.' 'For Colored.' "It was terrible what they did to black folks those days. Lynched them. Burned them. I don't want to talk too much about that.

"Dr. [Martin Luther] King came to our church. My twin sister and I sang a duet for him. I liked him. He wasn't afraid of anybody. Marched up to Washington. He asked our help. We collected money in jars at school. I did march. One time, we put on buttons to protest, marched right downtown and had breakfast. I wasn't scared.

"I honor all those who tried to make it good for us, so we could come downtown and have lunch if we wanted to. The Civil Rights Act was a great day because I felt free at last. That I could walk with my head up, that we were free to go to any school at last. I did feel good.

"Black president? Didn't think so soon, but I felt we'd eventually have a black everything. I don't like to say 'black' history. It's just history.

"I don't know why I lived so long. I never thought of it. Just tried to do my work and treat people the right way. There's a road you have to take, and you take it. It's been a good life. I wouldn't say a 'fine' life, just 'good.' Could have been worse.
"A white man is a white man. Let him be white. A black man is a black man. Let him be black. Just watch the way they treat you as a human being. Treat folks right, and respect them the way God would have you do. Let history take care of itself."

You Delight A Satellite

2010-02-24T09:31:00.005-06:00

I got your favorite planet in my pocket

But it ain't the one you pay attention to.

I got the one that has the hue of a large chunk of amber

hold it to yours and you can see the frozen past

You keep staring at the ones that some deem official

while I keep the chiseled chunks of fallen stars

and once bright meteorites

I use a telescope in measured sight

you gravitate to moissanite

It's the measure of who you are

identify your fallen star

Pieces

Sometimes when you pick them up the dust crumbles thru your fingertips

and reform earth

even though they ain't from here.

Keep them watchful eyes to corner skies

to monitor the rise and fall of moonbeams and ultra violet rays

as I manage the dust

It's so hard to do that under the warming vibes of the sun

and the map yielding light of the one satellite

you've always held dear

I have those now to watch over and guide me.

You delight a satellite

and dance within its vaunted rays

every day I make my way

by the light, your constant play

I close my eyes and feel your rays

when darkness falls you pave my way

Your light a constant warmth for me,

The only way I truly see.

2010 Hassan Ntimbanjayo (I just made that up) - Ya Dig?

When White Privilege Just Isn't Enough

2010-02-20T09:01:00.006-06:00

Feb 20, 2010

I started this post yesterday. I never got around to finishing it due to having 'stuff' to do. I think being in the midwest, lacking twelve full hours of sunlight has a way of having a diminished sense of seeing things sometimes. I am happy with my life and how I am in it. Yeah, I've made hard choices, command decision and mistakes that affected not only myself but others along the way, and I am satisfied with every move I've made. It's my life and I refuse to be unhappy.

I also understand that being who I am, living in the era I live in has its... Limitations. I try hard every day to try to deal with the world as if I have none even though I know that every step I take, someone that has no clue as to how it is to walk in my shoes puts a tiny pebble of doubt, hate, misunderstanding or prejudice in my pocket. By the time I get home from my day's journey, I have the equivalent of a quarry by the way of my trousers.

I never asked for it. Neither did my grandfather or his grandfather, but it has been given to us and we still carry it. Never have I asked anyone who hasn't ever driven down my block to come there because I know that they cannot stomach the bullshit, but it is spoon fed there, so the expectations of men who look like me are low. Results contrived for the solutions to the world's problems are unexpected, dividends aren't even considered to be yielded unless I can score touchdowns or hit jumpshots.

But I'm 40 now and there isn't a market for me. Well, it isn't that large. Never has been, even though some of us have climbed through open windows of opportunity and have made impact. The fact remains that there are no expectations for us. It is the mark of the attitude of living with and whithin the status quo, even though we have so much to offer.

We should be angrier. We should hold a grudge one million times more than we already have. The atrocities committed against those that look like me that has happened in MY lifetime...

And I'm not supposed to ask for reparations

I'm not supposed to bring certain conversation up

I'm not supposed to want apologies

I'm not supposed to feel the pain of all of my lost mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters

I'm supposed to just smile and take it, forgiving the sons and daughters

And we do.

We just take it.

And we act like it never happened.

And then when the TV gets turned on to the nightly news, we see a brand new form of a very old version of an anger so horrid that it reminds me of the days where it was common place to see another me swinging from a tree.

And I believe that just the sight of our current sitting president causes such a feeling.

When White Privilege Just Isn't Enough - 2/19/2010

I've been black my whole life.

I've been a witness to a lot of travesty.

I've had to live in a world... No, a country where folk are shunned from keeping it real. I mean it's looked down upon and for some, it's downright disrespectful to bring certain stuff up in conversation. I would have never made it growing up in the Jim Crow or Civil Rights Era.

The truth is the truth and unfair is unfair.

This country was founded on rebellion, slavery and developing stolen land from the native peoples. This country has also thrived on military might, racism and a class based system that pits the middle against the lower, leaving the upper to prosper in the brokering of the class wars. To watch the utter arrogance of the American people as we speak against the development of other nations... To watch how we police the world so no other nation can gain equal footing burns my ass when just a few days ago the men who murdered Sean Bell...

Never mind about that.

What we're all witnessing these days is not the elimination, but the decline of white privilege. The country as a whole is taking a new shape by the numbers and those who had the unspoken privileges and graces in the past are getting balanced out in more ways that one.

I cannot finish this because of how I feel right now. There is an anger that I feel coming from parts known that feel like the stuff I've seen from the horrid past. Fear, trepidation xenophobia and finger pointing because there is someone else sitting in the office of power and certain folk just can't stand it.

They are angry and upset because for a few scant hours in their lives they have almost been made to live like we have for ages. It ain't everybody but... It's enough to take notice.

You know:
None of my family ever brought guns to a health care rally.
No one I know flew an airplane into a Federal use building.
I've used the N-word before, but to my knowledge, I haven't replaced it with the word 'Socialist'

~~It might be high time I got on my horse to warn the folks to start clinging onto their guns and religion~~

incomplete 2/19

Ask Yourself

2010-02-16T15:44:00.002-06:00

I really enjoyed my weekend.
My sister and brother in law brought the kids in from Dallas and we all gathered together to celebrate my brother's twin son's birthday by hanging out at an indoor water park. Good times were had and great, laughable stories were made this weekend. I can't wait to hang out again with my sibs this summer when we trek to Disney in Florida.

