The Rules

When I started this blog I set a rather strict guideline:no cursing. Oh I've skirted it a few times, walked right up to the edge, hell jumped off the deep end but brought myself back to righteousness when editing. I have, though, observed the rules to the best of my abilities. There is a cost, there are certain subjects that it is almost impossible for me to discuss without needing four to eight letters. 12 if I am deslanging one of my favorites.

I am an emotional being, cool when I can reign them it, caustic to vindictive when I can not. Thus when I read the Trayvon Martin verdict surprised? Please I grew up black,  and in New Jersey no less. I remember going from not noticing women holding their purses when I stood in line with them to being enraged when I noticed they even did it to 5 and 6 year olds.

Jason Whitlock, I don't agree with "crab in a barrel" philosophical positions because I believe most driven people are stronger than the forces determined to hold them back. You have to be, to be successful in anything the odds are so hard against you that it's laughable how we think a few negative Nelly's make a difference.  Say an athlete when of the probably million people their age playing basketball they may be amongst the 100 that get drafted. Jay is special though, it takes a huge amount of guts to not only disparage athletes but to also point at one of the most successful men in his field(Jay-z)and say "oh no these other best of the best in their genre shouldn't listen to him".

If I'm not mistaken Whitlock and Sean Carter (yes I'm using Hov's government I'd have used his other but its just a way to say Jay that ***** and well the rules) have been in "the media" one music,the other sports reporting since about the mid to late 90's. One has bought and sold his stake in a basketball team and the other is barely podcasting as a side hustle to his print reporting.

This crap about black on black crime, or brown on brown. Newsflash Whitey Bulger is a white guy, who mostly preyed upon white people in Boston. Convicted of 30+ counts out of 30+(I know the DA didn't get him for all but when the front numbers match I guarantee they were in the office popping bottles and twerking) when its white folks guess what: they just call it crime.

Now unexpanded I can touch on it and not break the rules. But if I go into detail yeah Jay Whit can suck a fatty and I don't mean a blunt.

The new black power is for black men thing, yeah explain to me again how you expect me to have a conversation when to start I have to be the bad guy? Who has the majority of the degrees again? Who is seen as angry and who a deadly predator who needs to be put down on sight?  This is not me saying sit down but step back,  idiocy doesn't have a gender or skin color. If you want an ally in a battle don't start off the fight by knifing them first just because they are closest and foolish enough to trust you.

This is stuff I have wanted to talk about but I know how I am. This stuff aggravates the hell out of me. People complaining not because they want to solve the problen but because they want their 15 minutes of reality tv fame.  Trolls wading into a heartfelt conversation just to see how quickly they can pour jet fuel on the fire.

Or sometimes its just people wanting to blame us all for the misdeeds of a few. They think by portraying a personal issue as a widespread epidemic it will make them feel less responsible. There was no chance they could have succeeded so its less about them having bad judgement/luck/karma/timing and more about the inevitable.  Lot less work involved if nobody could have done better.

Now in a sense this is cowardly. I could force myself to go into detail I just needed to release some of the pressure. But when every time you turn around its another tear your hair out moment. Or maybe just your day to day is feeling like 200 pounds of wet cement, joints straining, muscles screaming mentally you just say "no I don't want to obey the rules"

So dear readers I leave it to you, what topic do you want me to wrestle with just to see how it goes down. 

I know I took a hiatus, but damn really a tall can of spam for a brother

I don't know what I expected bouncing off of here like that. I've thought about blogging but then again I was like pffft "ain nobody got time for that," which really isn't true I could have made time I just mentally wasn't feeling it. I was too busy putting together baby bikes, changing diapers, tickling bellies and squeezing noses. I was trying out a few new mobile games, getting lost in the joys of TASTYKAKES in the mid south(yes I did dedicate a blog to that a while ago, but now they are here).

