WARNING: EXPLICIT NEGRO WRITING

A Blog About Nothing

2012-01-09T02:21:00.003-05:00

God. There is nothing, as some of you know, that can put the fear of God into a person more than a blank piece of paper. These days for most of us that blank piece of paper has been replaced by the blank screen and the blinking cursor which, for some reason, is even more daunting. A blank piece of paper can be filled; it is finite. It has an end. If you fill up the entire front and entire back, that's all there is. And once you have filled that page, you have defeated it, defeated that small suddenly insignificant piece of used-to-be-tree. But on the computer screen, the word program is infinite. I suppose you could write a word document so enormously large that it would literally take up all of the space on your hard drive, but that is a bit unrealistic. Even if you just put a paperweight on the keyboard, it would be ages before you filled up a word document. And THAT is what is so scary. You cannot beat the page. You can only fill it and then, right there waiting for you is another bright, clean, empty screen. Taunting you, mocking you, daring you to come at it with everything you have. And if and when you do? There's another page. Like a Hydra, endlessly attacking you with space to be filled.

I have forgotten how to type. Not that I ever really was a good typist. Not even mediocre. I am using my two index fingers to type this, and am looking at the keyboard. I have typed this way since the first time I really had access to a computer, when I was 17 years old and a freshman at Penn State. That was 16 years ago, and I still type as well now as I did then. Skills plateau, I guess. I type fairly fast, but since I am looking at the keyboard I have no idea what I am typing, or if anything I am typing is being spelled correctly. Spell-check is my friend. It is a wonder anyone can spell anymore.

Typing is an issue, but writing had never been. I have always been a writer. Since the first time I started reading when I was 4 or 5 or whatever, I wanted to write. My mind was full of ideas, good ideas, great ideas I thought, and I thought that they should all be written. I would write, and people would read what I wrote and tell me that it was good, that I was talented. But I didn't believe them. I thought, rather oddly, that they had just never really read anything good, so what I wrote must have seemed great to them. It wasn't that I did not, or do not, believe that what I had written was good, I just... I'm not sure actually. I had the same problem with women actually. When I read things that I wrote years ago, things that I forgot that I had written, I always think “that was pretty damned good. I'm a great writer.” I have always been my biggest fan.

Women have loved me, and I have never, ever understood why. I have good traits to be sure, but enough to be loved? I never could logically figure out how a woman could fall IN LOVE with me. I'm a great guy and fun to be around, but love requires more I should think. I know each and every reason why I have been in love with the women I have been in love with. Some of those reasons were sick, twisted, and wrong, but at least I knew it. For some reason, I am incredibly and indelibly enamored with women who lacked, shall we say, sanity. Thankfully I only actually dated one such woman, but I often found myself chasing the craziest bitches you could imagine. Sluts, whores, bipolar-borderline personality types, cutters, criers, moody semi-psychotic females all had my constant attention. It did not help that the crazy girls where often the hottest ones. I think there is something about being beautiful that makes you crazy. And, as many people have observed, being crazy usually makes people pretty damned creative, or at the very least fun to be around at parties. Being Hot makes one fun to be around at parties as well, but it does not necessarily make one creative. Now if a girl was creative, sexy, and crazy? I was hopeless. If I were to be completely honest with myself, I am still hopeless. The only thing that stops me from still chasing crazy bitches like dogs going after cars is that I have the scars to remind me what happens when I catch them. Basically any time I got too close to a woman, well the effects were very similar to what happens when a dog catches the car; the car is fine but the dog ends up mangled. And boy have I been mangled.

Which is not to say that I am perfectly well myself. I am in fact crazy as well. The specifics of which are not important, but yeah I am crazy too. I think it is why I like crazy women, like really does attract like. Well, at least they attract me; I only attract them so much as they really like to be my friend. Which I suppose is fine, unless one really wants to have sex with someone who does not sleep with their friends. Then it is nothing but frustration. Sexual frustration is one of the worst types of frustration, other than vocational frustration. Sexual frustration is the hardest to truly satisfy because its satiation depends entirely on someone else. Some of us are much better at convincing others to have sex with us than I am. I am still, even at the age of 34, shocked when a girl agrees to have sex with me. I guess it's a great feeling. As a psychologist, I usually know what someone is going to do or say in any general situation, but I never, ever can figure out when a woman likes me until her hand is on my dick. Then I have a clue. One of my favorite moments in life is the very first time a woman spreads her legs for me. It is such a rapturously joyous occasion, I wish that Hallmark made cards to thank women for letting me see their vagina. It really is that great. Straight women and gay men are missing out. It's a little like... a little like when you're playing a video game, and you meet the one Boss character that whips your ass day in and day out for a week straight. Then finally, one fateful day, you figure out the proper strategy and you win the stage. Triumphant music plays; experience points are gained; gold is earned, and all is right with the world. Until you start the next stage that is.

I often wonder what it is like to feel sexy. I have no idea. This is no remnant of low self esteem that has stuck with me from my childhood, I honestly have never known what sexy is. I have felt confident, funny, powerful, in control, in charge, scary, neglectful, morose, intimidating, frightening, rageful... but never sexy. I mean, I think I know what sexy looks like, or at the very least I know what women generally find sexy and it never, ever looks like me. I know a lot of people find the Tyrese types sexy, and though I can match the skin-tone I am a far cry from the physique. Women think Ryan Gosling/Reynolds is sexy, but I'll never be able to be that white, at least not physically. People think David Tennent is sexy, but I will never, ever be that thin without losing some of my skeleton. Also, my hair will never do what his does, which is why I cry myself to sleep every night. I know that a couple of my girlfriends found me incredibly sexy, but it was through no fault of my own. I think that's what is most bothersome about the notion of sexiness for me, it's not a tangible thing I can work on and improve. It's easier for women, men are simple creatures. Find something good about your body and personality and accentuate it. My body and personality are constantly in flux, so what do I nail down and say it is exactly sexy? What do you do? What does anyone do? Sexiness, people tell me, is like being cool. The less you think about it the more you exemplify it. Is that true? Could it possibly be true?

I'm drinking. Not how you think though, it is a glass of V8 Splash, some kind of berry flavor. There is a shot of rum in it, but only one. I'm showing restraint. The words are flowing more freely now, more freely than they have in a while, but I am sure it has nothing to do with the sugar and food coloring and fermented whatever that constitutes rum. It is, more likely, because I can't think straight. ADD is wonderful for the creative process because it makes it impossible to not see an issue from every angle. Sometimes I think my greatest gift is being able to see a problem from many different points of view, a trait that people call empathy. I am quite empathetic. Too much so. In thinking of other peoples feelings I often neglect my own, and when I neglect my own feelings, they slink off into a corner and begin plotting malevolent selfish plans on their own. After that my subconscious convinces my waking mind to do something unspeakable under the pretense of helping, or sparing someones feeling. I really do understand all those sayings about doing evil in the name of good, sayings which often take the form of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, or some variation thereof. Considering the heathenish things I do fully aware of the ramifications, and the bad things I do in the name of good intentions, I am doubly destined for Hell, if there is such a thing. I gave up on being religious long ago. I knew myself, and I knew I would never live up to any religions standards of goodness.

So here we are, some of the pages of space and time filled up with thought. If you have read this far and are wondering “what is the point of all this”, I regret to inform you that there is no point. No, wait, there is; the point was to see if I could still write, if I was still capable of forming coherent thoughts and sentences and putting together something people would read. I have written down every thought that I had in the last two hours, and you, for some reason, read it. I find myself as curious about why you would read this as I am curious about why I wrote it. I am writing this to myself, and hope that when I read it it offers a little glimpse into the mind of the writer, and offers some understanding where before there was none.

The DeceptiComics Comedy Show

2012-01-04T01:26:00.003-05:00

See what these publications may or may not have said about The Decepticomics!

“The most wickedly Hilarious crowd-pleasing comedy show since Martin and Lewis!” National Geographic

“The Beatles of Comedy!” - Rolling Stone

It just may kill you with laughs. A fast, furious, and riotously funny farce of a show in the tradition of The Kings and/or Comedians of Comedy.” - ELLE Magazine

“Insanely funny.” - Christian Science Monitor

DeceptiComics Comedy Show premiers in New York City, NY on Thursday February 9th at the Parkside Lounge located at 317 East Houston Street, New York, NY 10002. Show starts at 7:30pm sharp and admission is $15 at the door, $10 in advance.

The DeceptiComics are four malevolent comedians, brutal, merciless, and hilarious. Their purpose, to conquer and destroy audiences with brutal wit and deadly punchlines. They are driven by a single undeviating goal: total domination of the entertainment universe. In the war that rages between staid, boring comedians of the past, and the newer, sleeker, more technologically advanced DeceptiComics the Earth city of New York will serve as the final battle ground.

Cerrome Russell, born and raised in Sumter County, GA, started his comedy career 10 years ago while serving in the United States Marine Corps. He was first exposed to a broader audience as a cast member on the 2nd Season of BET's popular prank show Hell Date. He has traveled extensively, performing at college campuses and military installations worldwide. Truthful, country and off-center Cerrome Russell's comedic style covers a wide range of

Dillon Stevenson is a comedian and writer based out of New York City. He’s performed stand-up at New York Comedy Club, Comix, Broadway Comedy Club and Gotham Comedy Club and other venues in NYC. As a co-founder of the comedy group G.R.I.T.S. he’s written, directed and performed in sketch shows off Broadway & at benefits and events throughout the city. As a lifelong performer in commercials, short films, television & stage shows, stand-up is where Dillon found his place after graduating from St. Johns University with a bachelor’s degree in communications. With microphone in hand (a light saber would have been preferred ) Dillon is taking the New York comedy scene by storm.

Mike Brown is a comedian and writer from Harlem, New York. He’s performed at Caroline’s Comedy Club, Stand Up NY, Laugh Lounge, EastVille Comedy Club, and other venues all over New York. He also hosts events, including one at SUNY where he did a pretty awesome job. Really! He knows that because 128 audience members became his Facebook friend afterward—and we all know how hard it is to get Facebook friends. Mike has a reputation for doing comedy absolutely anywhere; comedy clubs, cellars, bars, basements, gyms, laundromats, churches, colleges, condos, backyards, front-yards, attics, living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, Bed Bath and Beyond, funeral homes (to liven things up), mobile homes, retirement homes, wherever. And for the record, Mike Brown loves comedy much more than writing about himself in the third person.

John Minus is a comedian, writer, and all-around great guy who lives and breathes his home state of New Jersey. He has been described as having a sense of humor “darker than his skin” by racist comedy critics. He refers to his style as “Tragi-Comedy”. John opened for Robert Klein in October of 2011 in Cherry Hill, NJ. John spoke with Mr. Klein after the show, and was informed that he was not at all horrible. So, he continued his fledgling comedy career nonplussed, no pun intended. He is willing to do anything and everything to be entertaining, up to and including dropping his pants at a moment's notice. He doesn't need to do that, he just likes to. Eschewing traditional Black Comedian tropes, John has never dressed in drag. Well, rarely dresses in drag.

Tickets are $15 at the door, $10 when purchased in advance. Advance tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite.com.