This past weekend was a pre-vacation for my other half and I. I think I mentioned that we're headed to the Bayou in a bit for a real two weeker of alligator, coffee and beignets as well as a whole bunch of etouffee. Lord, I can't wait for that. Things have been real busy around here and it would be nice to just get to a nice spot and experience a little slow and quiet. Chicago will tax your friggin' brain and overrun you with business if you let it.

I have absolutely nothing to say about Chris Matthews, Dick Cheney or John Mayer. I need folks to ask themselves a few real questions that actually matter like:

Why are black and brown folk so damn affected by the so-called recession?

Why are black and brown folk seemingly 'just taking' the negative results of current opinion polls as well as managing the negative outcomes of labor employment statistics?

Is it just me or does it feel like there is some stagnant waiting period going on right now in minority communities?

Why isn't there more reactionary activity taking place in our communities?

Where the hell are the proactive lobbies, and why aren't they addressing congress?

Why exactly did we wait for so-called black leadership to address the president last week when the pressing socio-economic elephant in the room has always been there?

Instead of placing blame on all things external (like calling John Mayer racist last week), where are the ideas and actions that would bring forth the necessary change to actually move people ahead? I'm seeing a lot of folk sitting on their hands right now and I don't understand why.

There seems to be a lot of folk running and hiding from the issues when it seems to be the time to asses and reassess what seats need to be filled in congress both on the federal and state levels. If folks like Senator Evan Bayh have become totally discouraged in the federal legislative process, then who should become candidate to fill that seat?

From Gary to Indianapolis to Evansville and all parts between, the state of Indiana has tons to lose in funding, jobs and farm support if the wrong person is chosen to rep there. I mean, from the steel, iron and manufacturing personnel needed for the bridge and road repair that our president's administration got off the ground to the high speed rail project, Indiana has a lot to loose...

And there are 10 other states that can use the right candidate to get the job done with job creation and with repositioning federal dollars to provide for workforce payroll instead of unemployment benefits and the like.

We must eliminate the thought process that we must continue along with the status quo. There are a ton os 'isms' that are still in effect if we continue thinking along these lines. What is happening with the thinking process and how we're coping with them is NOT okay.

What am I talikg about? Ask Keith Olbermann and then ask yourself.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You got an answer?

Water

2010-02-09T02:06:00.001-06:00

I thought I'd be sad or something seeing that I lost my beloved MacBook Sunday morning. I was mixing up my herbs, playing with my juicer (spirulina primarily - I gets my greens in son!) and I was adding some crushed L-Arginine to a glass of water when I tipped the liquids right on on the keyboard.

Damn!

And then I realized...

The only thing I fried was the logic board. I noticed that this was my chance to have an opportunity to upgrade to something bigger and better like a titanium MacBook Pro.

An UPGRADE!

GLORY!!!

It's a better feeling than the Saints winning on Sunday night. My water moment was funnier than the Sarah Palin comedy hour the night previous.

I mean, I think I am the only one watching this stuff? I know that I can't be. Everyone seems to be a little too pre-occupied doing other stuff to be concerned about their health and well being, and I mean 'the process' IS about our health and welfare. The marginalization of our current leadership is moving into a third phase and no one seems to care.

Enough about that. The missus and I are packing up for our NOLA trek next week but first... Indoor water park activities with the nieces and the nephews.

I guess this past and next weekend's theme is all about water.

The Long Walk Home

2010-02-05T05:50:00.002-06:00

It's impossible to think that I walk this path alone.

I just cannot be.
It is very impossible for my mind to contemplate
But for some strange reason if this is to be

I truly understand

Even if I don't wanna.
Even if I'm headed home, being away for so long
that I can't even remember

There were times upon time itself as I traveled where when I looked around
all I saw was the endless trail of my own footsteps
And it's shameful because I've come this far

No water
No pause
uninterrupted, without a single hitch in my step

and then I realize...

A lot kinfolk and those I held dear
let me walk right past them
without even lifting their head

Acknowledgements meaningless
unfocused energies
unfettered emotion

lack of eye contact, not even giving me a simple walker's hello

Hey stranger!

never lifting an arm to wave into the distance
Offering sanctuary
extending shelter
sharing overabundant libations

or even

a drop

of kindness
So my next thought is to not even look back
as I travel over blazing sands

their worth in this moment of my extreme thirst and fatigue
is the value of a pillar or salt.

So I never lose pace

I just keep walking.

Might as well then, right?
There's more for me to indulge when I get home.

whenever that will be
if it'll ever happen
however I might try to continue

I just keep telling myself:
keep walking. I'm almost there.

2010 Hassan Olumoroti Ntimbanjayo - Ya' Dig?

I remember telling myself that things would be different when it happened back then. I just didn't know how much. It seems the trade off is a bit scathing if you ask me. Folks aren't afraid to let you know that they tolerate this as just a temporary measure, that 100,000 people have set an agenda that will topple the current political power structure.

I think that's a bunch of bullshit.

I also think that folk that say things just to get you to regurgitate it so that the other guy will believe it is an old and tired practice but we still fall for it anyway. After all of the years of struggle to get free it seems like the being free part wasn't what we really bargained for. Most folk that look like, related to and fraternize with me really wanted to be validated. It's good enough for all of us now so sleep is a necessity.

Also bullshit.

I bet you President Obama is feeling like a broke-ass Nino Brown eight now because nobody is putting in any work. With all of the unemployed folk out there right now, you'd think that folks would get constructive and start bartering and creating some sort of grass-roots economy.

Sheeeeyit. That's socialism.

Idiots!

I read about whole societies that were lazy, uninterested and unmotivated. They fell quickly.

And to think... These obstructionist bastids actually think they'll get their country back the same way they had it by doing nothing, keeping the ball away from the change guy and then doing the exact same things that got us in this rut in the first place.

