Back in Buff

Yo...back in Buff yall...I got a good 6 days of shenanigans, including the parent's 30th anniversary.

Btw: Ernesto was corny.

Floridian Roadkill

I can recall complaining about the weird way that Florida's magnificent wildlife can get mucked up by the state's corny and ignorant population explosion. It resulted in things like seeing some tropical bird ambling down the median of a major thoroughfare, as some 16-wheeler whizzes by, exhaust and all.

Those type of sights were always simeautaneously annoying and sad. I mean, what's really what?

Nothing prepared me for what I saw the other day, though…

A swan lying as a crumpled heap in the middle of a dark subdivision street: call it Floridian Roadkill.

I saw it, got out the car, inspected the lifeless mass and really wanted to hurt something – and I’m the furthest thing from an animal rights activist. Don’t get me wrong, I treat God’s creation with respect. I’m a huge proponent of that. But I’m not too good to poor a packet of salt on a slug.

But to see a swan or flamingo or – whatever it was – dropped like Roy Jones Jr. in the middle of the street was one of the most unsettling and enraging sights, yet. ESPECIALLY because I called it. I had predicted it just a few moments earlier. I turned off Spring Hill Drive onto Waterfalls Dr. and had to stop my car for close to 20 seconds and let this molasses-moving swan high-step across the street. And I barely saw this bish. Goodness knows that some blind senior wasn’t gonna catch a glimpse of this tropical beauty until their luxury car’s front bumper had knocked the heartbeat out of it.

Two wack things about where I live are that no neighborhood has sidewalks and no neighborhoods ever have sufficient streetlights. It’s annoying. What this brings about are terribly narrow streets (you actually can’t park on streets in suburban Florida, you need to find unowned swaths of brown grass and park their, which usually involves you scraping your car under some thorny-branch tree, stepping out into knee-high weeds and some tropical bugs crawling up your shin, then leg, then nesting between your scrotes for the evening).

Aside from the terribly narrow streets, everything is pitch black. I’m just not used to that. I guess, in a city, if things were that dark, crime would spike to levels more depressing than they already are. I remember in Buff, I’d be walking back from the Boys Club or my niggas’ crib on Donaldson and if even ONE street lamp would be out, the neighborhood would seem like something out of scene in a movie where a crime was about to happen.

Here in Fla, though, no street lamps (or just really short and sparse street lamps, I guess, would be more accurate) just means that you have to drive slower.

But, some lead-foot geezer that couldn’t differentiate Michael Duncan Clark and Andy Dick in the broad daylight – so street lamps for them means that something or, Jah forbid, someone is getting that can tapped.

Anyways, when I passed the swan I remembered cursing the narrow streets and street-lamp scarcity, then driving by and saying out loud, “Watch that bird be knocked out when I come back.”

So I rolled on, made my little night visit to my landlord Mary (her health is on and on, in case you were wondering, but she’s doing OK. I’ll miss her when I move in a few months). I stayed at Mary’s for about 15 minutes as she called other seniors “old women” and chatted about her upcoming night out with the girls, at a fish-fry in some trailer park way out in the middle of nowhere two counties north of us (which I, of course, already consider the middle of nowhere).

Anyways, Mary had her cash, we had caught up, I gave her a hug and rolled out. Right out the driveway, left onto Waterfalls. About 45 seconds later, I’m coming up on the busy intersection of Spring Hill and Waterfalls, the point where u leave the neighborhood of identical houses with no sidewalks and turn onto the busy street with a bunch of shopping centers. But about 20 yards before I get to the stop light, I have to swerve out of the way of a pile of angel-white feathers.

I KNEW IT!!!! Curse the ridiculous state and its irresponsible residential planning!

I mean, wtf kind of roadkill is a gd swan?!!!! I know I said I was gonna quit with the euphemisms, but ish!!

Look, roadkill is not a foreign concept to anyone, let alone me. You see all type of rodents strewn all over the road when you make trips for Buff to Rochester or Syracuse or NYC on I-90.