My twitter was dead save for a few random posts here or there. My tumblr pffft aptly named, and my no hold barred blog, I locked that in a cage and didn't step in a la the four horseman of old. Pacing around the outside with my thoughts cluttered, my voice masked, and my ideas fettered. I mean I have apps for this, a laptop, phones you name it. It was more than just plain laziness it was avoidance. I didn't want to do it. I mean yes of all the things that have happened lately I had something I wanted to say, but then it was like to hell with it. Why do I have to say it, why do I have to add my voice, I'm tired give somebody else a chance.

So I said nothing, I kept quiet, I didn't even pay attention to the comment notifications(they looked spammy, hell it wasn't like I had written anything since thanksgiving) but to actually come back and see the spam. I don't know how many of you are pet owners but you know that feeling when you have been gone from the house for a few hours (whether frivolously or for a valid reason), and you just know that whiskers or Buddy has taken it upon him or herself to have at your shoes, sheets, the trash, or the couch. Yeah I don't know about other bloggers but for me, that is the feeling I get when I haven't blogged in a while and I know spam is there, you almost don't want to come back to clean it up but you know you have to go back before your home becomes a war zone.

This wasn't terrible, but it did suck, I hate redirects. I mean it's almost like you think that I'll just leave you the ability to steal traffic, eye balls, or click thrus. I don't even get that much but I want what I get, I always complain about a lack of interaction(which is of course not helped by the fact I stopped blogging. Dunno why I keep doing that lately) so you hijacking traffic really does annoy the hell out of me.

Okay well I am back now, maybe I will do a "drive by entry" about what I think of all that has happened since I last blogged. Actually I know me, maybe I should make it a few posts so that I don't have a huge run on like this is becoming.

So yeah spammers burn in hell, actual readers thanks for coming by, friends who were wondering yes I am here, yes I'm alive, I have no clue what the hell I am going to talk about this time. Or how long I will be in the mood.

Thankful

I give thanks for:

Morning Dew
Baby Smiles
Brotherly Laughs and Hugs
Friends with senses of humor
Friends who know when I've gone to far but love me even after they have told me so
Parents who have seen almost 4 decades together
Stealing 20 years from extinction(and still counting)
Having the courage to stand my ground
Getting up after being knocked to it
Laughing in the face of end of the world predictions
Understanding that sooner or later one of them will get it right
Science that has made the world I live in easier than even that of my parents
The knowledge that we do not yet know all so there is still much to do and learn
Another day to go back on that work out plan I gave up on who knows how many months ago
Another chance to reconnect with old friends before I or they don't get another morning
The ability to see family in the best of times
The chance to be there for them in the worst
A chance to share a meal with many of those I love, and a hope to add more to the table next time.
an achy back, creaky joints and sore bones: memories of a life well lived
a cluttered mind, teary eyes and a furrowed brow:castaways of a head full of thought
Meeting many people who have added such joy to my life
The chance to meet even more tomorrow.

I am especially thankful for a moment, for no two are a like and each one has another chance to take your breath away.

late to the Party again

Okay sooo as I readied myself for bed last night checking up on an annoying PC that I am still in the process of finishing, bad hard drive as well as every reboot requires an f1 hit, I happened to catch the pilot episode of Fringe. Now before you say it, yes I have friends who are addicted to Fringe and have talked about how great a show it is which is all well and good. My thing was as I hadn't seen the pilot or any of the early episodes it was a lot of heavy lifting to try and catch up all at once to whatever season it is on now especially since I had no clue what the ORIGINAL driving factors are for characters. Even if you miss a few shows if you catch the first few and can get the starts of a lot of the back drop and back stories, at least in my mind, I believe you can follow along and kind of plug yourself in until you can go back and find whatever episode you are missing. I've also started a new new Anime(Don't know if I discussed Fairy Tail yet so if I haven't that is the old new one) called Soul Eater which looks like a sillier chibi version of Bleach, it's hilarious. I got a heads up to that one from Kitsune's  Dragon Ball Z Kai DVD's they had ads for it on there so I decided to check it out, looked like it had plenty of action and comedy in it.