And we extend a hand to them because we need to remain cordial.

The same folks that brought guns and rifles to rallies and have utter contempt for cats like me. Luckily, I still have a few field manuals and some recent range training.

And now, I go back to doing my thing.

Wooten's Day Update

2010-02-03T14:47:00.000-06:00

It's not that I haven't been paying attention, I have. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, I have. It's not that I haven't been reading others works, that I have been doing as well. I just took the last week to observe and participate in our most recent electoral process without filter.

I have a ton of things to get out regarding our commander in chief, reactions by his opposition, decisions made by the administration, the upcoming budget and our friends, family and neighbors and how they relate to the current state of things from my point of view.

I just need to finish up a few things on the business end over here as well as prep for my stay in the Big Easy coming up in a week and some change. Things got busy in a good way over here and I'm just enjoying the time I do have free...

Enough. I got stuff to do.

Stealing From Richard Lawson

2010-02-02T16:27:00.001-06:00

In honor of the 'Lost' series finale premier, I've stolen an article written by Richard Lawson of www.gawker.com

Everything That's Happened on Lost So Far, Just from Memory

Lost is so confusing! But not that confusing. Here I will try to write, from memory without using any wikis, fan sites or Google, everything important that's happened on the show up to tonight's final-season premiere. Wish me luck.

A guy named Jack wakes up in the middle of the jungle wearing a suit and doesn't know where he is. So he gets up and follows some noises and there on a beach is a plane wreck, with survivors running around screaming and people getting sucked into the still-running engines and stuff. They were all on Oceanic Flight 815, headed from Sydney to Los Angeles. Jack helps rescue some people, so we know right away that he is the Hero, and he meets a girl name Kate who stitches him up even though she is scared to. Jack tells her that he is a spinal surgeon and she doesn't say who she is and then we go meet other people who survived the crash.

There's a bratty brother and sister named Boone and Shannon. There's a pregnant Australian young woman named Claire. A heroin-addicted fading rocker named Charlie. A mysterious, knife-throwing bald man named Locke. There's Michael and his sullen son Walt. A Korean couple with a stern husband named Jin and a timid wife named Sun. Neither of them speak English (or so we thiiiiink at the time...) There is a great big fat person named Hurley who makes a lot of jokes but is also sort of a sadsack. There is a highly capable Middle Easterner named Sayid who, it turns out, was an interrogator for the Iraqi National Guard. Finally there is Sawyer, a long-haired Southern guy who is aggressive and immediately takes a disliking to Jack's authoritativeness. The feeling is mutual.

So whatever, everyone gets to know each other and we get to know their back stories. Kate is a fugitive who killed her mean step-daddy and then fled to Australia. Oh, she also got her childhood boyfriend killed while she was fleeing from the police. So she feels really bad, but is still happy to be free — the US Marshal who found her in Australia and was bringing her home died shortly after the plane crash. Jack had an alcoholic dad, also a doctor, who drank himself to death in Australia. Claire wants to give the baby up for adoption, and is creeped out about something a psychic told her about her baby (basically that she can't let anyone else raise it.) Charlie wants sweet sweet drugs and to do sex to Claire once she is no longer pregnant. Michael, whose ex-wife recently died, wants to have a good relationship with his son. Sayid wants off the island (he's looking for his long-lost love) and Sawyer just wants some peace and quiet. Boone, a step-brother as it turns out, is sort of pathetic and in love with his step-sister. Step-sister Shannon is just sort of a whiny bitch and doesn't do a lot. Oh, but she does speak French! Which comes in handy when...

...On a little hiking mission to see what else is on this island, they pick up a radio signal. It's a recorded broadcast of a woman saying something about how the rest of her friends are dead, that they got sick or something, and that she'd really like some help. Sayid does math magic and figures that the thing has been playing on a loop for sixteen years. A confused Charlie then gives the show's most iconic line to date, "Guys... where are we?" Chills abound!

Even more chills are caused by a big loud thing in the jungle that makes trees thrash around and sounds like some sort of old timey mechanical dinosaur. Nobody knows what the tree monster looks like, but Jack and Kate are fairly concerned because on a little trip (this show is all about various trips and missions to things) to the detached cockpit, they watched as the barely-alive pilot was sucked out of the window and horribly killed by that very same loud noise thing. So everyone is scared! And people are hungry and all that. Someone, I forget who, finds a series of caves that will sustain the people for a while if they want to live there. Some folks don't want to leave the beach though, still hoping to get rescued, so the crew divides in two. At the caves they find two old dessicated skeletons. They do not know who they are, but they know people have been here. Jack and Kate sort of start to fall in love, but Sawyer's got the hots for her too and thinks get complicated.

Meanwhile: Sayid is still trying to get the fuck off this damn rock so he can go find Nadia. In his travails he gets, after hearing creepy whispering in the trees (a common phenomenon), captured by... the French lady from the recording! She is crazy and feral and lives in a shack. She says her name is Danielle and that she was on a science-boat that crashed on the island 16 years ago. They'd heard a broadcast of a sequence of numbers repeated over and over again, and they'd followed it and boom. Then everyone "got sick" and "the Others" took her daughter. So there are others! This makes Sayid very nervous.

For further proof of these Others, the crazy bald guy named Locke is digging in the jungle, frantically. Why? Well because he found this metal hatch thing hidden under some vines and now he wants in. Locke has a special relationship with the island. See, before he got there he was paralyzed from the waist down from an accident. (Much much later we find out that a con man pushed him out of a window.) But now that he's on the island? Lt. Dan's got magic legs. (Much like a lady we don't know much about, Rose, had cancer in off-island life, but now is fit as a fiddle. Mysterious.) So yeah, Locke is obsessed with destiny and symbolism and all that, so he really thinks he's supposed to be on the island. Dig dig dig he goes, with Boone's help. One day he and Boone are doing some exploring and they find the wreckage of a small airplane, laden with a few long-dead priests and a bunch of ceramic Virgin Mary statues. Except! The statues? They're full of heroin. Watch out Charlie! But anyway, the heroin is sort of a red herring. This isn't a drug-running island. This is a Mystery Island. So Boone's in the airplane and he's fiddling with a radio. Suddenly he hears a very faint voice and he starts yelling "We're survivors of Oceanic flight 815!!" etc. You hear "815" back and then the signal cuts out. Boone has disrupted the plane and it topples over a cliff. Despite Jack's efforts to save Boone, he dies. His is the first real character-casualty of the show. He is not the last.