The Decepticomics Comedy Show is an Exit Eleven Production. Lineup subject to change without notice. For more information go to facebook.com/AlterNegro, or http://ExitEleven.blogspot.com

The August Non Pro Comedy Show

2011-08-20T14:46:00.000-04:00

Sunday, August 28, 2011, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at Tobacco Road, New York, NY

It's August and it is Hot. Really Hot. Slave hot. Apartheid hot. What do those things mean? I do not know. As blistering as it is however, the Non-Productive Comedy Show will be hotter than a London car fire, believe it! Yes cats and kittens, the rebirth of cool movement is going strong, are you jumping on-board yet?
Hosted by comedian John Minus and blogger N'Jaila Rhee, and backed by the comedy network Non-Productive.com, the retro comedy show with sex appeal will be at its explosive best this month. The formula is simple: take two terrifically sexy hosts, add 8 of the best looking and most hilarious comedians in New York City, sprinkle liberally with Pinup girls who may be enticed into disrobing at any given time, and give away some free stuff, including a bottle of Nude Vodka. We have it down to a science here, the science of putting on a great show!

The Show will be taking place at Tobacco Road, 355 West 41st Street, New York, NY 10036. General Admission is $5, but there are buy one get one free tickets available for those who order them in advance on EventBrite: http://bit.ly/pjx4WQ. Street Parking is free in Hoboken, Jersey City, and New York City. Tobacco Road is easily accessible by both the PATH trains and any Subway that goes to Times Square (which is only one stop uptown from Penn Station).

Non-Productive Comedy Show comedians have always been top notch, and this month is no exception. We have:

Jessica Delfino – A multi-talented singer, songwriter, and comedienne based in New York City, her songs (dubbed Dirty Folk Rock) tend to ridicule taboos and include jokes about vaginae, weird sexual topics, and other fun stuff. In her act, she plays an assortment of instruments including guitar, flying V ukulele and a rape whistle. Find her antics at http://jessydelfino.blogspot.com/ and follow her Twitter.com/JessicaDelfino.

Derik Boik – According to his website www.DerikBoik.com, “Derik began performing stand up in 2004 after winning a comedy contest at the Gypsy Comedy Club in St. Augustine, Florida.” He started out winning! He will have the home field advantage as he hosts a weekly open mic at Tobacco Road on Wednesday night. He is also a terrible racist. Meaning he is terrible at racism. You can follow him at Twitter.com/DerikBoik

Rashad Bashir – Barely wet behind the ears comedy-wise, Rashad has taken the city by storm, even finagling his way onto the NPCS once before. He greatly impressed the audience with his geek-influenced comedy, and will be the first person to ever be on the show twice!

Helen Hong – From her website, www.HelenHong.com, “Helen Hong is a comedian, TV host, matchmaker, and star of Logo Channel’s reality dating series 'Setup Squad.' Helen’s adorable stage presence and mischievous point of view have landed her on The Huffington Post’s Favorite Female Comedians list and a profile in The New York Times.” Relentlessly funny and not afraid to get her material dirty, Helen will make you an instant fan. Follow her on twitter at Twitter.com/FunnyHelenHong.

Brandon Collins – Brandon is great at making GRITS but he has no problem cooking on his own either. A member of the groundbreaking sketch group “GRITS Comedy,” he also does his own brand of intelligent and incisive stand up comedy. Brandon has already appeared on the NPCS as part of GRITS and tore the house down, look for him to do the same in this show. See some of his great performances at GritsComedy.tumblr.com

Adam Cozens – Another comedian who made his way onto a previous NPCS unexpectedly, Adam made such a great showing we had to have him back for a full set. Prolific and insightful, you can see much of his work and material at www.AdamCozens.com Go to his site, really, we are not kidding about the prolific part, and all of it is funny! You can follow him at Twitter.com/Adam_Cozens

Sharron Paul – There is very little that Sharron doesn't do when it comes to comedy. She hosts and produces comedy shows, and is a very talented and impactful stand-up comedian as well. That is another way of saying she is funny as heck. She prides herself on her realness, and this is what she will be bringing to the NPCS. Check out her comedy on www.CheapDateComedy.com, and youtube.com/Sharronica.

Jay Welch – Jay sometimes tells jokes where even he only marginally knows what he is referencing, but still you will laugh all the same. Marvel at his beard while he comically works you over with jokes that you thought you weren't smart enough to get. An every-man’s comic, Jay connects with all types of audiences and leaves them tears. You can't actually say you've seen comedy in New York City until you've seen Jay, and here is your chance.

Hosts:

John Minus – John is willing to do anything and everything to be entertaining, up to and including hosting a comedy show in drag and dropping his pants at a moment's notice. He doesn't need to do those things, he just likes to. Originally a writer, John has recently branched out into hosting his own podcast called the Alter Negro Sho on www.Non-Productive.com, and producing and hosting the Non Productive Comedy Show. He writes everything from editorial blogs to fiction of every sort (from action to comedy to erotica), all of which can be found on his blog http://ExitEleven.blogspot.com. John can be contacted at (908) 812-8612 or at JohnMinus@non-productive.com.

N'Jaila Rhee – She is the author of www.BlasianBytch.com, where she interviews interesting and hot (in all senses of the word) people in the adult industry. She also writes comprehensive adult toy reviews, humor articles, Geek-interest posts, and original erotica stories. We still are not sure how she got into comedy, but she is also the co-host of the Alter Negro Sho with John Minus.

The Non-Productive Comedy Show is an Exit Eleven (http://ExitEleven.blogspot.com) and Non-Productive Network (Non-Productive.com) production. Lineup subject to change without notice.

Non Pro Comedy Show

2011-06-20T12:54:00.002-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 19, 2011

Our Next Non-Productive Comedy Show is Full of Pride!

The Non-Pro Comedy Show, now in its third month, features the finest comedians NY and NJ have to offer. Unlike your typical comedy show, this performance channels the classic ambiance of 50’s and 60’s era comedy clubs. In honor of Pride Month, our show will feature an homage to one of the greatest gay entertainment traditions.

(New York City, NY) - The Non Productive Comedy Show - the biggest, hippest, flashiest comedy show in New York City, will be dazzling the Midtown crowd once again on July 26th, 2011 at Tobacco Road, 355 West 41st St in NYC. Showtime is 7PM, admission is $5.

The amazingly talented cast of this month's NPCS includes:

Gordon Baker-Bone (Winner 2011 NJ Comedy Fest, Co-Writer of the webseries "Hater-Bot")
Molly Austin (The Peoples Improv Theater, Writer, Star of the musical comedy, "Girls On The Side")
Mike Brown (Prolific Comedian and Writer)http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Sassi Keegan (MTV, Adult Swim, and Host of SEVERAL comedy events in and around NYC)
Mike Lawrence (John Oliver's New York Stand Up, Nerd of Mouth Podcast)
Esther Ku (Finalist in NBC’s Last Comic Standing Season 6, Finalist in the Hottest Funniest Chick Contest on Sirius Satellite Radio)
Vicky Kuperman (Nationally touring Comedian, regularly seen at large venues in NYC such as Gotham and Broadway Comedy Clubs)
GRITS Sketch Comedy (Hot and Tasty Sketch Comedy team)

For more info about the comics and video links, Click Here.

Vintage pinups and fans of great comedy alike will be fully satisfied by the NPCS. This is different from a normal comedy show in that we have more glitz, glamor, and most importantly, sex appeal than you'd find at a regular comedy show.

About Exit Eleven:
Exit Eleven Productions encompasses all of the creative endeavors of John Minus, as well as producing the projects of other talented young people, especially people of color. We also specialize in supporting and unifying artists from New Jersey. John writes, hosts a podcast, the Alter-Negro Sho, and performs stand-up comedy all over the tri-state area.

Contact:
John Minus, Executive Producer
Exit Eleven Productions
908-812-8612
http://exiteleven.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/AlterNegro

Latest Clip from Broadway Comedy Club

2011-06-19T01:01:00.003-04:00

Here are a couple of my latest clips, I hope you like them I did.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This one is from Broadway Comedy Club

And this one is from Comedy Night on the Lake

Upcoming Shows for the Alter Negro

2011-06-01T15:23:00.008-04:00

Hey boys and girls, I have 3 shows this month so far, and it would be awesome forhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif you if you came to them ;)

The closest is Comedy Night on the Lake in Milltown NJ this June 4th, 2011. Here's the Comedy Night Event page on FB

I need at least 4 people to come to enter the competition, but the more people I have the better my chances to win! Audience Favorite wins CA$H PRIZE! And FEATURED SPOT at the next “Comedy Night”. $10 cover, 2 item minimum. If I win I will be donating all of the prize money to The Valerie Fund a charity for children with Cancer and Blood disorders. To find out more about where the money will go, click here.

My next show is at Broadway Comedy Club, and is a really important audition show. The winner of this show gets a regular spot at BCC for the whole Summer, and PAID comedy gigs. I need at least 7 people to come to enter the contest, so go to this site to see my beautiful face and purchase tickets: John Minus Page for Best Young Comedian Contest

Last but not least is this months Non Pro Comedy Show, which will be the best one yet! More details on that to come.

Buy Tickets For the Non Pro Comedy Show at a discount!

2011-04-20T02:25:00.000-04:00

Online event registration for Non Productive Comedy Show powered by Eventbrite

The Flier

2011-04-18T01:55:00.003-04:00

Hears the flier for the Non Pro Comedy Show, share with your friends! Like an STD!

Upcoming Shows

2011-04-13T17:51:00.003-04:00

I have two shows left this month:

GRITS Sunday Dinnahs: FREE Stand-Up Show!!!
Sunday, April 17 · 7:00pm - 8:30pm
380 3rd Ave
New York, NY 10016
(212) 779-1380

Non Pro Comedy Show
Sunday, April 24 · 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Port 41
355 West 41st Street
New York, NY

about the NPCS:

Have you ever wondered what happened to Cool?

What happened to that kind of coolness that didn't have to be announced, that didn't have to be yelled at the top on your lungs? Whatever happened to that kind of cool that made itself known by its very presence? Where has that unmistakable aura that makes others gravitate to a person gone? It seems that the world lost that kind of cool and replaced it with bluster and bravado. This new “swagger” seems to have replaced everything it ostensibly is supposed to stand for. The Squares have taken over the world, and all the rest of us are worse off for it.

But worry not Cats and Kittens, for I have found Cool, and I married it to Funny, and their child is the Non Productive Comedy Show. Whether you're a Big Daddy (seasoned vet) or an Ankle-Biter (just turned 21) this is the show for you. We are going to have some of the Funniest, Slickest, most With-It comics around, coupled with the most Boss Babes I could find. Oh yeah, there will be all sorts of eye candy as both the Comedians and the Show Gals will be dressed to the nines. And if you dig Guys better than Gals, there will also be some fine Daddy-O's completely chrome-plated (dressed up) for your perusal. No matter what you like, you're gonna flip when you see what we have put together!

The crew for this gig is top-notch, including pro comics such as Abbi Crutchfield, Gordon Baker-Bone, Subha Agarwhal, Kevin J. Williams, Kate Hendricks, Nimesh Patel, and more!

Now as for you, if you want to attend this magnificent event dressed like a Clyde, well that's your bag baby. But all the people in the know will be sporting their finest duds, whether it be sport coats and ties for the gentlemen, or swing dresses and heels for the ladies. The more into the mood the audience is, the more authentic the entire experience will be. There will be Martinis and Tom Collins available at the bar, just to lubricate the ol' funny bone. This will be an experience unlike any other, where you can escape dullsville and enter a world where cool isn't forgotten, it permeates every laugh, every drink, and every set of gams. Now I know at this point you're pretty fired up about all this, so here are the details:

The Non Pro Comedy Show is a Exit Eleven Production. It will be taking place at Port 41, 355 West 41st Street, New York, NY 10036. Admission is $10.