In Buff, we have nice size rats, not NYC rates, but some serious jokers that gnaw thru our garbage cans and can be brazen at times, like “walking”, not scampering, across the street at night.

I kinda took pleasure when I’d see them laid out. Sometimes u might even catch some mangy dog on the side of Bailey Ave, with blood seeping from his guts. It happens.

But a swan?

It’d bound to get worse, because one of these days a human is gonna get hit. The youngsters in my hood have the habit of skateboarding or merely wandering the streets at night. They don’t always wear bright clothes.

The day is coming.

With Apologies to Mel-Mel and Dubb

...and anyone else that wondered what's the deal w/ The Kid. Can't call it. But I gotta lotta ish to expound on. No revelations, just ish. Gimme a minute.

I'm in South Florida this weekend. I hope to get to South Beach, hit Lincoln or Ocean, pull out the lap-drop and get to gemmin.

Mel, I got u, baby...

Three Cleaners And One Mop

A couple months ago, my niggas Trav emailed us a link to a Patrice O'Neal stand-up clip on youtube.com. It was hilarious throughout, but he had a segment on immigrants and the way the carry out their jobs. He spoke of this Mexican cleaning-lady at hotels that disregard "I'm Busy" signs or "Come Back Later" tags that you hang on the door. He said the Mexican ladies will continue to kock and when you open the door -- to a crack mind you -- to let them know to come back, they will literally try squeez through.

"I must clean room, I MUST clean room."

That was so comical to me...but comical in a very real way. These immigrants make it their life's mission to handle their biz and nothing will stop them. I HAVE to clean this office space. It's rich stuff.

Because their labor is cheap and they carry on like God will judge them if they do not clean with 189% of their all, immigrants, in a most of the country, have displaced everyone as the primary cleaners.

Except Florida.

Especially areas like mine. Just far enough away from a city to be a real suburb so you find pockets of true, rural America; but close enough to still be considered within the metro area and attract migrant workers.

Here, in West Central Florida, within arms reach of Tampa Bay, you have three different types of people that inhabit cleaning jobs: Latinos that don't speak English; poor negros between the ages 35-55; and retired seniors.

And know that I mean this in absolute terms. You will not find any other demographic cleaning piss off a urinal besides the three very specific groups I just mentioned.

You will not find an English-speaking Latino wiping down a window in West-Cen Florida. Doesn't happen. I mean, why, hire them? That'd break the stereotype. I mean, where's the utility or convenience in being able to actually communicate the following, "Please don't throw out my 20-oz. cup of coffee that has exactly 18 ounces of coffee and is burning your plam and making you wince. Please leave that $2.50 product on my desk, so that I can enjoy my purchase." Communication is not practical, so I can understand building managers insistence on hiring only Hispanics that know more Latin than they do Glish.

You will not find a retired black or a young black. Retired blacks, most likely to be less financially able than their white counterparts, obviously don't need an extra paycheck. Their caucasian brethern with pensions and snow-bird houses up North need these jobs much more. And why would anyone hire a young black to keep anything tidy? Seriously. No BS, no sarcasm, but that'd be the most defeatus hire ever.

And you will NEVER find an able-bodied caucasian working as a cleaner unless you're in a blue-collar town (Buffalo, Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh) and the cleaning jobs are unionized and run by the ethnic-whites. If it's the case of an ethnic-white making $20+/hr, then you might see an able-bodied caucasian cleaning. Otherwise, this is something that will NEVER happen. Even in states like South Dakota, they'll go grab a drunk Indian, sober him up with some Folgers and hand him mop.

No-glish Latinos, 35-55-year-old coloreds, retired caucs -- these are the ONLY groups. There is no empirical evidence to support this, other than my infallable and omnipresent observations.

Now, this is getting back to Patrice O'Neals assertion that the West Coast Mexicans clean like their lives depend on it. That's sort of the case here in West-Cen Fla, too. In fact, each group has unique steezes to how they perform on the job and it each comes down to their differing senses of entitlement to the American Dream, a slice of the capitalism-pie...and because they process this entitlement differently, the exhibit it in differing forms. Thankfully, all three different types of workers are all over Hernando County..in fact, three very inidcative examples get paychecks at my Gold's Gym.

