how christmas drove mj crazy

yeah, its been a while...

one of, if not, my absolute most favorite thing to do during the christmas season was to crank that jackson 5 christmas album. man, mj was doing his thing on there! but, i remember how crushed i was to find out as a pre-pubescent teen that mj didn't even celebrate the yuletide. i know that i was far deeper and more inquisitive at 12 than most of you are now, but if you didn't know mj was jehovah's witness so no christmas presents for him. how heartbreaking! singing about all that christmas cheer and he didn't even celebrate it. my theory is that this among all the other crazy things in his childhood f#$%ed him up real nice and smooth.

shout out to jo and kat jack for making mike the man he is today!

long time no see back at the tree

okay so its been a long time since i've been on here and a lot has changed. i look forward to keeping this thing up.

niggas

I try not to get to personal in this blog because I have another blog where I rant and rave about my feelings, but I am putting myself on front street.

I was talking with some friends today about how there is no word for hope and/or wish in the portuguese language. When my Portuguese teacher initially told me about the absence of "to hope," I became really sad and almost reverted back to childhood. It was kind of crazy. I started asking her about birthday candle blow outs and falling stars. She just told me that they people use "to want" instead of wish or hope. (Now, all of this is about to make sense in a second.) Everytime I think of the word hope I think of Black people's struggle. Everytime! Hope is what you do when you can't see how anything less than a miracle will get you what you are asking for. Hope is something spiritual while wanting is just kind of greedy. I want some new shoes. I want a bajillion dollars. You want things that you don't need. Often times we are hoping for things that will change our lives or save our lives. Anyway, I also think of the last words in "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou:

"Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave."

Alright, now that I have finished emoting. My little brother has a myspace page. He's 15, so I was expecting lots of vulgar language, machismo, stupid arse rap song, and scantilly clad teen girls. I got everything I was looking for and a BoNuS! He has some little questionaire on there and for heritage he put NIGGA.



My heart broke ya'll. On some seriousness, my heart crumbled into 10,000 pieces. As much as our people struggled and fought to retain something to pass down to us, some part of our identity detached from the opression of this country, my brother not only used the word to describe himself but listed it as his HERITAGE.


I have come undone

BGG

regurgitating the news

I suppose I regurgitate the news in each of these posts, however, I don't really want Harvard and the Washington Post to do that. If I got paid to write the news, I think I would take the time to publish something worthwhile. Well, for the 5 jillionth time it has been reported that Black American men have mortality rates similar to men in west African countries or so the Wash. Post reported. Harvard School of Public Health reported that both Black men and women in every income bracket die earlier than their white counterparts. However alarming this is, I am kind of numb to this since it has been reported over, over, and over again since 1990. It's almost two decades later and fortunately we all have about the same chance to make it to age 4 and even out of childhood, but after that its every race for themselves.

I have been getting more than a little annoyed at the way we announce our problems, research our problems, and still have the same problems. I (sigh) honestly don't understand why the richest country has the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world. Furthermore, I haven't a clue why we are the only country that can afford to have universal healthcare, but don't. It is absolutely mind boggling to me. I am guessing it goes back to my theory that this American government is just a front for the corporations.

wtf!

I usually don´t make two posts in one day, but this is absolutely absurd. CNN and every other major new source reported ''Newspaper journalists paid to blast Castro''. Paid by whom? You may naively ask yourself. Paid by the U.S. government of course. That's right ladies and gents a paid advertisement from the feds. So how reliable is the US press that's mostly owned by Time Warner, Viacom and a few others? The audacity of our government to justify a war ''to establish democracy'' in other countries when this type of crap goes on in the US.

This administration is an embarrassment. Its a front for corporations. Every word that has been publicly broadcasted by the media and the Bush admin. for the past 6 years has been for profit. The Senate released a report that proved BL (osama) and SH have nothing to do with each other. Hmmm, funny that they come up with this now that election season is upon us. Even funnier is that Michael Moore came to this same conclusion two years ago in ''Dude Where's My Country''. The MAN doesn't really want me to believe that Michael Moore has better intelligence than the FEDS. Nevermind logic because Dick Cheney went on freaking Meet the Press on Sunday and said that he hadn't read the Senate report. So much for those checks and balances.

Being an African American I was born with a healthy distrust of the government. I guess its from all those auction blocks and legalized lynchings of my ancestors.



But, come on this is effing ridiculous. Speaking of ridiculous, I am all the way in Brasil minding my business watching the BBC and look who gets international press time...None other than 50 cent. This guy is an international star. OMG, the horror! Its bad enough I heard him in the streets here in Rio, but I never thought that I would see this muheffer on the BBC World News.

Exhausted by the madness

BGG

well how bout that!

Brad Pitt tells Esquire magazine that he isn't gonna get married until gay folks can get married. AMEN! (in my southern church voice) Now, I am not gay, but I believe that all people should be afforded the tax break that marriage offers.

Cheers,
BGG

how cool would it be

now my normal sarcasm may be missing from this post because i was actually really surprised and happy to learn about the following. on saturday, somewhere in berlin, activists, politicians, and their moms (no not really, but it was a bunch of people) sat around a huge table and answered questions. (this is something an idealist like me dreams of, the opportunity to ask cornell west why he's so pro-black but never teaches at a black school...SWEET!)


the panelists answered questions submitted by anyone who posted a question at this really nicely designed (lol, GUG) website.

for the pessimists and the cynics: yeah the world may not have been radically altered by this big superfluous meeting of the minds, but it gives a young dreamer like me hope. under the patriot act, i thought people really forgot how to ask muh-f'in questions. i really thought that the american academians took a back seat to critical thought, but they were just waiting to sit at a big table in berlin and have their thoughts broadcast over the web. silly silly me!

bad words...well eff me!

Being the music junkie that I am, the tunes for my "Welcome back to the U.S./ Housewarming" must be on point. Since a variety of ages are expected to be in attendance, I needed to get working on finding the "G- rated" stuff. Word, so I am thinking ok ummm current and kid-friendly, I got this(((((((((((((((crickets))))))))))) Well there's ummm LUPE, oh...he says NIGGA, but then there's umm...Kelis, no um, Outkast... no Dre says eff, umm Cassie...no all her songs are about sex...Okay well, um that Kev Brown mixtape...no that's three years old. DAMN IT! There are no kid friendly, quality hip-hop anythings out there. I don't know what I was thinking its hard enough to find quality, but quality content without cussing like a sailor.



Well, that Chicken Noodle Dance is pretty curse word free!