Cafe Addis.MOV

2011-03-01T01:51:00.000-05:00

Grits Sunday Dinnah.wmv

2011-02-22T23:40:00.000-05:00

If you could have any car you wanted, what kind of car would you get?

2011-02-22T22:04:00.001-05:00

The 2011 Ford Shelby GT500, aka the new Super-Cobra, in Legend Lime Green

Ask me anything

formspring.me

2011-02-16T01:47:00.001-05:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/JohnMinus

What's the first thing that you usually notice about someone you meet?

2011-02-16T01:46:00.001-05:00

On a woman? Shoes, Legs, Hips, breasts, eyes, hair. I tend to look at everyone from the feet up.

Ask me anything

formspring.me

2010-12-21T14:10:00.001-05:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/JohnMinus

How To Deal With Loss (of your team)

2010-12-19T19:01:00.004-05:00

It's not like this hasn't happened before.

It's not like most sports fans don't know this feeling.

It's as if my neck was broken, I was shot in the stomach, and kicked in the balls all at once.

I have no idea what my physiology is going through right now, but nothing in my body feels right at this moment. Everything is clenching, straining, gurgling, and cramping.

But This isn't the first time I went through this, but for some reason this seems like the worst time.

Worse than 1994, when the Knicks lost to the Rockets in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Worse than the Giants loss to the 49ers in the playoffs in 2002 (which was incredibly horrible by the way.) I think this feels like that did, but somehow worse. That's bad considering this was a season game and that was a Post-season game.

Worse than 2005 when, at the first and only Playoff game I've ever attended, the Giants were embarrassed by Steve Smith and beaten 23-0 in the first round of the playoffs. That was soul-crushing.

Worse than my previous worst loss ever, the 2008 playoff loss to the Eagles. This was the year the Giants went 13-3 and seemed a lock to at least get to the playoffs. This also started the trend where, no matter how good they are, the Giants just could not beat the Eagles.

And now this. Today. December 19th, 2010, the absolute worst New York Giants loss of my lifetime. Mind you, the Giants lost a Super Bowl in 2000. That was nowhere near as bad as this was. I was a little indifferent about that year, I'm not sure why. This was just a regular season game. Yes there was a lot on the line, but it isn't as if the Giants are eliminated from the playoffs, or from playoff contention.

It's bad, and I'm sure most sports fans can attest to this, because it was a loss to Philadelphia, a place I absolutely cannot stand. Everyone has a city that they loathe; I happen to have two, Boston and Philadelphia. The Giants last Super Bowl win, spoiling the Patriots undefeated season, gives me a lot of closure with my dislike of Boston, because I know that grinds their gears. But Philly, the Giants have not beaten them in 6 games. Everyone has a city they hate, and a team they hate, and mine is the Philadelphia Eagles. When it comes to hating a team, it is usually more than just a matter of scores and stats. If you truly hate a team it is because of something personal. People who actively hate a team and city have had personal; experience with that team or city. I truly believe Brady hates the Jets, not because they're a division rival, but because he loathes New York City. People from Cleveland loathe the Steelers because they hate Pittsburgh.

There's no sense, no rhyme or reason to sports hatred. It is by definition irrational because lives do not actually depend on the outcome of the game, but many of us react as if they do. What I hate the most are people who dismiss the feelings of sports fans. “Oh it's just a game, you don't play for the team, why are you so upset?” I feel like telling people who say such things to eat a dick, but I don't because I know they just don't understand. A connection to a football team, or any team really, is visceral, emotional, primal. It's like a affective umbilical cord between one entity and a greater cause, a greater goal. It's the essence of “us vs them”, and the basis of telling oneself that the people like you where you are from are better than those people and the place where they come from. It's sociology, anthropology, psychology and familial love all rolled into one. So when something like this happens, when your “family” lets you down in such a shocking and disturbing way, the damage can be catastrophic.

Yes we go one with our lives; we go to work, to school, to church. We don't die with the hopes of our team, yet a small part of us does die. It dies because we detach some of our heart and give it to our team. And for that little bit of ourselves we expect a return on our emotional, and oftentimes financial investment. And when we are deprived of that satisfaction what to the outsider seems inconsequential, we rage, rage against the dying of the play clock.

Two hours ago I thought that I may have to give up following sports, specifically football. I am too invested I think, and my reaction to this loss was kind of scary. But right now I have realized something, this is a defining moment in a sports fans life. I firmly believe that you are not a grown up until you have your heart ripped out and stomped on by a member of the opposite (or same) sex. I think the same is true for sports fans. There are a lot of Yankees fans who didn't grow up until the Red Sox ripped their hearts out in the 2004 ALCS. I think this may have been my wake up call that Ii need to back up a little, lest I end up like those bitter insane Red Sox fans before they won the World Series. I need a catharsis yes, but I know that there are a lot of True Blue fans out there who are excoriating the Eagles and cursing the Giants with me, and for some reason that helps. I think the game that has threatened to make me quit the family maybe the game that cements my ties to the football community for the rest of my life. And that's how you deal with loss, curse scream, yell, but commiserate with the rest of your family. And just remember, eventually you will beat the Fucking Eagles.

New Stuff

2010-12-12T22:16:00.005-05:00

I have two shows coming up in the near-ish future. The first is the Glorious (and monthly) Carnivalia! Carnivalia is a crazed Orgy of Burlesque, Comedy, and Magic! The perfect cure for Dark Winter days right? It's a celebration of comedy and sideshow peppered with burlesque held every last Tuesday of the month at Public Assembly in Brooklyn, NY. December 28th One is the next one, at 9PM.

Then January 15th I will be performing at StandUp-NY at 5PM. It's a Saturday show! For real! More details about that will be forthcoming.

Also I promise that I will write more. It's one of my 33 Year Old Resolutions.

Next Show!

2010-10-13T01:50:00.002-04:00

My next show is at World Famous Caroline's! It will be an all-star show with lots of A-List comedians. Make reservations ASAP.

The Utter Collapse of Western Movies

2010-10-01T02:43:00.001-04:00

To be honest, I'm not a movie person. This is not to say that I do not have movies that I like. I have a fairly large movie collection, full of movies you have never heard of or never seen. Most of my favorite directors are either dead or extremely elderly. Also, a lot of movies I like most people consider to be dreadful. I haven't seen many Hollywood staples like "Rocky" or "Top Gun". But even I have noticed that Hollywood is on a losing streak of unheard of proportions. This year has been one enormous yawn on the movie front. I can't remember a period of months when absolutely no big movies have come out. Think about it, have you really looked forward to a movies since Expendables/Scott Pilgrim/Eat Pray Love weekend? Absolutely not.

And we go. We still go. Well I should say you go, because I don't support that crap. The last movie I saw was "The American" which wasn't exactly a blockbuster. I know that it seems like a George Clooney Spy Thriller seems like it would be pretty damn hard to mess up, but they found a way. They did so by producing and directing the entire film in Italy, land of moody, morose, and macabre movies. "The American" will forever be known as the movie so moody they gave out Zoloft at the door instead of 3D glasses. That picture up there? Clooney is aiming for the audience's Joy. They chose to release it in the Summer, when people want fun movies! The damn movie started in the Winter! Any joy and good feeling the audience had when going into the theater was definitely assassinated by the time they left.

So what does Hollywood have planned to bring us back? Sequels out the ass. I for one am glad for the sequels because I would rather see that than take a chance on something, ahem, "original" from these people. And for me I see no difference between big studio movies and indie movies. At their heart most "indie" movies follow similar tropes just like the big movies do. Indies movies are all heart and emotion and guts and tugging on heartstrings. There are very few indie movies that are straight out action films, and I know you can say that that's a function of budget, but really that is just a cop-out. It can be done, see "Black Dynamite". As with everything connected with the film industry, the creative people just are not trying hard enough. I know people who are beginning filmmakers, so I am under no delusions about how difficult it is to make a movie. It's slightly less involved than planning an amphibious assault against an entrenched enemy fort. Still, whether the budget is $120 million or $120 every crew has a responsibility to the public to put out the best product possible, and that just isn't happening.

This has been a depressing movie year in many senses of the word. Along with "The American", the year started out with "The Lovely Bones". Anyone see that? Well don't if you are having a bad day. Or have children. Or ever plan on having children. The unintentionally funny commercials for "Extraordinary Measures", "I ALREADY WORK AROUND THE CLOCK", got more attention than the movie did. "Repo Men" repo-ed the plot from a previous movie. "Kick Ass" made me angry and sad for reasons none of you will understand, and it just goes on and on. This was the Summer of disappointment and, except for Harry Potter, it looks like the rest of this year is going to be blowful as well. I wish that we would all just boycott Hollywood for a month. One month if we all got our shit together the quality of movies would increase substantially wouldn't it? Ah, it's fun to dream.

Endhiran Theatrical trailer

2010-09-30T21:52:00.000-04:00

Asians Need to Be More Angry

2010-09-25T02:45:00.002-04:00

There's a sight I've seen way too many times at comedy clubs lately, and I'd like to share it with you. Maybe I'm overreacting but it always helps to get a second opinion. I always cringe when I see Asian people sitting up front at a show because I know they're going to be in for a long night. Every comedian has a few go-to jokes when things aren't going well, or just to bridge the space between jokes. Some people go for fart jokes, and some work the crowd. Comedians know Asians are easy targets because A. everybody seems to laugh at Asian stereotypes, B. most Americans don't actually know anything about Asians or Asian Americans, and C. Asians never stand up for themselves. This never happens with Black people in the audience, unless the comedian is supremely confidant or supremely stupid. The average comedian won't just up and come after a Black audience member, especially if there are a lot of Black people in the audience because, well, we don't play that. We are known to destroy a persons whole character onstage, and sometimes continue it in the parking lot after the show. Seasoned comedians can insult a Black audience because they know how to temper their jokes with truth, or be somewhat self-deprecating at the same time. Above all else, a joke making fun of a Black audience has to be funny.

Too many times I've seen comedians make tired, old, cliche, unfunny jokes at the expense of Asians just because it is easy and because the people in the audience usually respond. I know for a fact that Asians, Indians, Africans, Latinos don't like being confused for one another. It's a sure bet if you call every Latino you meet Puerto Rican, you are taking your life in your own hands. But comedians, and people in general will often refer to every Asian person they meet as Chinese, which really pisses off anyone who isn't Chinese. Asians, like all other races, have their intra-racial stereotypes that cause them to like or dislike each other, and it's pretty insulting to just assume anyone Asian is Chinese, as China is not exactly the most popular country in Asia. Likewise, people who say "oh they're all the same" are just ignorant and useless. On this night in particular a couple of Filipino girls sat up front, and I felt so sorry for them, as many of the comedians used them for every Asian stereotype joke possible. They stoically sat there and took the abuse, but in the back I was angry for them. I have Filipino friends and a Filipino ex girlfriend, so I know a little about the culture. The comedian went on making stupid jokes about eating dogs and things like that. I was offended 1, because those are Chinese stereotypes, not Filipino, and 2, they weren't funny, just insulting. I always say, if you're going to be a racist, be an Informed racist. Have your stereotypes straight with your ethnicity. The #1 rule of making racist jokes is that they have to be more funny than offensive. As the night went on she admitted she knew nothing of them or their country (admitting to ignorance is a personal pet peeve of mine) and kept referring to them as "pinos" which I'm fairly certain is a racial slur. Other comedians came up and made comments making them out to be subservient Asian sex toys, talking about the, ahem, restrictive properties of their uterus and other things that I can only imagine were mortifying for them. All the while I became more and more angry because I thought about what it would be like if those were Black girls, even if that could and would never happen to Black girls. The mostly White audience, of course was eating it up, but I and many of the other comedians just seemed to feel uncomfortable. These were people who came out to an Open Mic and were being supportive, they didn't come there to be insulted. Especially not insulted in an unfunny way.