Eventually everyone finds out about the Others and the Hatch and by this point we've seen traces of a weird black mist or smoke every time the monster is nearby. So his name changes from Tree Monster to Smoke Monster. Smoke Monster it will stay until... well, he's still the Smoke Monster. Claire has had her baby and Danielle the crazy Frenchwoman has made the acquaintance of the camp, and starts staring creepily at the baby. This unnerves Claire, who has been having night terrors about people trying to steal her baby. Well, she was right to be scared because she ends up getting kidnapped by a guy named Ethan who was pretending to be a fellow survivor, but was really an Other! Oh it's all very scary and Claire is gone for a few episodes, but eventually she comes back, dazed and drugged, and can't remember a thing. But now we're pretty sure that Others = bad, so we are wary of them.

At the end of the season, Danielle shows up and says the Others are coming and everyone panics, but really it was just a ruse to get Claire's baby. It doesn't work and she weeps and runs away Into the Woods. Meanwhile a group of folks — Sawyer, Michael & Walt, and Jin (who has made up with his secretly English-speaking wife, who was planning on leaving him because he was doing wicked things for her gangster father) — have built a raft and go pushing out into the sea, to swelling music, to go find help. As they set out away from the island, Jack, Kate and others head deeper into the island to find dynamite. Why? To blow up the hatch door and see what's inside. And where would one expect to find dynamite on Mystery Island than in the belly of an old slave ship that's somehow made its way all the way to the interior of the island. So they get dynamite and, after a minor character gets blowed up by said dynamite, they bring it to the Hatch.

Back at sea, something terrible has happened. A creepy fishing boat has attacked the raft and snatched Michael's son Walt, and then torched the USS Freedom. So Jin, Sawyer, and Michael are just floating in the water, missing the kid, and seriously screwed.

In the jungle, they're about to let it blow when Hurley says "No no!" See, he's seen numbers on the side of the hatch door and they are bad numbers. Numbers he played in the lottery back home and won, only to be followed by some kind of curse. Hurley is bad luck and seeing those numbers — the same sequence heard by the French ship 16 years ago, one assumes — makes him think that only bad things lie within the Hatch. But it is too late. The fuse is already lit and the thing blows and everyone pokes their head over the edge to see what's inside. That's how season one ends.

Season two gets into yet more mysterious territory. Everyone on the boat turns out to be OK, they wash up on shore basically. The Hatch is investigated and... there's a Scottish guy living down there! His name is Desmond and, oddly enough, he and Jack once met briefly on the mainland. (There are all sorts of weird, incidental connections like that.) Desmond tells them that he got shipwrecked a few years ago while trying to sail solo around the world, and that there was another dude there when he got there. Their job was enter a code of numbers — that code of numbers — into an old-timey computer every 108 minutes or... the world would explode. This was serious business! The good news is that there's a ton of shit in the Hatch, food and supplies and stuff. Desmond quickly disappears, not to be seen for a while, and the Oceanic kids take over the Hatch, and the button-pressing duty. Locke, of course, becomes particularly obsessed with the whole thing.

MEANWHILE, something very interesting has happened: When the plane was crashing, it split in three pieces. The cockpit was besieged by monster attacks, as I mentioned. The middle section contained all of our heroes. And the tail... well, the tail contained the Tailies, a second group of castaways whose first 48 days on the island we see in a single episode. As bad as Jack & Co. had it, the Tailies had it much worse. They were nightly attacked by Others, and even had all the children they were with stolen. They too had a sleeper agent, who ended up getting killed by a tough LAPD cop named Ana-Lucia. Jack and Ana-Lucia had met at the airport bar before taking off, so again, incidental connection. Joining Ana-Lucia are a glass-eyed psychiatrist named Libby, a tall stoic Nigerian fellow named Mr. Eko, a man named Bernard, and a stewardess named Cindy. You find out that that voice Boone heard in the little heroin plane? It wasn't rescuers, it was just Libby and friends. D'oh.

Eventually the two teams meet up, but with sort of disastrous results. Shannon, who had begun to form a bizarre romance with Sayid of all people, is running through the jungle on a rainy day and Ana-Lucia, approaching the mid-section people's camp, thinks she's an Other and shoots her dead. So both step-bro and step-sis are now dead, and Ana-Lucia hasn't made the best first impression. The man Bernard turns out to be married to mid-sectioner Rose, so that's a cute little old-people romantic story that continues on through the series. The stewardess Cindy mysteriously disappears right before Ana-Lucia shoots Shannon, and we've only seen her one other time since. Hurley meets Libby and gets a crush on her, while Jack kind of digs Ana-Lucia. Kate is still trapped in triangleville, as is Sawyer. Complicating everyone's business further is a man named Henry Gale, captured by Danielle the crazy Frenchwoman and brought to the Jack for safekeeping. This man is a master manipulator. He seems innocent and good at first, even though Danielle is convinced he's a terrible Other. Well, eventually it turns out she's right. Henry Gale is long dead and this man is named Benjamin Linus, a real sonuvabitch who, like, *runs* the Others. He starts whispering bad things to everyone and everyone goes a little nuts and eventually Michael, trying desperately to get his son back, shoots and kills both Ana-Lucia and Libby so he can free Ben and get Walt. Everyone is pissed at Michael, but especially Hurley, who had a boner for Libby somethin' fierce. We are also upset because we may never find out why, in a flashback, Libby was a patient at the same mental clinic where bad-luck-maddened Hurley was. We still haven't found out!