Dig...

Lucy is a Latina. She works evening. Most importantly she works hard. Lucy is the type to wipe off seats, armrests and handles almost immediately after the use. She LITERALLY runs over to machines when they're vacated and does her squirt-wipe move. It's a perfect cleaning motion because her rag is hitting the surface almost immediately as the drops of disinfectant hit the surface. You might find yourself wondering if she's manic, a neat-freak or obsessive compulsive. I mean, before I had gotten hip to her cleaning steez, I just remember taking my time getting up from one of those ab-crunch machines and feeling this presence almost hovering over my back. It was Lucy, waiting to clean my nigger-sweat off the crunch machine. She was so eager to clean my sweat -- even though I was planning to do this myself -- that she semi-brushed me away from the rag laying next to the bench and knocked over my water in the process. Which is when, of course, she picked up my bottle and superhamingly-quick threw it in the nearby trash. At which point I tried to communicate that she'd done something wrong. Which, of course, was first met with a blank-stare, only to be interrupted by the sight of someone vacating another machine, to which she sprinted and began wiping IMMEDIATELY after the patron had just finished wiping it down.

This woman does not leave the lockerroom when I enter. She keeps at her job. When she enters the lockerroom she usually shouts, jarringly-loud, "HELLO". That's when I say something or another patron will yell something -- and because we know she can't understand us, it's usually something unintelligle that we yell in respnse, something like, "Someone is here!" -- she typically ignores these masculine voices and sets up shop...unless someone is naked, which has happened before. In that instance, she hunched her shoulders, put her hand over her mouth, set her bucket down and paced the hallway until she felt she could no longer deal with the fact that she wasn't cleaning the lockerroom.

I thought, "Wow. This woman is just way too manic about this. It's more than committment and work-ethic. She has an emotional and social problem. Maybe she's stricken with several phobias."

But one day, I was the last one to leave and headed to my car the same time she did. She was whipping some busted 1987 Cavalier or something and this thing was FILTHY! I mean, DESPICABLE!

"How can this neat-freak/germiphobe even last .02 seconds in that car without cleaning it to a pristine sparkle?" I thought this out loud as she was opening up her door to the Langfield Projects.

But that's when it hit me: this woman is just really that committed to doing her job well, so she can send money back to her fam keep the water on.

Immigrant-Americans (new demo-term for u) seem to have their own sense of entitlement -- they feel entitled to pursue the American Dream. It prolly goes something like this, "I, as human being, am entitled to living a suitable life and sometimes I ain't gettin at it in my native country, so I'm gonna go to America, where I'm not entitled to ISH, but if I work hard enough, I'll be entitled to fair pay and fair treatment." That's general and surface, but about as accurrate as a nigga like me can get at...I'm not an immigrant-american, but you can somewhat get the idea of how the human spirit is working in these circumstances.

But that's how this group generally behaves. They almost end up over-cleaning. They invade your space to keep cubicles/machines/elevators clean. They throw out things not meant to be thrown out. They can even sometimes inspire brief panic, when they're frantically sprinting somewhere. It's like, "Wait, is there a fire somewhere? Why is this portly Dominican woman running-top speed, with flopping-breast? Oh...she's picking up that dirty paper-plate that just fell off the edge of the garbage can...gotcha."

Mr. Sir's sense of entitlement leads him to do other things. Mr. Sir is what I call the 50-something black man that cleans at the gym. I, in fact, only know he's a cleaner because I asked one of the trainers once. Because, for all I know, he could be sort of like the Norm of the Spring Hill Gold's Gym.

Instead of cleaning, he does things like (LITERALLY) park his rear-end on one of the low-seated excersize bikes and watch television. I'll walk by him on the way to a treadmill and he'll point at the TV, like, "Look, brotha, the Knicks is on!" Or he'll lean against the credenza in front of the wall-to-wall windows and check out the 3-on-3 pick-up games or oggle the women jazzercizing.