I feel I should say I am far from against insulting the audience, especially if they deserve it. I am all for making crude and offensive jokes at the audiences expense; this is something I hope to become better at myself. But I think that it should always be done with a sense of humor, and when those people go home they should remember the night fondly and want to come back another time, no matter how badly they got dissed. I feel like those girls had a horrible time, and I hope that they will look past that night and give comedy another chance, just not in the front row.
My point is, Asian people need to act a fool every now and then. Say what you want about Black people, but it's generally accepted that, much like Werewolves and Robert Bruce Banner, it is not a good idea to make us angry. I feel like if Asian people got angry more often, White people wouldn't take such liberties with your culture. I know it isn't very Asian to make a fuss, but there are plenty enough of you who are first and second generation Americans on the East Coast now. You are well aware of how to show your ass when somebody pisses you off, just like a Real American should. To be quiet and respectful is un-American. The next time somebody asks you if you eat dog, make them eat dog shit. The next time somebody asks you if you sucky-sucky, tell them to suck yo dick, bitch. The next time someone makes slanty-eyes at you punch them in the face repeatedly until their eyes stay that way. You have the inalienable right to be an Asshole like any other American, so use it.

Except for Indians. You guys are big enough Assholes as it is.

Upcoming Shows 09/21

2010-09-21T13:11:00.001-04:00

THE ALL-STAR COMEDIAN SHOWCASE at STAND UP NY!
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6th at 8:00 PM.

236 W. 78th St., New York, NY 10024 • 212-595-0850

Featuring as always comedians from MTV, Comedy Central, HBO, Letterman, last call with Carson Daly and Conan O' Brian
Admission is $15 per person with a two-drink minimum.
Very Important: Reservations have need to be called in by Monday, October 4th at 212-595-085 Seating is at 7:15 pm sharp.

COMEDY NIGHT ON THE LAKE SATURDAY 10/16

Saturday, October 16 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Tavern On The Lake 101 Main Street Hightstown, NJ

Come to the Tavern On The Lake for a comedy open mic night. The first event in August was a huge success and I have been asked to host a monthly open mic starting in October. Here are the details:
$5 cover. 2 drink minimum.

This is a great venue. We had over 80 people show up last time and that was on a Monday night so I'm thinking a Saturday night is really gonna rock.

All-Star Comedy Showcase with Bob DiBuono

2010-09-07T01:37:00.000-04:00

Stand Up|NY
236 W. 78th St
New York, NY

You are invited to the All-Star Comedian Show and Tweet-Up on Wednesday September 15th at 8:00 PM at the STAND UP NY COMEDY CLUB with BOB DIBUONO. The tweet-up will be hosted by me, John Minus.

This show will be one of the best of the year! This show I have designed as a tweet-up, which means that not only will it be a great comedy show, it will also be a chance to meet up with people you've only talked to on Twitter so far. if y...ou want to spread the word use the hashtag #NYComedyTweetUp

Begin making reservations now as they need to be in no later than MONDAY, September 13th. Seating for this show is at 7:15 PM sharp, but we can meet at the club as early as 7PM to start introductions. Admission is $15 per person with a two item minimum inside the showroom. The club reservation number is 212-595-0850

The IndustryRoom.com Showcase

2010-09-07T00:23:00.002-04:00

The Broadway Comedy Club
318 W. 53rd St.
New York, NY

Every week, Talent Scouts, Agents and Managers from Hollywood and NYC come and watch our new and developing comics. Come see them discover the stars of tomorrow(Hopefully, Me!) $15 cover ($12 in advance) and 2 drink minimum. (No Discount tickets accepted.) Guests should call 212-252-4253 to make reservations to come and see you perform. If they do this it will be $10 at the door instead of $12.

The Roadrunner-Free Diet

2010-09-06T02:23:00.001-04:00

If you are reading this you probably understand the relationship between the Roadrunner and the Coyote. If not, how the hell did you get to this blog anyway? I will explain, in any event, for those who are Warner Bros. Impaired. Wile E. Coyote spent the greater part of his existence chasing after the Roadrunner. He occasionally branched out from this pursuit in an attempt to steel fat sheep, but he was always stopped in those pursuits by the presence of a lackadaisical sheepdog named Sam. By and large Wile E. wanted that Roadrunner more than life itself, and he wasn't shy about it. Wile E. was a self proclaimed "Super Genius" and had an extremely high IQ. What made him look stupid, however, was his single-minded pursuance of the Roadrunner. No matter how ingenious his scheme, no matter how unlimited his credit with the ACME Corporation was, he could never corral that little bugger. If one really quantified the amount of resources, both time, effort, and monetary, that Wile E. sank into trying to capture and eat the Roadrunner, the effort would hardly seem worth it. With the time and money he put into acquiring the roadrunner, he could easily have had all of the finest foods in the world flown to his desert. He could have learned to become a master chef himself, becoming the greatest cook that the world has ever known. Bounty lay within his claws wherever he looked.
Yet he had to have this one bird. And what is it about this bird that is so alluring, so fascinating, that it is all that the Coyote hungers for? When one examines the Roadrunner, one does not see a particularly meaty bird. He does not seem juicy or succulent. The Roadrunner is portrayed as one of the fastest beings alive, and its musculature reflects that. The Roadrunner is lean, long, and built for speed. None of those traits suggest that it would make a delicious meal. If anything its meat would be extremely gamy from all of the activity and exercise it gets. All evidence points to the fact that the Roadrunner would not make a very good meal, and actually was quite flawed in this area. Yet and still the Coyote spent all of his energy and resources to catch it. What did Wile E. get for all of this effort?

Pain.

Ceaseless, boundless, unendurable pain. The very universe worked against him. The best laid schemes of Wile E. Coyote oft go awry. Gravity conspired against him and the laws of physics broke themselves to ensure his defeat. Objects float when they shouldn't and fall when they should fly. Fire burns according to it's own whims, and explosions are more explosive than usual. It would be one thing if these environmental accidents were random, but they are very one sided, and very much against Wile E. When the very elements of the universe would conspire against him, you would think that the Coyote would give up, but no, he presses on ever more. He bangs his head quite literally against a mountain, each time hoping for a different outcome while the Roadrunner “meep meeps” and zips away into the distance.
This is quite an accurate description of my love life for the last 22 years. I have spent my life since I was 10 years old, chasing Roadrunners. It wasn't so much that I only chased the girls that I could not have, it was more that I could never have the girls that I wanted. There were plenty of girls that I did not want, and they may have been interested in me, but I didn't know, didn't care. I was always very aware and very decisive about what birds I chased, and did so with great aplomb. Some birds kept my attention for a long time, some for only a day, but no matter what I was always chasing somebody. And the outcome of all of my chasing was very similar to that of the Coyote. I was always falling off of cliffs, crashing into mountains at ridiculously high speeds, or being blow up in any number of inventive ways. Of course I don't mean these things literally. I suffered these injuries as psychic assaults and wounds to my ego from hundreds and thousands of rejections from all of the Roadrunners I spent my life chasing. I first remember a bird catching my eye at the age of 10. I was in 5th grade and there was a 6th grader named Angela who I only saw on the playground. I didn't know why, but I would just stare at her the entire recess period, and I found myself lingering on the 6th graders side of the playground. I never chased her seriously, but she got the taste in my mouth. It wasn't until High School that I was in full Coyote mode. I reasoned that the better the trap the easier I could catch the bird. But instead of bird feed, I used romantic stories, Valentine's gifts, sweet words, sweeter acts, and every “friend-ly” act I had at my disposal to win women. And man could I attract them. I had so many female friends I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't know what to do with them because they wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do to them. I was constantly being diverted into brick walls of “friendship” or “I don't like you that way”. But did I give up? Did Wile E. Coyote ever give up? I bounced from Roadrunner to roadrunner, always chasing, never catching, but taking more and more damage all the time. It was this last point that I didn't understand until much later.
There were two points that I didn't understand until I was around 30. One was that every bird I chased was never as perfect or unique as I thought she was. She was always deeply flawed (like the Roadrunner) for my purposes, and never as unique as I thought she was. In fact, it wasn't until much later in life that I discovered really attractive women were a dime a dozen, and that really great personalities were in much shorter supply. My religious fervor in chasing women blinded me to their flaws, and in that blindness I treated them far better than I should have. That was always my first and biggest mistake. The second point that I realized entirely too late was that all the damage I took from Roadrunner chasing had left me completely bereft of self-esteem, which was in turn making it even harder for me to catch any girls. Very self-defeating cycle that is. By the time I was 27 I was dead, done; I had no self-esteem left and I was desperate. I had no defenses, but the assaults on my psyche kept coming. The boulders that fell on me, to continue the metaphor, got bigger and bigger, even after I held up my pathetic little sign that said “I Surrender”.
I would say the biggest, juiciest, and fastest Roadrunner I ever encountered was, well, I'll call her AZ. AZ was the worst for me because unlike the antagonist of Wile E. Coyote, AZ was just as devious and as much of a Genius as I was. The fact that she was so much like me was why I desired her so much. It is also why I had no chance of catching her. She would set traps for me and I would walk right into them. She wanted a game, I wanted to be caught. To this day I can't really be around her, because she destroys all of my mental defenses.
She was the one I wanted the most but not the most destructive. Lots of birds would fight for that title, Ceresa, Kia, Grace, AV, L and others who thankfully I can't remember now. New ones pop up all the time, each more perfect than the last, but in the end, like our friend the Roadrunner, they are never worth the amount of pain I go through to catch them. That's why I am now on the Roadrunner Free Diet. No more chasing birds for me. I can't have Carbs, refined Sugars, or Roadrunners. I am officially off of the market, for all the reasons seen above. I had an epiphany, recently, that if I took all the money and resources that I put into Acme Corp. and chasing roadrunners, and put it into bettering myself and focusing on school, I would probably be rich and famous by now. I have already seen some positive results from this new philosophy.
So to reiterate; no more rocket packs, no more flying outfits, no more painting tunnels on the sides of mountains, no more bird seed, no more giant magnets, and definitely no more dynamite. I'm sure life will throw some absolutely irresistible birds my way, but I will resist. I will stay focused, because I have bigger birds to fry, so to speak. This doesn't mean that I'm going to start to chase men, it just means that from now on, I have no romantic life. I can live without one, and frankly, having one hasn't ever done me more good than bad. So this is my version of the “Fabulously Single Project”. Let life come at me with whatever, but this Coyote, for once is focused on something other than chasing tail.

Like Urination for Precipitation

2010-08-07T16:51:00.002-04:00

If you aren't familiar, there is a saying that goes something like “do not piss on my head and tell me that it is raining.” I am quite familiar with this situation because many times in my 3 decades of life I have had people unzip from above my head and subsequently warn me of coming thunderstorms. One of the most pernicious of these bamboozles is the “we can be friends” lie. For a man, and for most women, being put in the friend zone is the kiss of death; there is absolutely no worse fate than being banished, “It's a Good Life” style, to the Friend Zone. (If you don't get the reference, look it up; it's an excellent episode of the Twilight Zone). Like that episode, being banished to the Friend Zone is a cold, horrifying, soul-crushing event from which there is no return. When you have been sent there once your main goal in life is to never be banished there again. But I, for one reason or another, keep finding myself in that particular cornfield time and time again, each time through another hilariously convoluted series of events.