Phew. This is where it starts to get blurry for me. So basically everyone sets off across the island to find Michael and confront Ben and the Others and stuff. Meanwhile a small contingent has gone a little numbers-nuts, and they want to see what happens if they *don't* push the button. Will the world end? Yes, probably. Locke has discovered signs of other Hatch-like stations, and a narrative about some mysterious American scientific group called the Dharma Initiative begins to emerge. Are they the Others? Were they killed by the Others? It's unclear. Anyway, there's a whole big fight thing with Mr. Eko and then Mr. Eko gets killed by the Smoke Monster and Desmond comes back and is all "Wait, you gotta push the button!" but Locke doesn't want to push the button because he's lost (Lossst) all his faith again or something. The people looking for Michael have found Walt but have been captured by Others and while they're waiting down by the docks with bags over their heads, there's a loud noise and the sky turns purple, because the button didn't get pushed and a strange magnetic reaction is happening in the Hatch. Desmond reaches for an emergency turn-off valve or explodey button or something and he gets to it and the season ends. Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are in captivity and everyone in the Hatch may have been blown the hell up. Oh, and Michael and Walt are gone, home to safety. Michael will later come back and die on the island, trying to rescue everyone else to atone for his sins.

For some mysterious reason, though the Hatch is now smithereens, the people inside it are alive. They don't really remember getting out of the Hatch, but they know they're alive, so what's to worry. Not faring so well are the captured three, who are being kept in weird zoo-like cages. Ben has brought Jack there because he has a big bad tumor on his spine and he needs Jack to fix it. While Locke and Rose (the lady with cancer) seem to be cured by the island, Ben can still get sick. It is a mystery. In his captivity, Jack meets an ethereal blonde Other named Juliet, a fellow doctor who persuades Jack to do the surgery. If he doesn't they're probably going to kill Sawyer and Kate. Sawyer and Kate who are put to work building some kind of something outdoors (people seem to think it was a landing strip.) Juliet reveals that she is a fertility doctor and that all the pregnant women on the island die in the third trimester. But Claire gave birth on the island! Exactly, this is why they snatched her. For creeeepy medical studies.

This is also troubling because we have learned that Sun is pregnant, though it might not be Jin's baby. She had an affair before getting on the plane and it might be that dudes. But it doesn't really matter, because they're still in love. ANYWAY. Locke is still like crazy and doesn't know his purpose or whatever. He ends up sort of siding with the Others or something? Well, however it happens, we end up learning a lot more about these mysterious people. We see more buildings. We see that Jack and friends are actually on a second, smaller island (that kinda gets forgotten about). We learn about the Dharma Initiative, that something very bad called The Incident happened that wiped a lot of them out. We learn that some people, like the teary-eyed Juliet, are basically being held there against their will. Ben is bad, Ben is connected to some old, sinister stuff. He convinces Locke that Locke is some sort of Chosen One and takes him on a vision quest to go meet the Others' big bad leader, name'a Jacob. Jacob lives in a creepy old cabin with a picture of a creepy old dog and... well, he's invisible. He's a ghost maybe? Locke can see a dim flicker of a figure in a chair when the whole cabin starts to shake and everyone runs the heck outta there because it's scary.

So all this mystical stuff is going down while everyone else is still trying to get off the damn island. One night someone parachutes onto the island and says she's from a rescue boat that's a few miles offshore. Everyone is happy and, of course, everyone is suspicious. See they've started to learn about something called the Widmore Corporation, some sort of shadowy conglomerate with ties to the island that is, conveniently enough, run by the father of Desmond's long lost love. Desmond doesn't know where the heck he stands in all this because he's been having a terrible case of temporal displasia. He's sorta maybe been time traveling and chatting with a weird white-haired woman, who has told him that he can't change a single thing or else the world will basically end. This is all very confusing to the audience.

The girl who parachuted in has a satellite phone, but it's being jammed. They figure out, with the help of the now-defected Juilet, that there's a Dharma station under the water that's been jamming frequencies. Desmond, in his weird time skipping, has visions of the future. And he sees one thing: Charlie, our Claire-obsessed nice hobbit rocker, has to die. But he dies saving everyone! Charlie accepts his fate and takes a suicide mission down to the water hatch to unjam the satellite phone. He succeeds and he dies and though Ben warns that the people on the boat are very bad (they're having a big showdown near a radio tower) Jack calls the ship and tells them to send in the cavalry.

We see a flashFORWARD, instead of the show's usual character-developing flashbacks, and it's a drunken miserable Jack who is yelling at Kate that they need to go back to the island, that they never should have left. Bad things happen once people get off the island and it was all a terrible mistake. That's how season three ends, with rescue hanging in the balance.

Seasons four and five get wayyyy more complicated and I can't remember everything. Basically the island becomes a big time machine and while the six folks who end up making it off the island — Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Claire's baby, and Sun — are trying to get back to the island, everyone left on it is jumping around in time. We find out that Locke has gone into the past and visited with old island people (the original Others?) to make sure that certain things in the future happen. Mostly he talks to a guy named Richard, who never seems to age. In fact, Richard once visited Locke in foster care when Locke was a boy. Circles!

The crew from the boat turns out to be mysterious indeed but not all that bad. Basically they are working for the bad Widmore guy, trying to get Ben, but they're also scientifically curious about the island. A scientist named Daniel Farraday knows all about the time travel and teaches everyone a lesson about having a Constant — something in the present to cling to in case you get stuck traveling in time. If you don't have a Constant you die of time sickness, which may or may not be the disease thing that the crazy Danielle lady said killed all her friends.

Danielle finds her daughter, now a teen being raised by Ben, only to get killed. Then Alex gets killed by bad soldiers from the boat and Ben is super mad. Locke has also been having weird meetings with this mysterious Jacob, who's now taken on the form of... Jack's dead dad! What's going on?? Nobody knows. Basically lots of forces are all vying for control of the island and our castaways are stuck in the middle. After many hijinx, Jack gets the original six (minus the baby) to come back to the island with him. The only strange snag? In the future, Locke is dead. Ben goes off island and kills him, making it look like a suicide. The island is traveling wonkily in time because in order to get off the island, Ben went down into a mine shaft or something and turned a giant donkey wheel, which made the whole island disappear. Disappear into the past, that is.