Once, he was leaning against the railing, watching Making The Band...I was a few feet away. One of the gym-workers asked him to check the lockerroom. He reacted in subtle-exasperation. Then he eyes started roaming. He was searching for something. That's when he found me, and shook his head a bit, as if to say, "Can you believe these white-folks, youngblood? Got me workin' up in this bish." I felt like saying, "And I better not catch your grown a$$ watching television on the clock again."

It was a classic black moment. We like to seek-out sympathizing blacks in those type of situations, thinking that common heritage will lead the other black to disregard the fact that were being derelict in our responsibilities. It can be a problem.

Ultimately, Mr. Sir and many of the other black-cleaners I've come acrossed all have similar dispositions -- they don't really wanna clean. Their senses of entitlement basically say, "My 40 acres and a mule is you giving me this paycheck while I do other things, like relax." They want that paycheck "for the price of on the house". And the fact that immigrants are now inhabiting that bottom-ring of the American social caste system is making their sense that they're entitled to not have to work as a cleaner for a paycheck is becoming heightened.

I told you before that senior citizens have the oddest jobs in Florida. I mean, you're liable to catch a 70-year-old folding clothes at Urban Outifitters. I'm serious.

Nothing is worse than the seniors that take your money at toll booths. First of all, there are huge signs broadcasting their meager pay: "We Pay Our Toll Collectors $6.50/hr."...or something to that effect.

But its always kind of depressing to be passing through a booth at 2:30am and handing some wrinkly-hand senior name Sue your 50 cent. They always look sad and depressed. You gotta think that they don't believe they should have to do this. That 1.) US Social Security nd 2.) their children should not allow them to have to take dirty quarters for 8 hours a day.

Plus...I mean, they're white. That has to really get their bloomers in a bunch, dampen their diapers.

White people like to play the self-righteous role. They like to point out other ethnicities deviant senses of entitlement and draw conclusions that indict the other groups as lazy/delusional/bad human beings. Their immigrant stories and boot-strap lectures are tiresome, duplicitous and hypocritical. White people have their own senses of entitlement. America was built on this sense and still operates based on the sense that WASP's should rule the world. Yes, that's boiling something very complex down to something very simple (even a little innacurrate), but u get the gist.

The seniors that clean Gold's Gym feel like they shouldnt have to work. They hate the fact that they need to work to maintain their two houses and such. They also feel that since theyre forced to work, they are entitled to your FULL cooperation. That means don't sweat at the gym. That means, don't put your hands on any glass at the office-building.

Any action that creates work for these geezers is met with the most soul-piercing exasperation and dissapointment possible. Their reactions, because it's always mixed with this maternal-paternal condescension, can make you feel sort of stupid and worthless.

And the seniors will even throw their jobs back on you, because -- ideally, they shouldn't have to lift a finger.

Grandma that works at Gold's will actually ask you questions like, "are you going to keep spilling your water?" And the patron will looked a little puzzled, like, "I can't be worried about harmless water falling on the floor as I'm jogging."

Grandma does alot of audible sighing if she has to wipe down a machine. If she needs to clean the lockerroom and you're still in it, she'll ask questions like, "well are you going to be in there for too much longer?"

Their words, actions, gestures, everything is colored with a disposition that says, "This is America. I'm white. I'm old. This is so not me."

Which begs the question: There's a latina, a black man and white senior cleaning the same office floor and a boss drops a mop down as says, "Someone needs to hit the pantry floor when everything is done."

What would happen?

The white senior would say, "I'm not cleaning up after those slovent young brats. Tell them to make sure they don't drop their dirty knifes with hippie-peanut-butter on the floor. My job description says nothing about being their mothers"

The black man offersa flippant smirk and says (sincerely excuse the language), "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit."

The latino woman grabs the mops and engulfs it with her arms and bosom like a mother-lion guarding her cubs.