I believe that I have been sent to the cornfield more times than most, because I have a particular personality trait that predisposes me to leaving myself open to getting “rained” on. I have an impossible to ignore need to fix people. Now don't get me wrong; I'm no Mother Theresa/Jesus figure. I would say it’s more of an ego-syntonic drive to do what it is that I think I do best; resolve people's psychological issues. I think that most people like to do what they do best, and I am a very good psychologist, regardless of what people may say. There's another component to this tragedy that I am not sure if I have complete control over; I have a penchant for meeting women who have recently hit rock bottom in their lives. This is a big reason why I have to fix so many people, because I seem to find so many people who need fixing. I'm not talking abut women who just broke a nail, I'm talking about serious, life threatening issues. Most of the time. Sometimes they are just girls who happen to date the same type of homicidal jerks over and over again but most of the time they are women with legitimate problems in their lives that I have some sort of useful perspective on.

If this is just some random cosmic coincidence then I suppose I can't do much about it. I've tried fighting against the immutable laws of nature before, and have always come out the worse for it. I'm tired of beating my head against a wall of physics. Another, less fantastic hypothesis is that I am subconsciously attracted to “damaged” women, which is a common affliction amongst some men. I have written before about my ”Hero Complex” and how I have a inherent drive to save people. What if there is a part of me that, when there is no one around who is in any acute danger, seeks out women who are broken, damaged, or are in acute danger, and insinuate myself into their lives? What if there is a part of me that looks for emergencies so that I can “save the day” and be the hero? Ask yourself these questions if you have a similar pattern of behavior, especially if you often find yourself banished to the cornfields. There is a direct correlation between befriending damaged people and ending up in the friend zone.

What is this connection? Well, I'll tell you. One of those immutable laws of the universe I spoke of earlier is the he or she who fights the battle never lives to see the fruits of their labor. Despite what 80's movies and video games have told us, if you enter the Castle and fight the Dragon in order to save the princess, chances are in the real world that once you do risk your life and do all those acts of daring do, the princess will then immediately hook up with your unemployed stoner roommate. THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is reality. I have learned that whenever I fix someone, they inevitably run out and sleep with/fall in love with the first person they see that isn't me. I have heard stories from several men and women confirming this from their own experience as well. They have had cases where they have helped people to stop drinking, stop doing drugs, stop dating abusive men, stop dating crazy women, get jobs, go back to school, graduate school, etc. and when they finally help this person achieve their goal, they, as Kanye West said “leave they ass for a White girl”.

What I mean by that is whenever you put your heart and soul into helping someone out in life, the chances are good that when they reach that goal they will leave you for someone else, that is, if they were ever with you in the first place. Only very strong relationships don't break up when one person experiences a large change in life/status such as going from dug user to sober, or from having low self esteem to being a fully self reliant individual. The worst part of the banishing procedure is that the person who does it usually tries to convince you that it's a good thing, which is where the great lie about being rained on begins. Rodgers and Hammerstein could not compose a greater song and dance than these people do when they try to explain to you why the fact that they are essentially ditching you now that they are “better” and giving all their goodies to a complete stranger who had nothing to do with their recovery is, in fact, a positive experience for you. Some of them think that you should even be thanking them for it. They are effusive with their thankfulness. Here is an actual text I received in this situation;

“I adore you, you know that. Just not in the way you want me to. Anyway I think you're amazing and awesome and I hate that now things are probably going to be weird between you and I. I hate to lose you. You're the only guy who I've talked to consistently for a year. And I think that's because we never hooked up.”

And this, this is the part where the trickle of piss becomes a downpour;

“You should be happy, I let you in where other guys never get to go.”

Apparently that place she let me in is everywhere but her vagina. The crazy part is that this is maybe the 20 or 30^th time I've heard this speech in my life. I have the unfortunate luck to encounter women who believe that they can only sleep with men who don't care about them, and who they can't care about in return. This is, of course, lunacy. But a surprising number of women think this way. By the way, the above quotes are not doctored or taken out of context in any way. It took me a long time to realize that telling me it's a good thing that “I'm too special to sleep with” is not a good thing. It's piss disguised as rain. It's a sham, and after 3 decades I'm finally learning to grab an umbrella and step out of it. If you care about someone, and they are special to you, you should give them the greatest gift you can, which isn't “friendship”. Besides, what these people consider friendship isn't that, because the relationship is never even. The person doing the fixing never receives the same services in return. That person can never depend on the person they fixed for emotional support. The damaged person, by definition, cannot be a good friend because if they could they would probably possess other life skills that would have prevented them from becoming damaged in the first place. They are inherently selfish, and never ask about the “fixer's” problems. Therefore, the fixer is more of a tool to be used when needed than a true friend. In what way is this a tenable position for anyone? A true friendship is reciprocal, and these relationships are strictly one way. The friend zone is a lonely place, and no one ever has sex there.

So, if you are the type to be a “fixer” and you feel some trickles coming from the sky, ask yourself is this really rain I'm feeling, or something else entirely?

Let's Pretend

2010-07-21T03:36:00.001-04:00

(I believe that this falls under the category of "free verse" not quite a poem. be gentle, I kinda of just vomited it up from my subconscious.)

Let's pretend that I took no for an answer. That I let the world beat me, that I never recovered from my mother being snuffed out like a candle in a stiff wind. Let's say that I never recovered from every time I got knocked, no, hit by a car, slammed to the ground, power-bombed and then had a piano dropped on me from three stories up. Let's pretend that I lost the fight with my own mind that I have had to fight every day of my life, the death urge that compels me to fail, to sleep longer and longer until I get to the day when I don't wake up. Let's pretend that I don't hear the alarm in the morning over the sound of my ribs cracking, over the sound of life kicking me again, of the sound of my jaw shattering and my teeth hitting the pavement like a packet of skittles, skittering across the ground. Let's pretend I was late for work because I was choking on my own blood and bile. God don't like Ugly, but he does not mind kicking you when you are down. He must enjoy that sound, the skittering, you see.
See the sideshow, let it begin, can't afford to pass it by, guaranteed to make you cry. See the boy who cried a million tears and not one hit the ground because his pride and his ego refused to let his pain go, so the heartache and the rage and the sadness and the frustration roam his wearied mind like hungry tigers consuming every but of happiness that should clumsily stumble into their path. So he cries on the inside and smiles on the outside and laughs at the cliches that suddenly make sense but don't shed any light and don't give any answers and don't provide any solace or comfort but never cease to miss a moment to destroy any chance at making a better life for himself and those around him.
Let us count the ways in which his heart has been broken, let us count the ways in which his heart has been denied, let us count the ways that he has let down and been let down, let us count how many times he has been told no. Let us see how many times he has been laughed at for daring to hope for something better, for asking for a woman who was never meant for him, for asking for a happiness that will forever be out of his reach. Be careful of the laughter, if you gather it up, all of it every smirk and smile and giggle that has escaped the Candy-Colored Lip-Glossed orifice of his oppressor, the sheer volume of derision would blast your consciousness away as cleanly and as efficiently as those poor souls who where firsthand witness to the splitting of the atom at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You may hear the cracking, again, the crackling cracking, but it is not breaking it is burning, the singed sizzling away of what was once a human being.
If you were to look for my innocence, my hope, my childhood, my boyish charm, you would find no bone, no ash, no teeth, just a relief, a dark outline against a wall of where all of those positive things about me used to be, before they were destroyed by untold waves of heat, pressure, and light. Blasts from the Candy Colored lips of so many who spoke honeyed words that burned, most literally, like the sun, and left as much evidence of their passing by as a sun would.
Maybe if you looked up you would see those trees with their strange fruit swinging in a cold, ill wind. From the bows of the highest trees swing those things I once held dear, my hopes, my dreams, those things I wanted and want so much in life, hanging dead and decayed, lynched with barbed-wire nooses, by honeyed words and lies and half truths and good intentions. Well meaning diatribes and silences that were meant to speak volumes but instead were like thin steel spikes drilled deep into my living corpse, aimed not to kill but to cause the most pain possible. Steel spikes that never missed their mark, that slid easily, lubricated as they were by the aforementioned tears that I never was allowed to cry. Three swords it says, piercing my heart, but still it beats. Let's pretend that it didn't, let's pretend that my heart stopped and I gave up and I said yes, no, I know, I can't, you won't I'm not good enough, I never will be, I never was, Never will be good enough for you, Not White Enough, Not Jewish Enough, Not Skinny Enough, Not Stable Enough, Not Rich Enough Not Black Enough, Not Hood Enough Not dat Nigga.
Not
Not
Not
Not
Not.
Ever.
Enough.

Let us pretend. That I will never. Ever never be enough.

Let us pretend that I believed that.

That I will never be good enough.

Where would I be? Would I be anywhere? Would I exist? No I think not. So excuse me if I'm Pushy. Excuse me if I'm Arrogant, Creative, Cocky, Overbearing, Antagonistic, Demonstrative, Persistent, Persuasive, Loud, Random, Unpredictable, Uncompromising, Moody, Overwhelming, Intense, Subtle, Stimulating, Arousing, Destructive, Comforting, Seductive, Protagonistic, Heroic, Demonic, Erotic, Feral, Dutiful, Loyal, Reckless;
Excuse me, if I do not take your “no” and walk away quietly into that dark night.
Excuse me, in short, for being Me. Because this is the Me You made, This is the Me I had to learn to be to survive the world You made for Me. So enjoy Me, revel in Me, Because I Am Not going Anywhere. And if you cannot fathom that, well, You can always Pretend that things were Different.

Show at Comix

2010-07-17T00:42:00.004-04:00

A mix of new talent with seasoned pros and celebrity drop-ins! These are the shows to catch the hottest stars of tomorrow! And I'm gonna be there! (I'm in the "hottest stars of tomorrow" category) What I need is at least 15 people to RSVP As Soon As Possible to come and see me perform! All you have to do is call the club 212-524-2500 and say you are coming to see me! You also get a discount on admission, which would be $10. There is a 2 drink minimum as well. All that is inconsequential however, as this is a really funny show, and even though it's new talent, I can guarantee it's funny talent! So let me know if you are coming and thanks in advance!

Oh, and if you can't come, which I completely understand, try at least to tell anyone you know who is a fan of Stand-up. It should be a good show.

Best Beats Ever

2010-06-23T02:49:00.001-04:00

What I am undertaking here is, at best, quixotic, and at worst, impossible. I want to make a list of the top 10 best Hip Hop beats ever. Once I started upon this task I realized how foolhardy it was. I mean, it would be hard enough to make a list of top 10 Bad Boy beats, or top 10 Violator beats (including Missy, Timbaland, and Busta Rhymes songs). It would be damn near impossible to make a top 10 list of Dre beats, or Snoop songs, or Eminem songs, but that is exactly what I am attempting to do here. If you disagree with my list, (and you are almost destined to) I encourage you to make a list of your own. I am a beat connoisseur, a beat junkie, a beat-nut, if you will, and I would love to hear other people's opinions on this matter. To be honest, I probably won't even completely agree with my list, but I figure this is a good place to start. Oh, and PLEASE keep in mind that though there may be better SONGS that capture some of the moods I'm talking about, I am making an attempt to separate the beats out from the flows, featured artists, etc. So without further ado, here we go...

10. Is a Three-way tie by Dipset because they are all TV related samples. Of course I mean .357, Let Me Know, and the Horse and Carriage remix. They are (in order; Magnum P.I. Theme, the MNFootball theme, and the Night Court theme) some of the best TV music around. I am slightly disappointed that they never got around to sampling the “AirWolf” theme, but it could still happen, right?