Sawyer and Juliet have carved out a nice little life in the '70s for themselves, working for the Dharma Initiative and increasingly letting go of their off-island lives. All that is disrupted when the five folks come back to the island and start mucking things up. Jack is determined to prevent that big Dharma-killing thing called The Incident, convinced that that will correct the whole course of history and thus prevent Oceanic 815 from ever crashing on the stupid island in the first place. All this weird time-loop theory abounds, and season five ended last May with Juliet maybe blowing up a nuclear bomb while lying near-death at the bottom of a well and we don't know if it was successful in correcting the time warp or not.

We also see a wayyyy long ago flashback of a man named Jacob and a mysterious other fellow talking about things. The man dressed in black, who goes unnamed, says he wants to kill Jacob. And he succeeds! In a weird way. Basically Locke's corpse was brought back to the island with Jack and crew, and ended up in the island in the present day. A crew of mysterious people who were on the same plane that brought Jack back, but who weren't sent back to the '70s like Jack and Kate and Hurley were, take the corpse while also being led around by... Locke. So Locke is both dead and alive! Or is he? Turns out that Locke really *is* dead, it's just the man in black's spirit pretending to be Locke. The fake Locke gets Ben to kill the real Jacob in the base of a giant and crumbled Egyptian-esque statue and so we don't really know what any of that means.

Claire has disappeared for an entire season, we suspect her to be dead, but we're told she's coming back. She too may be an island ghost. We don't know if all the different timelines are going to meet up, but I suspect they will. We still have to figure out the true nature of the island and why the castaways are so important to it. Couples have still to be reunited (Jin & Sun, especially) and many questions remain unanswered. The time-travel savvy Faraday has been killed — by his own mom, in the island past, who is dating a younger version of the bad Widmore guy — so we can't ask him. Desmond the Scottish Odysseus has reunited with his Penelope, but has decided to go back to the island to help. I don't remember if he made it back yet or not.

AND THAT IS WHAT I REMEMBER. Are you intrigued? Or just confused.

Richard Lawson is a writer and blogs for Gawker.com

Whatever

2010-01-29T03:25:00.000-06:00

I haven't had much to say this week, even with all that has happened.

I mean, basically I understand that we only get what we ask for, and when you try to do what you think is right for you... Well, these days

Shit.

I don't even have the energy right now.

Monday: To Be Continued...

2010-01-25T10:51:00.000-06:00

Let me clear my travel schedule and get to where I gotta go for today and then I'll talk to ya'.

Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said

2010-01-18T09:21:00.008-06:00

I'm actually not here today. I'm out of the office early, making things happen. My weekend was as busy as today will be for me. I hope you make today a day of service... There is so much to do.

I am grateful and amazed in the service of my brother and elder Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his quest for service and sacrifice in his works to set us straight on how poor people AND people of color are to be treated. Already sacrificing any earnings from writings and recordings, his own ready-made pastoralship, his family and any endorsements he could have had if he would have just stayed either in Atlanta at his father's church or in Montgomery, Alabama... His influence travels greater than any other person could have if given a billion dollar marketing machine and countless commercial appeal because his thoughts and ideas given to overcome the struggle are timeless and his thoughts are the absolute truth, and it didn't cost a damn thing to hear or read any part of the message.

It only took understanding of self and an open heart to know that he spoke truths in a time that did not want them to be spoken to the masses of the world unless it was filtered and it's message neutered by whatever powers that were. Control was and still is key. The haves these days still want continued control and it is NOT money that influences minds to speak truth to power. Well, you know that that is...

Right?

Lord, I hope so.

He traveled and risked, eventually giving his life in getting his message inspired by Christ's teachings, Grandi's philosophy on life and non-violence and countless others in an effort to let us know that all of us regardless of geographic location were free, equal and deserved proper treatment and placement in the standing of the world.

As a man who is the age that he was when he was taken from this realm I can say with total understanding that I know what was being said and what he was attempting to do with his ministry. He had gone global... No, universal. The Poor People's Campaign was where he was really trying to go. The American Civil Rights Movement was just a launch pad...

So in tribute, I give you Jay Smooth and his video doctrine of the day:

Y'all be easy and get out the house, Ya Dig?

Reminders - Re New

2010-01-13T22:58:00.003-06:00

1-12-10 5:07pm

A while ago I mentioned that I wouldn't get too political here because I knew that for the first time in ages more of us felt engaged. Yes, it has lots to do with the last general presidential election, but our interests have been peaked in past mid-terms as well as some hawt-ass mayoral and gubernatorial races since Clinton's first ride. I had the ability to vote and have participated since George HW Bush held office, and back then seeing as I wore the uniform of a serviceman politics became that much more important to me but... I was born and raised not far from where the 'machine' was created...

All my life, I never had to be reminded that I was black. At times when I started drinking beer, finding places to partake in pool, darts and bowling the fact that I was black would fade and I would have a good damn time. I've had white family members and friends since coming out of the womb, and as much as I tried not to downplay my blackness folk just kept reminding me how difficult it was being black.

I was always told that it was understood

Shit.

1-13-10 10:47pm

As I was typing this yesterday, I was bombarded with the news of the earthquake in Haiti.

Earlier today in yet another attempt from 'certain folks in the know' to remind me just how black and ugly I am regardless of how much I try to live my life as just an average cat, how unholy and cursed people that look like me seem to be or always seem to be involved with... These certain, not dwindling fast enough motherfucking racist-ass buffoons like Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh open their mouths and speak some of the sickest, insidious shit I've heard in quite a long time.

I ain't even mad though. I just waited and got this:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This I knew as a part of family tales, general historical accounts and my education. I know how beautiful we are and I recognize the contribution of all of my cousins to my legacy. Just because some fear it, turn their heads from it and try to suppress it... It will grow stronger. We will grow stronger.

We will renew
We will rebuild
We will continue to expand

In spite of you and your acolytes.

.

Happy Ocho Cinco Football Playoff Weekend!!!

2010-01-09T16:01:00.002-06:00

My whole week consisted of HTML, CSS, Perl, content editing three new domains, college football bowl games and even more web site stuff. I'm currently into the AFC championship game with more football on the way later and of course tomorrow.

Earlier this week, I interviewed a few candidates and consulted two other business owners in the industry as well as tuning in and keeping touch with 2 contacts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.