Flav?

I know what y'all are sayin, "Twist, how is ya man Flav gonna have a whole 90 minute season premier and you haven't spit on it, yet."

I haven't seen it yet. Matta fact, didn't even know a new season was upon us. But trust that Flav is what I deem quality television.

Gettin' at the essence

You already know I'm a glish-gangsta, right? I do what I want to the english language. I do what I want with the english language.

Me and the crew...especially my crew, would constantly makeup phrases and terms for random things. Back when niggas were saying things were "of the hook", we were saying things were "out da gate." We refered to men as "emcees" as opposed to "dudes" and we called white women "cavegirls" (I'm not neccessarily proud of the former, but whenever somebody drops it as an oldie-but-goodie, it brings the house down).

Anyways, yesterday's blog got me to thinking about the way we use adjectives and the ripples.

Over the past 5 years, we REALLY started using nefarious words as compliments. When I say we, I mean young people.

Now, this is nothing new. My Pops' generation called tings "bad". And RUN let you know that it was "bad meaning good." Nasty has been a compliment for a while. That's just how glish goes in the neighborhood.

But our generation has taken it a step furth. Now, things are "dangerous", things are "murder"...and on and on.

In keeping with yesterdays post, let's continue adding "est" to these. But let's also go one step further, if someone gets to such an insane level, that they embody the adjective.

Like, not only is Dwyane Wade the dangerousest nigga on the court, he's so dangerous, that I believe he embodies "danger"...so I'm just calling him Danger. But this spills over into other bowls...Elzhi is not a dangerous emcee, Elzhi is danger.

Pitchers stuff is called filthy...so my nigga Fransisco Liriano the Dominicano is filth. His stuff is so filthy, he's essentially filthy.

Eva Mendez is not sexy, she's more than that -- she's sex.

I'm feeling strong about this.

New Glish

I just want to add a new word to our collective lexicons: "nutsest". And I'm doing it in this forum because I think slang has rendered the traditional tenets of the English language a bit archaic.

For instance, if a woman is more pretty than other pretty women, then we say she is the prettiest of the group, right?

If weirdo is more starnge than other screwballs, we say he's the strangest.

Well Gee was just tellin me about one of the new episodes of MTV Cribs, with one of the N'Sync dudes. Apparently he a bunch of features and aspects of the crib that were nuts. So I wanted to ask him what was the most nuts part of the crib. Now, English rules would force me to ask, "What's the nuttiest part of the crub."

But, see, nuttiest doesn't articulate, AT ALL, what I'm trying to get at by asking the question. I don't wanna know what was the cookiest part of the crib, I want to know what's the dopest/most extravagant/ridiculous part of the crib.

And I'm glish-gangsta. I take liberties in that way. So I used "nutsest"...and Gee rode with it like a rider.

You can also say "ridiculousest", "seriousest", "gangsta'est"...New Yorkers are fond of saying things are "nervous", so they can "nervousest".

You have permission. Run wild with it.

10 Things I Hate About You (or white people)

I really like white people. And I mean that sincerely.

There. That was my, "I'm not racist, I have black friends" preface for this post. Because, as much as I like the caucasians, they do things that I find extremely annoying. This shouldn't be a surpirse to anyone. Not because I'm Vince, but because I'm human. And, most individuals that grow up in a certain culture will find idiosyncracies or ways of actions specific to other cultures to be annoying, irritating, sometimes unbearable. And sometimes we don't even know our culture-specific actions are annoying the snot of someone of a different ethnicity or culture...most of the time we just don't care.

Funny, but my old friend Jessica from high school messaged me on myspace a couple months back. This was our first communication in close to 10 years. She's white and was one of my favorite people to antagonize in high school, because she engaged me and always gave more benefit-of-the-doubt than I observed. In the message she said she remembered the fun we had during our daily debates, then added a parenthetic: "even if you used to frustrate me with you stereotyping." It could be me at breakfast with about six other white kids and i'd say, "You know what I hate about white people?" or "And, see, that's what I hate about white people."...and I'd usually follow that up with something that was either really shallow, purposely antagonistic, or trivial...but, it was still something that I hated -- or, more accurately -- something that annoyed me.