9.“What Up Gangsta”, 50 Cent - If you have some nefarious actions planned for the night, there are few songs that will put you in the proper frame of mind faster than this song. Runner-up – Quiet Storm, Mobb Deep, Ante-Up Remix, M.O.P.

8.“Fire”, Joe Buddens – This may be the Jersey in my showing, but the hardcore House pedigree of this songs makes me put this song on repeat consistently. If it comes on while I'm driving I instantly speed up 10-15 mph. It's that kind of song. If you can sit still during that song, check your pulse.

7.“Never Let Me Down”, Kanye West – It's fairly well known if you know me that I drink the Kanye Kool-Aid. I say that I am to Kanye as “Stan” was to Eminem, without, you know, the homoerotic letters and suicidal tendencies... But I digress. The problem with me and Kanye's songs is that I find it impossible to separate the flows from the beat, so I can't really be impartial. “Never Let Me Down”, I believe to be an amazing song, with or without words, which is why I included it here. Still, I feel like I'm violation my own rules here...

6.“Bitch Please Pt 1 and 2” - Want to talk about epitomizing the West Coast sound? I don't think it gets much closer than these two songs. They fairly beg to be blasted at high volume in a low rider, sans top, in a low income neighborhood. You can throw Xzibit's “X” in here as well; what, that was an enjoyable song...

5. “Clint Eastwood”, Gorillaz – This is the first Gorillaz song I ever heard and still is by far my favorite. I don't know what it is about this lazy meandering baseline that gets me, but like a good point guard this beat makes whoever is working with it look better. I think maybe it is the harmonica that lends the song a sort of otherworldly feel. Either way, this one deserves to stand among the best.

4.“I Can't Stand the Rain”, Missy Elliot – If anyone ever coins the term “Beat Minimalist” (which I should) Missy will be the primary example of such an artist, and this song will be the primary example. A song that's as great for what isn't there as for what is, Missy definitely explored the space with this one. This beat is the musical version of a Sundress; you had better be talented, because this beat will not hide any of your flaws. Beautiful bare bones music.

3. “You're All I Need”, Method Man, ft. Mary J. Blige – The most gangsta love song of all time, there is really no way to get around how hard this beat is considering the subject matter. If you separate the two and listen to them separately, you are put in the mood to do entirely different things. By “different” I mean, do a home invasion or write a poem for your beloved different. It's a good thing this song is about love, because this beat is about grimy, illegal things.

2.“Who Shot Ya”, Notorious B.I.G. - Speaking of bad intentions, this song has nothing but bad intentions. Again, I maybe unduly prejudiced towards this song because of all the yelling of “J.M. MUTHAFUCKA” (my initials) but this beat influenced a lot of hip-hop that came after it. An original product of the Minimalist School, this beats' scarcity of decoration allowed B.I.G. To fully display the breadth and range of his lyrical ability. I can imagine the shock to the status quo when they first heard this song. So, what's better than this?

1.“Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”, Busta Rhymes – What is it about this song that was/is so special? What is it that, when it comes on in clubs or bars, produces some kind of positive reaction in every patron, male, female, old, young? This song, I think, was something of a musical breakthrough for hip-hop. Definitely Minimalist by nature, I think this song made producers change what they thought a hip-hop beat could be. “Put Your Eyes” was off-beat; slower than usual, and had odd pacing, but it worked, oh boy did it work. The song showed off Busta Rhyme's ability to rap over pretty much everything, but, I believe, it showed the hip-hop world that there was a lot more room for creativity when it came to producing tracks.

So that's my list. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am.... now.

The Beginning of the End for All Other Podcasts

2009-11-02T19:59:00.000-05:00

An Alter Ego is a second self, a second personality or persona within a person. An Alter Negro is the new definition of what it is to be Black, the Negrona within the Negro. I am of my Race, Gender, and Species, and not of them at the same time. The Alter Negro Show is the Internet Radio Broadcast manifestation of me, John Minus, the Alter. It is everything in my head wrung out and put on display for the world to see. It is my way of changing the world.

There are a lot of people like me out there in the world, people who don’t quite fit in, who are underrepresented, marginalized, and labeled Deviant. To all of those people, I say; this is the Show for you. The Alter-Negro Show, hosted by John W. Minus. The Grand Premier is in 3 weeks, November 23rd, 2009 on the Non-Productive Network, www.non-productive.com.

Go ahead, try and not listen. You’ll regret it.

The Most Colorful Game

2009-10-21T18:45:00.002-04:00

A young man was killed in Hartford, Connecticut on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence, as Hartford doesn’t seem to be a place bereft of crime. What is truly unfortunate is that sometimes no matter how much a young Black man tries to do the right thing, he can still become the victim of random-bullshit-petty-violence that takes his life. It may sound cliché at this point, but most concepts become cliché because they are so ubiquitous as to become a rhetorically accepted fact. The concept I am talking about is that of the poor Black kid in the ghetto who has some athletic ability and tries to use it to pull himself and his family out of the endless cycle of violence that traps so many in America’s inner cities. It may be cliché, but it is a stone-cold fact for many kids in the ‘hood that Football or Basketball are their only perceived ways of being somebody in the world… well, that or hip-hop. The worst part is that even when these kids make it, achieve their dream and get scholarships to a big-time College, their past still haunts them. They leave the ‘hood, but the ‘hood never leaves them. Jasper Howard wasn’t even from Connecticut, he was from Miami, FL, and still the violence that has claimed the lives of so many young Black men claimed his as well. And, like I said, as far as we know he was trying to do the right thing. So what do we learn from this? No matter how hard or how fast someone runs between the lines, they can never escape what they are, their Color.

This season the NFL has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the AFL, what is now the AFC. In honor of that there have been a multitude of “Throwback” games when two AFC foes face each other, resulting in some rather colorful uniform displays. Starting with the Bright Orange stripes of the referees, I believe that I have seen every color in the visible Electromagnetic Spectrum, and some that aren’t (I’m pretty sure the Seahawks have used some Ultraviolet Colors in their alternate Uni’s). I, personally, have enjoyed the hell out of this season’s throwbacks, my favorites being the Oilers and Broncos (yes the Brown and Gold). Unfortunately my absolute favorite throwback Uni, the Tangerine of the Tampa Bay Bucs, will not be on display as they are a NFC team *sigh*. I guess I’ll live. Even with all the flashes of color one thing unfortunately seems to remain the same; the inescapable fact that the most important color on the field isn’t the green of the grass, or the hue of the uniform, but the tone of the skin of the player.

This has always been true, and it still is true. In 1958 the University of Buffalo football team was invited to it’s one and only Bowl game in its school history (before or since). It was the Tangerine Bowl, to be played in Orlando, FL against the Florida State Gators. Buffalo had two Black players on their team, and the school was informed that one of the stipulations of playing in the Bowl Game was that Buffalo’s Black players had to stay home; the Orlando High School Athletic Association did not allow Black players to play with White players. This was not an isolated rule either; it was a pretty common practice in The South for a long time. Common, of course, until the segregated schools realized that they could not beat teams that had Black players. Then the urge to win overcame racism, as it often does. This is why Sports so often overcomes racism, because even the most strident racist bastard can overlook his hatred for 4 quarters.

This being the case, sports have brought down a lot of racial divides, while simultaneously putting them on display for the world to see. There has long been a belief that Black’s could never successfully play the QB position because we just aren’t smart enough. This perception is still around; there are very few Black QB’s who aren’t also known for their running ability. Warren Moon, the only Black QB in the Football Hall of Fame, had to go to Canada to play when he graduated from college because no team in the NFL would draft him as a QB, despite being named MVP of the 1978 Rose Bowl. After passing for over 3000 yards for 4 straight years in the Canadian Football League, Moon finally was taken seriously as a QB, and after a sizeable bidding war signed with the Houston Oilers. To date, only one Black QB has started and won a Super Bowl, further adding to this perception. And then there was the Limbaugh/McNabb debacle…

Rush Limbaugh, briefly, worked for ESPN doing color commentary on the NFL. He genuinely has a love for football, and in my opinion was an interesting addition to the show. His football analysis was actually very good, and he did not seem that out of place for someone who had no real connection to the sport other than as a fan. But alas, eventually the real Rush came out when he said that the Media wanted Donovan McNabb to succeed only because he was a Black QB. Now at the time, and even today, I did not think what he said was really that terrible. In fact I may have even agreed a little. Regardless of the fact that I hate the Eagles, I thought that Limbaugh’s statement, in and of itself, was an observation and nothing more. The problem is in the context of everything Rush has said before and since regarding race, he cannot say things like that and expect it to be glossed over. He has said some things that quite frankly make him the world’s biggest asshole, and he cannot possibly be naïve enough to think that what he does for a living would have no bearing on whether he was allowed to be part of an industry as image-conscious as the NFL is. Add to that the target of most of his vitriol happens to be African-Americans, who obviously had a problem with him becoming an owner as well, and yes, Rush was Rushed out of the group trying to buy the St. Louis Rams.

I am an ardent believer in our First Amendment right to Free Speech, but what most people fail to realize is that when you say whatever the Hell you want to, there are consequences to those actions. Rush Limbaugh just experienced some of those consequences. In his world, he is never held accountable for his actions, but in the real world, people hate him and are angry about what he says. Sports are the great equalizer, where it’s about Colors, yes, but what rules above all is CAN YOU HELP US WIN. Because of that, over the decades racial barriers have been broken down both on the field and off. Ultimately, Rush was not going to help the Rams improve as an organization, as many players voiced that they would not play for a team that he was a part of, meaning that his presence would hurt the team in the WIN/LOSS column. Period. That’s why he was dropped from the group. I love my Colorful NFL World for just that reason. Now, where can I buy one of those Gold and Brown Broncos Unis?

The Unbearable Triteness of Beings

2009-09-16T17:44:00.001-04:00

Let me start off by saying this.

I. Hate. Pink.

I always have. I don’t think there is anything good about her or what she does. Most of my distaste for her comes from the fact that she is just too damn ugly to be famous. I mean, I know plenty of attractive girls who deserve to be famous way more than Pink does. She’s just awful in the facial area. She looks as if a blind impressionist sculpted her visage. I disapprove of her and most of the things that come out of her mouth. Many of her “songs” seem to consist of yelling and pandering to tired fake-feminist themes that are guaranteed to sell because hey, who doesn’t like being angry and yelling about being spurned by stupid ex-boyfriends huh? Really, she’s the worst kind of garbage because she has absolutely no basis for having a justifiable opinion on anything, yet she feels the need to share her ill-informed and irrational opinions with everyone in the fucking world. Literally, she is a global cancer in this sense, harassing people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Her most passionate cause is animal rights, but unlike most animal rights activists she actually does other charity work for humans, and for this I must give her at least a little credit. She hasn’t abandoned her (presumed) race for another species, even though she obviously shares more DNA with a canid or, say, an orangutan than another Human Being.

One of the reasons that this chick gets to me so much, is that she likes to lay into people that I like, namely Beyonce and Kanye West. She had a thing against Kanye previous to the events of last weekend because he wears fur. Well guess what you half-chick, Cam’ron wears fur too, why don’t you go after him huh? Call him a piece of shit? Oh I know why, because Cam’ron and Dip Set will actually have her ass kidnapped in a basement in Harlem, never to be seen again. The point of the matter being that Pink only goes after “soft targets” like Beyonce and Prince William. Kanye, for all of his ego, is not and never has been a thug type of guy. He’s just not the beef-type who responds to perceived slights through diss-records and carries out vendettas through the media, no matter what people say about him. As jackass-ish as what he did was, you cannot say that he has ever made a personal attack against Taylor Swift or anyone, save maybe for George Bush, who really deserved it. The evidence is clear; for all of the many and varied insults she has hurled at him, he has said nothing in return. For what it’s worth, neither has Beyonce. I suspect though that Beyonce could care less about Pink, seeing as how B far outclasses Pink in virtually any and every category of measurable success one could think of.