Afternoon Ponderers

Seems like I have been getting a nice amount of traffic lately and I want to thank all who are coming through. I know I disappeared again but lets just say I had other things on my mind besides blogging. I know I talk about whatever but some days you just want to keep it moving and not get too deep into the details. So that's what I did, let's see what I have noticed lately welp my Eagles are sucking right now, I'm talking Dyson sucking, 3 quarter Car Wash sucking. It would be okay if the offense was stalling a little since you know Mike Vick is out and all, but our defense has forgotten what the word meant. We let RG3 slice us up, a rookie I mean come on Rookies used to hate having to play Philadelphia because their main view was gonna be turf. I understand that yeah maybe Juan Castillo wasn't aggressive enough for some people but he's been gone for a couple of weeks now, whats the new guys excuse. This is Philly you want us to give you some breathing room:Blitz, Blitz some more, Blitz one more time and if the so happen to get the first down, Blitz them again. They have a mobile quatertback let's see how fast he really is. Let's see how accurate he can be after he has been sucking wind for a quarter trying to evade the blitz.

The twisted tale of Hostess

As I am sure all have heard this week, the Twinkie is about to die. Well not literally it will probably be bought by some other snack company and sold off with the same name, but the company that makes it Hostess, is going out of business. And it seems that Hostess was extremely in tune to our last election: a company that went into bankruptcy twice, was taken over by wall Street restructuring firms, racked up a lot of debt, asked employees to take a pay cut and possibly had management take a pay raise. Sounds like Romney vs Obama all over again huh.

Now me personally, if a company is asking for employees to take a pay cut I think that MANAGEMENT should face the first axe. The CEO and board should take a year of pay cuts (anywhere from 10-30%) and if the company is still in trouble as they hopefully re-invest this money into the company then come to your employees. This way you show them that "yes I have skin in the game, I was willing to bleed for our company first, but now we need more blood." I think if CEO's took this approach it would probably be easier for them to get concessions from the workers. The approach that probably isn't going to work is to take a pay raise right before you file for bankruptcy as a Forbes article I read claims. In the comments somebody documents what they think is the current pay structure and pay increases but I didn't get a chance to look them up yet. I might but hey this isn't a "business blog" just a "Hmm why fancy wanders across my mind" style thing. I don't know about you but I think somebody making upwards of $1,500,000 dollars can afford to lose $150,000-450,000 a lot easier than somebody making $40,000(on average most of the salaries I could find Glassdoor were between $29,000 to just under $49,000) can give up between $3,200-12,800. I could be wrong but I am pretty sure that while it might take a little belt tightening a guy/gal making a million dollars or more a year has some investments that will help him buy that new car he wanted. somebody making sub $50,000 is now trying to figure out which bill they can afford not to pay this month.

Tick, tock, tick tock

One of the lasting images of "Election day 2012" will of course be the outrageously long lines. I remember 2008, I think I waited in line for an hour and a half or possibly two to vote. It was a proud time, usually I go off to vote by myself but I was able to vote with both of my brothers and my parents. It was a fun time, granted we had waited til election day so of course we were forced to wait in those long lines to make sure our votes counted. This time around we were a little more spread out, so while me and my parents went off to vote together my brothers were still at a job site somewhere.

My father currently signed up to get a knee replacement was allowed to go first since he did have proof of his disability. Me and my mother on the other hand waited in the Vorgon's cue a never ending serpentine of people. We went to pick up my mother slightly after 5 pm, and within 15 minutes got to a polling place, this year we decided to early vote just in case something was incorrect. By the time we finished it was well after 7 pm because they had required us to file through a room in the church building that housed the voted machines so that they could TRY and shut the doors. It was a futile attempt, people had been pulling up in cars ever since we got there and it was a good sized line(longer then we realized) when we got there. For a while me and my mother thought we were getting close when we made it into the hallway, little did we know it was more subway tunnel then it was foyer. we started joking after hour two because there was nothing else to do, we refused to get out of line we had toughed it out that long and if there is one thing I know I came by my stubbornness honestly. I believe when my father was finally able to retrieve us it was somewhere around 8 pm(might have even been 9 pm, I guess I could check my tweets from that night). And I was happy I had done my civic duty, added my voice to the masses and was prepared to wait til election day to see how it had worked out.