Now, I'd say 50% of the time they'd disregard whatever I said as goading-gibberish (I was, afterall, bestowed with the unenviable Senior Year tag of "Talks The Most, Says The Least")...but something tells me they took a lot of what I had to say to heart as well.

Like, for instance, take my nigga Jim D from Orlando. (He is, in fact, not a nigger at all. He's a white.) But we were at some rube of a bar on Robinson once and got into some type of racial discussion and Jim had a "You know what annoys me about black people?" moments. He said sometimes what black people think is whistle-blowing or voicing displeasure about legitmate gripes, can be misconstrued as straight-up complaining by him and the caucasians. He said it's frustrating for him because he thinks blacks can turn away caucs interested in upbuilding and proactive dialogue with their whining, complaining, belly-aching, moaning, etc.

That was the gist of it. I disagreed with him on 65% of what he was saying, mostly because I had a different take on the situation, but partly because he was a white and I always get concerned when a white expresses sentiments that even begin to lean toward the, "Stop whining, put on your boots and get to work like the immigrants of the 18th, 18th and 20th centuries."

But the fact that this sentiment was coming from a dude I considered a friend, I thought about it for a good portion of my drive back to Tampa. I recognized he had some points, but it also made me think to myself, "Watch how you voice displeasure about the American status-quo, because its not just some redneck or rich prick that might take it the wrong way." I don't why it took Jim, in a routine convo about routine social issues, to bring me to this epiphany. But it did. It was one of those glimpses from the other side...in this case, the side of a cauc.

This a long-winded way to get me to what is really like a public service for any white that might read this blog, because I've had it up to here with your use and spelling of slang words and terms.

I know, "How in the world...better yet, why in the world did he take that route to get to this destination?" I don't really have a good answer for that...I guess as I was typing I started thinking about 1.) how, from day one, white people have annoyed me and i've told them so and I hope that they've taken some of my diatribes and ramblings to heart...and 2.) i've been on the other side and it's actually helped me.

In this case, one of my three genie wishes would be "Help black people to speak and spell better english and help white people to speak and spell better slang." Are we allowed twofers?

Anyway...here's a list of some things that I need you whites to clean up...

-- It's "peops", not "peeps". First of yall, you dorks, we don't really use the term "peops" anymore. It's just not cool, probably because you started using it too much. But, just so you know, "peops" is short for "people"...I don't really know where anyone would get the idea to write "peeps"...and I see it in too many magazines, newspapers and online sites. What is a "peep"? Really. I mean, think about what you're writing.

Now, it's still aight to use the term "peoples". That's still cool. As in, "Yeah, I'm bout to head downtown and get up with my peoples." Or, "Yeah, I know Ray. That's my peoples."

You will not catch any non-goober under the age of 40 using the word "peops". If you use the phrase "peops" in any manner, other than for satirical purposes, you are sounding like a geek. Now, that is meant only for the rubes that think they're sounding hip and "with it" when they say things like, "Yeah, I just saw Ray downtown tossin' it up with his peops."

And please desist with spelling it as "peeps". This is not appropriate.

-- It is "sun", not "son". Yes, we know you watch Chapelle and you've taken to using this phrase a lot in your everyday language. It's OK with us. In fact, "sun" has become so engrained in black/urban lexicons that I feel there is no way whites can ever make us stop using it, no matter how dorkish they make it sound or no matter if we start seeing Old Navy ads that end, "It's the new style, sun!"

Now...onto the spelling. "Sun" became a popular way to refer to one another during the mid-90s. I'm gonna say that New York rappers like nigs in Wu-Tang and Nas and kats like that brought it to the urban mass. But it's a term rooted in 5% rhetoric. Five percenters are a sect of the Islamic faith. Long story short, the refer to men as heavenly bodies, namely "sun" and "god"...during the 90s, especially in the northeast, everyone used to call each other "god", it was us taking after the slang spoken on the east coast rap records and many of them either dabbled in 5% teachings or were very serious about it.