I admit freely that I am biased towards Kanye, in fact I have stated many times that I am his biggest fan, in much the same way that “Stan” was Eminem’s biggest fan From an objective point of view however, the reaction to this event is all wrong. For one thing, Kanye interrupted someone else’s speech, did not insult her, and just said that B should have one. Now, upon further examination, it is no secret that Kanye looks up to Jay-Z like his big brother, so by extension it would make sense that he sees Beyonce as a big sister or at the very least sister in law. Who among you wouldn’t stand up and make a fuss if you felt that your beloved sister had been cheated? Wouldn’t you do it, especially if you were drunk and already prone to speaking your mind… no matter if it is appropriate or not… in any and all situations?
Secondly, and I won’t talk about this too much, but the man’s mother died 2 years ago, and let’s just say that it is still effecting him. Kanye was not exactly the most emotionally stable guy beforehand, and to lose such a central figure in his life, in fact, the central figure in his life so suddenly and unexpectedly sent him into a tailspin that he never has adequately dealt with. He admitted what I already knew, that he didn’t take any time off from working to adequately grieve, and all of that pain is going to come out somewhere at sometime. Believe me; I know this much is true.

Lastly, NONE OF THIS is as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. It seems to have sparked a national debate about whether manners are dead and about how Kanye is the rudest man ever. This of, course, is racist. I know people will say that I‘m full of it, but do you honestly think this would have gotten the same coverage if Kanye had done it to Ciara at the BET awards? Would you even have heard of it? You and I both know that the answer to that is no. I’m not entirely sure who Taylor Swift is or what she does, but I know what she looks like, and based on the fact that she is 17, and Beyonce is, well, B, I’m pretty sure that she has no business winning an award over B. That being said, she did win, and it is not the first time, nor will it be the last time some blond-eyed blue-haired girl wins an award over someone darker and more deserving.

What really burns me bout all of this is the public outrage. Much like the Michael Vick situation, people are showing much more anger and venom here than they do when actual human lives are threatened. I will never forget what happened in New Orleans, to me, it is just as horrible as 9/11, and that is why I consider Bush and his administration to be just as bad as those terrorists. They are just as responsible for the loss of several thousand American lives as Al Quaeda is. But I digress… the outrage over Katrina seemed muted and, let’s say, relegated to specific portions of the populace. The outrage over one entertainer embarrassing another has been far more vitriolic and incendiary. Once again, our priorities as a nation seem to be horribly skewed, and that is what makes me so angry. It seems like the most ignorant and ill-informed members of society feel the need to share their opinions in public forums the most often, which of course is why I started my blog. Pink firmly falls in the category of ignorant, ill-informed, and ugly. Sorry, I just can’t get over how hideous she is for a pop-star. I mean really, who dropped the ball there?

The White Girl Dance, Sex Offenders, Disney, etc…

2009-09-02T02:01:00.002-04:00

It’s been a long time, I know, but yer boy is back, and I have a lot on my mind. For one thing, Disney bought Marvel. This isn’t exactly a surprise if you really think about it, and it may turn out to be a good thing in some ways. Warner Bros. and DC have had an agreement for years now that has worked out really well for them. All DC characters have had movies made by Warner Bros., which has resulted in a pretty standard level of consistency across all of their films. At least in terms of production values, DC movies have all been decent. It is a trait that Marvel movies, let’s just say, lack. Marvel movies vary wildly in terms of quality, actors, and production values, and with this merger that may change. Also, the major advantage is that different characters can be used in different movies with ease. DC could easily do a Batman/Superman movie because WB has the rights to both characters, but prior to today there could be no Human Torch/Spiderman interaction because different studios did their movies. Well, they could do a Barman/Superman movie if they could un-fuck themselves and get on with it, but that’s another rant for another day. Let’s face it; Disney has a shit-ton of money that they can put behind any of their movies. They could even get better people to write/direct all of the Marvel movies, so there won’t be such a disparity between oh, say, Daredevil and Elektra and Spider-Man and Iron Man. Of course, the negative side is that Disney is Disney, and the darker titles like Deadpool and Punisher are going to be sanitized, much to the dismay of all. But you all do not need to be too worried about that, because if I see it happen I will burn Disney to the ground with all of its employees inside. I think that’s fair, right?

Which brings me to Sex Offenders… what, that isn’t a normal transition for you? Well, this post isn’t going to be smooth, it’s going to be more like a taxi ride in Manhattan, so get used to it. Now where was I… oh yeah, Child Molesters. So, it seems that people have their panties in a bunch about sex offenders in general, and pedophiles and child molesters in specific. They are scared to death that “those people” will move in next to them, and menace their children, abduct them in the night like some kiddy-touching vampires, and abscond with them under cover of darkness. Well, that just ain’t the case. What I am about to say isn’t meant to alarm you, but in fact is meant to get you to protect your family in the most effective manner possible.

First of all, most kids who are molested are assaulted by people they, or you, know. So if all of these strangers you see on maps of sex offenders scare you, you actually should be more worried about the people you know who show an unusual interest in your children because, let’s face it, no one really LIKES your kids. You LOVE your kids, but let’s be real here, you don’t really like your kids. So do you think other people can tolerate the sub-human ankle-biters? I mean, they may think they are cute, they may like to play with them, they may even enjoy your kids company somewhat, but at the end of the day most people cannot wait to getaway from your little buggers. The great thing about other people’s kids are that they are OTHER PEOPLE’S KIDS, and that when they need changing, or start crying, or start throwing ketchup on your brand new Ferragamo shoes, you can send those little f’ers right back to their parents and leave. That’s how the world works.

Child molesters and pedophiles want to stick around your kids and baby-sit even when they are colicky, or saucy, or nasty, or sick, or irreverent, or just plain being little pricks. That’s when you should be cautious, that’s when your Spider-Sense should be tingling. There are people who genuinely like kids and want to help them, but it is my assertion that everyone gets tired of kids eventually, and, given the choice, they would rather be doing something involving lubrication and nudity with another adult (or two) than be around kids. So, people, don’t worry about the sex offenders that have been caught, they are probably under surveillance: wonder about the one’s who haven’t been caught, the one’s that are not on the website… the ones you are related to, the friends of the family… In fact, just be aware of who the fuck is in your life. Megan’s law isn’t going to save your children, you are.

In the past few years, maybe I’ll say… ten; there has been a radical evolution in the White Woman… two in fact. One mutation has been the evolution of the white girl’s ass. Where previously the white girl’s ass was as wide and flat as the great plains of Montana, now you can find them with big, full bubble butts. Now granted, when I say “them” I mostly mean Italian girls, but there are exceptions. Every now and then you’ll find a Greek or Polish girl with a phatty that you just can’t ignore, but by and large, it’s the Italian girls who bring all the Black and Brown guys to the yard.

The more amazing evolution, however, has been the slow but steady ability of some white girls to be able to dance. And I don’t mean just move to the beat, I mean actually shake it like a saltshaker. Really, some of these chicks have rhythm, can move their hips, drop it like it’s hawt, the whole nine. It is really something to see. Now, this is, by no means a universal phenomenon. There are still white girls who seem to learn how to dance by studying old tapes of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld. I just cannot dance with those girls, as much as I would like to. People have to be in sync to dance together, in my opinion, and dancing with a girl who can’t ride da riddim, so to speak, is like trying to break a bucking bronco. It may sound fun hypothetically, but in practice it is in no way erotic. But that is not who we are talking about here, we are talking about those rare white girls who seem to have grown up Black and work a dance floor like they work a pole on weekends. I salute these women and wish that they would share their gifts and abilities with their Caucasian sisters. Problem is, a lot of those girls actually do work a pole… either a dance pole or… in another sense of the word… Really, if a few girls who can dance like this is good, than more are better, right? As long as you girls are at it, I will, free of charge, offer my services to dance with you. Nobody wants to dance alone right? Even Whitney Houston wanted to dance with somebody. Come one, come all, and trip the light fantastic with me, my Ivory Skinned Nymphs… you won’t regret it.

Living a Life of Raucous Desperation

2009-04-16T00:22:00.002-04:00

Most of us;

Many of us;

Live lives of quiet desperation.

At some point in our lives we are deathly, quietly afraid. Terrified of life. Of something in it anyway. We are anxious and fearful. I know it and you know it, those of you reading this right now and thinking of that thing that you are quietly (or vocally) afraid of are going to follow this a little easier than those of you who are denying it. And I know there are those of you who are denying it. Nothing, never, evermore, you say, have I ever feared. Nothing, you say, to the point of terror, and never to anything you would call "quiet desperation".

To you I say, "you’re good". You are the best liar of all, because the best lies are the ones you tell to yourself. We are all afraid of something, unless you have faced that fear… and you would know if you had because you will have that little episode marked down on your little mental Facebook calendar as "The worst fucking time of my life". Those of us who have had to face down our worst fears are never the same after it. Sometimes we are better, sometimes we are worse, but we are never the same.

When this happened to me, I wasn’t the same. Actually it happened to me three times. I had to endure facing my three worst fears… and as my Grandfather would say, I lived. I am still here… but changed. I am no longer living a life of quiet desperation, I am living a life of cacophonous desperation. I am desperate to be myself. For many years of my life I have molded who I was to be somebody for someone else. I made myself into everyone’s Doll, hoping that they’d buy me and take me home.

But when my "Happening"... uh… happened, it let loose the real me. And it turns out the real me is a Force of Nature, something like a Phenomenon, with all the destructive force of a Hurricane. And since I have made this little discovery I have spent countless amounts of mental energy trying to contain myself, trying to NOT be who I am, because people apparently couldn’t take the intensity. Or that’s how I perceived the state of affairs to be. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong. But that is certainly what it felt like. These days I often feel like there’s a caged starved, half-crazed wolf in my head trying to break out and I have to keep it caged and starved and crazed because… because…

Because… why exactly? Why indeed?

No more. I’m letting it free. I’m letting the Hurricane free to wreak havoc. I in short, am going to start being myself.

God help us all.

And for all of you who are also living lives of Quiet (or vocal) desperation, please write me, I will show you how to let your beast lose. We need more people to be real, to be themselves… to be Forces of Nature.

The Primordial Ooze of a Movement...

2009-03-18T23:55:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about this black sub-culture thing for a long time. I'm still trying to work the bugs out. The problem is that Black people are so fractured now, but there is definitely a need I think to form some sort of support group for the Black kids who grow up in the suburbs and aren't accepted by the mainstream society, Blacks or Whites. I grew up always feeling like an outsider, and I don't want anyone to have to go through that anymore, but I still see black kids who are, I see some of them on this site. So I don't know, I feel like maybe this is my thing in life, to try and make it easier for My people, not so much Blacks in general, but Blacks who never quite fit in anywhere else... it's all hypothetical now, but that's the gist...

Flip 'n Fold F'in Fantastic!