It's like, I'm sitting right here and can't get to posting anything on my blog. Oh well. 3 domains down with a couple more to go. This is not easy money doing what I do but enjoyable. I just can't see why other folks... Never mind. You can lead a horse to water...

Happy Ocho Cinco Playoff Football Weekend to everyone!

Bubbles

2010-01-06T08:48:00.009-06:00

I remember the first time I realized that everybody lived in their own bubble.

The bubbles these days I figure are less transparent and thicker than they were in the past. It seems that everybody lives in some sort of opinionated bubble that controls their actions and hide their true feelings, leaving less interpretation of their true feelings and intent for us on the outside. With the way things are going these days I'm pretty sure that we'll get to a point where someone's bubble will be just that impossible to pop.

While I hope not because some need popping. Sometimes. Certain folk.

Thing is, what I realized that we can live collectively or in individual bubbles and say and do anything we want and feel, thinking that it doesn't affect other people or their situations. when encapsulated, we say (shout) things reflective of undue either influence or what has been indirectly taught right, wrong or otherwise. Influence as to who we're suppose to be, things we're supposed to like and what we need to do have been unleashed in very heavy doses. In the past couple of decades some very unreliable, unproven and outright wrong folk with resources still push us to run with their limited knowledge.

What's basically happening these days is you have certain factions of individuals from certain places that believe certain things that promote outwardly that folks live inside their bubble of ideology. There are representatives that actually come outside the bubble to make announcements, broker deals and deliver edicts down from some mountain so that folks and groups in other bubbles can hear and relate. The reactions to the views and opinions from folks in said other bubbles used to be complementary with counterthought and reason. Problem is nowadays, so many people who cocoon themselves in these collective thoughts and fears have darkened the inner walls of their bubbles meaning they can't see or refuse to see someone else's bubble or for that matter the entire world around them.

There is no transparency.

For the most part, there are individuals that exist on this planet that don't live in a bubble. They attempt to communicate, trade commerce, thoughts, ideas and passions with the rest of the world and they look forward in all things that they do. So if you're trying to live your life outside of a bubble is there really a way to be complementary to the people who choose not to see outside of their own glass houses? Do you snub them if they snub you? Are you an intercessor?

You see, I'm known to be a very hard person. I can cut you off and never deal with you again if I believe you're on some bullshit. That method actually works for me because if you into living in your own bubble and there's a lot that will be said and done that would never be able to penetrate the walls of your cocoon, and the sound of mine and other voices regurgitating new ideas, thoughts, and concepts will never bounce off the inner walls and reverberate meaning you choose not to hear us... Never being left alone with a your thought/our thought combo, knowing that one thought is not enough... Then I have to jettison your ass from my existence. Time cannot stand still for those not inspired enough to not live life and experience all that The Creator has given us. This life is too precious.

Poverty, terrorism, lack of or missed opportunities, punctuality, disease and prejudice can no longer be used as an excuse on this planet, in these days. We've already overcome, you just haven't acknowledged it.

So me not being a nice person pretty much translates into me saying and doing things that could definitely pop someone's bubble. It causes them for at least a temporary moment to live in the reality of the now because I'm one of them folks that don't get much benefit from holding my tongue. I really try my best to exist in the truth of the now and for some people that reality is just a little too damn harsh. Sucks for them. They hide under the bed when it comes crashing down on the roof of their bubble, pops it, and then their comfort level immediately reduces to the point of panic and they shy away.

WTF? Really? Now? Most of my peers are near or over 40. I thought we were grown.

We shouldn't be relegated to live such lives, but we do.

So I guess my real question is: when in the bloody hell will some of us choose to live outside of our bubbles and what happens when someone else's truth becomes or already is a part of our reality? Because of that, what do we do when the bubble pops? What type of adjustments are needed to live in the reality of now? Why will we ever think of constructing a new bubble with much darker windows and better soundproofing (with a sturdier shell) just so we can't see and hear the reality of our now?

Can our family friends and loved ones be that damn afraid? Well, the answer is yes.

And now that a lot of us have realized while we were inside of the bubble playing with ourselves, fearful of what the truth of time brings... We've missed a whole hell of a lot. Older age, missed opportunities, and lost loved ones over time teaches us that we should be more appreciative of what's going on right now and that we need to get the hell out of these bubbles and just live and take what the universe gives us.

So my first bubble popping statement to a couple of people that are very close to me that read this blog is:

Your ass is getting old. You haven't done what you said we're going to do and you promised. Your window is closing. How long do you think I'll wait? You've only rewritten the plan all those times because you're stalling - you're afraid to execute. You're so afraid of failure that you won't even try and I'm getting ready to walk away.

POP!

Damn bubbles.

Half Naked Monday Mornings

2010-01-04T00:11:00.000-06:00

Okay...

It's Sunday night/Monday morning. Incense burning, a bottle of merlot down, working on on the caberenet sauvignon...

And I'm feeling GOOD.

I'm waiting for a major announcement concerning my business venture.

Everybody is healthy and on point.

And project M.A.B. is in full effect.

More later.

.

Post #611 - December 30, 2009

2009-12-30T17:39:00.002-06:00

I knew I was supposed to do something today...

Whatever.

I'll get to it and make that happen tomorrow.

I don't really get into capitalizing on end of/beginning of the year things. I really try to self analyze and adjust whenever I can. Not that resolutions and such are a bad thing, I'd rather make adjustments now as opposed to putting things off for a particular date. If things need fixin', then get to that post haste whatever it may be. I guess I just have more of a value placed on right now.

I do want to express admiration, respect, sorrow, shock and surprise on the things that happened over the last 364 days that made up 2009. It was a year of, well... Everything. I mean, anything that could have happened good or bad in the field of politics, pop culture and for some personal matters happened. I don't think we'll see or experience anything like 2009, and I believe that's both a good and a bad thing.

I promise not to be long winded. I'm really not up to my BlogSista, The Original OldGirl LadyLee to cuss at me never no more. I couldn't take that again, nevertheless in the same week! I'll speak my piece and then g'wan on out the side door, cause' I have things to to tomorrow.