It is not "son". Period. My nigga Maese -- who is not a nigger, but a white -- seemed generally shocked to hear this and I'm pretty sure he still doesn't believe me....but I'm here to let everyone know: it is "sun"....now, if white people would stop saying "sun" like Dave Chapelle, then that would make my day...but I'm not holding my breath.

-- can white people please stop refering to their friends as "b*thches"? Can u do this for me, PLEASE! Can you stop saying things, like, "This weekend I'm going to Mexico, b*tcheeeeeeeezzzzzz!" Or, answering questions with, "Hells yeah, b*tcheeeeeezzzzzzzzz!" I mean, why can't you stop this? Why do you have to continue with it. And, am I the only one that is annoyed by this?

-- you whites MUST stop refering to people by their first inital or first syllable of their first name and first syllable of their last name. Why are you still doing this more than 3 or 4 years after it became the ultimate indication that a person was a schmuck? Why are calling someone name Shomar Casey and Shocase or Myron Dickinson as Mydick? Why do think thats cool? Can't you just call N-Bar, Norman or Mr. Barry or whatever?

Stop it.

-- And finally...you all stopped all the iz this and iz that, right? You're not still doing the izzo this and izzy that, right? Wait...no? You're still going? Why?

I'm spent.

Back at em...

Yo. Wuddup. Not cool for me to go a whole week without posting. Won't happen again anytime soon...I hope. The thing is, I had to send my laptop into our IT shop because it was gettin eaten up by some nasty viruses...and since I've procrastinated on koppin a personal home computer, that left me with just my work jump-off. And the entire time I've been at work this this week I've been doing one thing only: getting my ipod in order. That means actual work has suffer (though I maged to break about three news stories, but I do that ish in my sleep). The time I've spent fiddling with my pod took up the time I would usually spend puttin together a novel blog.

Most of you won't even kop this til Monday...but oh well. In the meantime, I need to get back to my pod, so I'll just update you on things that crossed my mind since we last rapped..

-- sheer enjoyment of seeing Lance Bass on US Weekly, announcing he's gay. How was that not hilarious to anyone. I don't care if you're a fag-hag, a homo-hater or boy-band-despiser, a culture-snob...whatever you are, how could you not see that huge mug on the mag while checkin out your goods at the grocery line and not erupt in laughter. If you didn't, then you're not a human.

-- My nigga Tony and I had a conversation about how HBO does not love us, even though we love it. "Us" being blacks. "We" being the crew, since I don't know if all blacks are HBO zealots like me and the crew. I don't wanna reveal my hand on this subject too much, because I wanna novel-blog about it, but the essence is that, HBO offers no quality black television, by black television, I mean, shows revolving around black characters. The wire might be my favorite show on earth, but if you mention that, then you're missing my point. In fact, let me just save the point.

-- Which got me to thinking, why is liberal media andthe majority of America not really outraged that Jon Stewart has never had a minority correspondent on the Daily Show? I'm intent on bumrushing an article into my paper on this subject...so stay tuned...

-- What's the deal in Lebanon? Scary stuff. And was the World War 4 talk merely knee-jerk apocolyptic BS or was it real talk?

-- I just used the "BS"...I'm actually gonna stop. Most of you know I don't curse. But the ish outta some euphemisms. I need to clear my language up. It's too risque, too obnoxious, too innapropriate...and I'm supposed to purport myself in a cleaner manner. I've strayed from this a lot over the past 3 years. I was at my 3-day religious convention last week and started thinking about some really real things. The introspection was kinda frightening at times. But I gotta make some changes before I get off on the wrong exit and start heading on the wrong route -- morally speaking. It's comin...

-- Did I tell u I finally kopped a pod. It got me to thinkin about music crews. More coming on that...

-- make sure you give this week's Jazz Survivor Series track a good listen. It's seminal stuff.