As for tonight, CORPORATE TRAINING!!! The suits from corporate want to inform us on what's going on for master dealers and authorized resellers (as well as franchisees) before CES (Consumer Electronics Show - Las Vegas, baby!) starts next week. I can't wait. We got new stuff!

Y'all be easy.

Turn over every now and then, okay? You're roasting.

PINK CHAMPALE!!!!

,

Please Click Here To Read The Terms And Conditions

2009-12-28T11:11:00.003-06:00

Laying around.

It's what I've been doing since I've been discharged from the hospital. Just laying around. I haven't touched my sites (and no one noticed, well except for clickbank, commission junction, ebay and paypal), went out once last week on my wife's bornday to watch her devour a big-ass steak and avoided all things holly, jolly and 'holy' by getting some much needed sleep. The sleep part came against my will as I adjusted to these meds I got (that I'm no longer taking) by gaining lethargy and losing the arrhythmia that was spinning me out of control.

But I knew there is always a better way.

I feel a little different and am a little angry because I went from ACE inhibitors to a beta-blockers in less than a week. The fact that certain medical professionals work from the physicians desk reference and not from case studies and experience thru history is a sick thing. Fortunately, i'm doing this on my own. My wife and mother (who is a medical professional) convinced me to go to the hospital, and while I'm grateful in them getting me to the ER to save my life (because I was headed there - you know), I am very disappointed in their assessment that medical doctors are able to 'fix' things in one's life with the stroke of a pen.

They cannot and never will be able to.

So let's see... I didn't have a heart attack but I am in the possession of THREE drugs given to humans to maintain the heart and central nervous system after suffering a myocardial infraction...

And I didn't have a stroke or aneurysm BUT there is pressure on certain parts of my brain that leave me with debilitating headaches that I continue to have, even in my right now (except for when I do this one thing AGAINST doctor's orders)...

Second opinions, prescriptions, advice and game planning for 'this stage' in my life...

What stage? I am grateful to be the son of a radiologist and the nephew of a doctor and and a nurse as well as having a sister that's a nurse as well. I know the lingo, can read the transcripts and handwriting and actively participated in the conversations involving me, my workups and my scans. Other than elevated BP moderate cholesterol and a weird acting pancreas, I came in very damn healthy with a slight chance of stress. And I know what that little 'chance' of stress can to. So I adjust. Hell, I've adjusted a while ago and it has me under 240 pounds and active for the first time since I left the military (1993). Oh, did I mention that I messes with the herbacuticals and such?

Whatever, man. Ain't nothing wrong that non-medicine and common sense (with a whole lot of sleep, I'm back to two hours a night again. I know I gotta stop that but... Whatever, no excuses) and a whole lot of herbacutical living cannot cure. I'm already on top of that. I'm not worried about things and I am so ready to die (think Klingon, dammit!) if need be. I hear the universe and it mentions my name for some other stuff right now in this moment. That's the one thing I bothered not to explain to folks calling last week with concern. The one thing we have never been in control of is when our number will be called. I thanked them for calling and emailing and told them not to worry, I've done all that I've wanted to do and all that I can in history, and that I still will continue down my path with whatever time I have left, regardless of how much it turns out to be.

I am not dying, but ask my dad, cousin and a few friends, all they could do is suggest that I go even deeper in drug culture so that I can have a better quality of life. On who's terms? Wow. I love em' and I love their programmer even less. Couple that with the events of last week and there were some folks hemming and hawing over a little bit of nothing all in the name of something else. Something that doesn't even have anything to do with me. Never has.

For the record, I am going to keep doing the same things I have been doing before I had my 'incident' a week and some change ago. I don't plan on stopping doing what I love. I have found my niche and actually plan on relentlessly increasing my workload as well as increasing the amount of travel I have been doing. I just hope folks can keep up with me. Now, I will get some more sleep because I have to perform and I needs my rest, but not by much. The key is to do what you want and enjoy doing it without letting things, events and people stop you.

This was a road bump, more of a marker on my life's map. It gave me an indication on how many miles per gallon I was getting with my current brand of fuel, how efficient my engine was performing. That and I needed to stop to get an oil change and a lube job. I got all of that. The engine still runs and everything else is in perfect working order. I guess with the perpetual Roman calender (among other things) changing, folks get themselves all worked up in a lather over change and renewal. Funny, these are the same folks that try to convince you that man-made and designed things aren't that good for you sometime in March after the weight of the change and renewal mandate they put on themselves usually turns out to be somewhat unsuccessful.

Fail to plan, plan to fail I say. And for all of those with a plan, I salute you. Good looking out!

I no longer get frustrated with those types of things. When people bring em' up I just nod my head and keep moving in my direction. Some folk still stare with a sideways glare, shake their head and believe that I'm not listening. I am. I'm just keeping notes most times on what not to do. I know that my family, friends and those doctors that spent a few days trying to convince me to try out a litany of drugs to see which one my body will eventually adjust to all mean well.

I hope. I did encounter energies hoping that I would curl up and die though, but that's expected.

Even though we all know that some of my family and medical team's adoptive ways and un-natural creations will forever alter the path of me doing my thing, I still think they were thinking of my best interests.

Because of who I am, I can't live like that. I will not.

Not a hard question to answer I guess. Live life on someone else's terms, prolonging what seemingly would be torture, denying choice and experiencing slavery (products, services and efforts) or die doing your own thing, choosing to do what it do according to you and living life according to your own definition. If I live 40 more years in some drug induced haze using their GPS to get to some other destination, I would be miserable of being that person and would eventually end it all out of shame because I lived in a realm of cowardice. If I die tomorrow because I discontinued the bullshit the doctors gave me last week, then life has indeed been good. I am proud of where I am right now.

I'm still free. I just wish that everyone had the ability to see what freedom is and quit comparing it to material wealth and competition with others. Living life like that seems like a waste of time when you think about it that way, huh?

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Humbug Revisited. I See You.

2009-12-24T13:44:00.008-06:00

I thought Jay Smooth really put this into perspective.

Normally I'd be long winded about stuff, but it's our wedding anniversary among other things

Be easy y'all.

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