2009-03-14T17:54:00.000-04:00

http://www.flipfold.com

If there is one thing you should know about me, is that I fuckin love my flip-fold table. It's the only reason I fold any of my clothes. I don't know how I lived without it. No longer are flip fold tables solely purveyed to large stores that sell clothes; now the regular man and woman can own one of these magical devices. I have owned one for quite a while now, and have been on their mailing list for just as long. They sometimes send me comforting emails to let me know what is going on with their magical company. I have just received a new one to let me know about other products available from this company that should be put at the forefront of American Technologies. "The Ultimate Folding Tool" offers much more than just the Flip Fold table. You must go to their website to see all of the other products these people, from the goodness and genius of their hearts and minds, provide to us. What they do, yes they do get paid for, but that is not why these people work for the Ultimate Folding Tool. No, they do their work out of love, and out of a sense of duty to Humanity. Visit that site and tell me that I am wrong. See if it is possible. And no, they do not pay me to say this; what I say here I also say out of love; love for my flip-fold table.

My Perfect Child...

2009-03-14T17:31:00.001-04:00

He/She would be a perfect 1/4th combination of Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Janeane Garofalo. Except, you know, Black. It's not a racial thing, I'm Black, it's a Genetic thing... by definition my child would have to be at least half-Black. There may be some danger to having a child who is snarkier than I, but the ever present battle of wits would keep me on my toes and keep my brain sharp, preventing me from ever going more senile than I already am. I think this is a good plan. Now all I have to do is find an incredibly sharp, witty, and devestatingly beautiful woman... Any suggestions?

Minus on Demand, via Non-Productive!

2009-02-24T11:13:00.000-05:00

Hello True Believers, I know you all have a big empty space in your life, a hole if you will that just needs to be filled with something. Well we, your friendly folks at Non-Productive (Sam, Frank, Lindsey and John) are here to fill your vast emptiness with our big meaty show. Now I know you people all have busy lives and can’t always listen to us live when we broadcast… at least that’s what you say, and hey; who are we to doubt that you are actually out having a life on Thursday nights…

Anyway we, your Radio Lovers on Non Productive, every Thursday night at 8PM on http://www.Hearnewbrunswick.com or http://www.non-productive.com understand that you can’t always be next to a computer on Thursday nights to hear our sexy voices, that’s why we have Non-Pro On Demand, AKA Podcasts available for download! You can get to them by two methods, either one works fine. 1. You can go to http://www.non-productive.com and Click on the Record Player on the top of the screen. That will take you to the podcasts page, or just go to podcasts.non-productive.com. Both methods work. Once there just scroll down until you find the shows you want, or, as I recommend, download them all! Come on, as if you have something better to do?

John

Go Team Venture!

2009-01-19T23:03:00.001-05:00

Last year’s Comic Con had many high points for me, but the high point for most people was the "Venture Bros." panel. Occupying a full size ballroom, it was standing room only to see the people responsible for Adult Swim’s most popular series currently. The room was packed with fans, some in costume to see the series creator and voice of Hank Venture, Chris McCullough, James Urbaniak (Dr Venture), Michael Sinterniklaas (Dean Venture), and Doc Hammer (Dr Girlfriend (!)). I was there to cover the Con, but I was really there as a fan more than anything. I love Venture Bros. Because I used to watch Johnny Quest religiously as a kid and teenager. When I would think back on the show I would think about how odd it was that these two kids (Johnny Quest and Hadji) where constantly being thrown into life-threatening situations and saw more than their fare share of men die at the tender ages of 15 or however old they were. I am pretty sure they even killed some people themselves. It all made me wonder, what the hell were these kids going to be like when they grew up? Actually, Johnny Quest left me with a lot of questions, some of which I probably think of waaay too much…

But that’s neither here nor there. I believe that the people who appreciate Venture Bros. the most are the ones who grew up watching the cartoons and action TV shows that VB takes many of it’s references from. The plot is hysterical in and of itself, but it’s the pop culture references that put the entertainment value of the show over the top. That is not to say that you have to get the references to find the show entertaining, I just think that is how one gets the most out of the show. The strength of the show is in the writing; VB has some of the wittiest, smartest, most natural sounding writing on television. It’s the writing that attracts fans who are not familiar with the references and the source material for the show. I have personally enslaved many of my friends to the show by simply exposing them to one or two episodes that they never would have watched on their own. Once they were taken in by the unparalleled humor of the show, they were hooked.

The best part about the Venture Bros. experience was that the people responsible for making the show are just as funny as the show they produce. The ease with which they interact with each other translates well to the screen. Watching the Venture Bros. panel was very much like watching the show itself. The personalities of the writers and the actors clearly shine through in the finished product; it is a good thing that they have such amazing personalities to do the show. Fortunately for everyone in attendance, a great show makes for a great panel, and the crowd was in stitches for much of the way-too-short time we had with the principle players. They showed a preview of Season Two, which had everyone in attendance foaming at the mouth to see it. At this date Season Two has aired, and it was well worth the wait, living up to the hype built around it at last year’s Con. The best part of the panel was that outside of the panel you could find people like Doc Hammer and James Urbaniak wandering around the Convention floor just like anybody else. Just saying, the same could not be said of Seth Green. Anyway, this year Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick will be at the Con as Special Guests. If this article has sparked any interest in Venture Bros. For you, or if you already a fan, it is well worth it to seek out their company this year. I know I will.

Why Bruce Timm is Important to You

2009-01-07T00:41:00.000-05:00

Bruce Timm is one of the most important men in my life. I only found this out very recently though. You are probably asking yourself if Bruce Timm is one of the most important men in my life, one would think that I would at least have been aware of him before very recently right? Well, I say in response, you do not know me very well. I am very often ignorant of the people who are responsible for the things that I enjoy the most. And Bruce Timm definitely qualifies as a man who is responsible for a good deal of the most enjoyable, quite frankly highest quality television available since the early 1980’s. Let me guide you through some of the CLASSIC cartoons that Mr. Timm has been a part of.

Mr. Timm is most well known for his involvement with DC’s entire run of animated series, from “Batman: The Animated Series” on. These series all had a good deal of continuity, which is essential to quality, and ran from one to another in a fairly smooth fashion. Batman blended into “Superman: the Animated Series” (with “Batman Beyond” in between), and Superman went to “Justice League”. “Justice League” then went on to become “Justice League Unlimited”, and next the Wonder Woman animated movie that will premier this year. He also executive produced much of “Teen Titans” and was involved with many of the various Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond, and Justice League animated movies that were made during the DC animated series illustrious run. Now, I must say here that I have always been FAR more of a Marvel guy in terms of comic books, but when it comes to cartoons, DC wins in every category by far. The best compliment that I can give to “The Dark Knight” is that it almost was as good as an episode of the original Batman series.

Batman the animated series had a way of giving depth to characters that one wouldn’t think possible. I always said it had the best acting on television, which was especially bad since it was animation. Many of Batman’s villains in this incarnation where portrayed as tragic figures, especially Mr. Freeze, Clayface, and Two-Face. You never knew which way Catwoman was leaning (good or bad) and seemingly, neither did Selena. Harley and Poison Ivy very nearly deserved a show of their own. And then there was the Joker. People will argue this of course, but my favorite incarnation of the Joker is Mark Hamill’s. He was insane, dangerous, murderous, hilarious, and had the best laugh. You could always count on Joker episode to deliver, and it is hard for any series to be consistently good with any character. As for Batman himself, he started out as clearly having a Batman side and a Bruce Wayne side, but as the series progressed, and really, it helps if you think of all the series as one continuous story with different story arcs focusing on different characters, he becomes more Batman-all-the-time. It makes sense however as the dangers they face become more and more serious, and as Superman begins to lose control of his anger…

Ah, but there we encounter the greatest story in the animated series, the evolution of Superman into a real boy, as I like to call it. Superman as we all know is an alien. And all he really wants is to be human. Well, in the animated series Lex Luthor and Darkseid give him his wish, introducing him to two particular human emotions; pride and anger. Over the course of the series, Superman learns that he likes being THE Hero, that he does not like losing, and he does not really know how to handle frustration. One of the most psychologically thrilling storylines is the degradation of Superman’s control over his anger, and the effects it has on the Justice League, and the world in general. If the last Superman had some of that substance it would have been way more interesting. I mean, I enjoyed “Superman Returns” but it just does not stand up to the Superman storylines from the “Justice League Unlimited” series.

Bruce Tim has Produced, Directed, wrote, and Art directed all of these series. These are quality works, and just part of his professional body. I watched all of these shows religiously, and though I still Make Mine Marvel, when it comes to superhero cartoons, nothing surpasses DC’s masterpieces, and it is in large part due to Bruce Timm. It is, in fact, these shows that have pushed me to want to write even more. So, thank you Mr. Timm, for putting out some really good cartoons for all of these years, when a lot of other companies were really half-assing it. Timm’s work has shown me what is possible when people take a fantasy seriously and put hard work into it; a truly great story can be born, and in some cases completely reborn.

The Ultimate Battle

2009-01-03T01:37:00.001-05:00

Ok here's the deal. We have a Zombie outbreak that spreads Rapidly, and these zombies are strong and fast, and able to spread their Zombie-ness through bites. At the same time a large number of Velociraptors (nee Deinonychus) Escape from Jurassic park to the mainland, and start laying eggs. ALSO at the same time, a huge number of T-100 Terminators armed with laser blasters teleport back from the future with laser blasters to start the Robot Holocaust early. And finally, at the same time the First class of Space Marines is commissioned, complete with all of their hardcore weaponry (think Aliens) and they are deployed across Earth and Space to deal with all of these threats to humanity.

The Zombies are spreading, and the Raptors are breeding. Also, the Terminators picked up the Borg trick of creating Cyborgs, and can "assimilate" living humans. The Zombies can Zombify the Raptors and the humans. No one is sure if the Cyborgs can be zombified, or if Zombies can be assimilated. Apparently, Zombie Raptors can still heal. Space marines have all of the firepower in the universe at their disposal, and can pretty much destroy anything fairly quickly. Also, more classes of Space marines are graduating every month. So I ask you; who wins? Oh, and all sides start with even numbers.

7 Whole Days

2008-12-12T06:10:00.000-05:00

So, after tomorrow I have 7 whole days off to myself. What should I do? Road Trip? Does anybody want me to come and visit them? I'm open to ideas, it's 106 miles to wherever I wanna go, I got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and I'm wearing sunglasses.

Let's Hit It.

Givings and Thanks

2008-11-29T02:20:00.004-05:00

I'm finally full, and a little bit buzzed, so it's time to write about what it is that I am Thankful for.

I am thankful for Life. That I have Life, which leads me to the first person I am thankful for, Deb. It is Deb who is most of the reason I am still here to be able to write this at all. So if anything I have done in the last year has at all offended you or pissed you off, blame her. She's the one who saved my life, more or less. It's Deb who has gave me the most when she did not always have anything to give, and for which I will be eternally grateful.

Then there are the usual gang of Idiots, Frank, Ahmed, Benny and Kurt. The guys who always gave me the good advice that I just didn't take, and who would have thought it figured?

Ok, no more Alanis. But every time I had some great revelation this year I realized it was something one of you had already told me. There is a saying about horses and water that I believe is applicable here. But I am still thankful for them, even though I don't listen to what they say... eventually the message gets through.

Then there is the person who gave me the impetus, the motivation if you will, to get better and to stay better. Lauren, this Bud's for you. Or rather, this Cupcake's for you. Oh who am I kidding, whatever Lola wants, Lola gets right? But seriously, just because I was convinced that I needed to live, didn't mean I had a reason to live for. I have that now, and I found it because of you, so thanks for that.

And there are so many other people that I am thankful for; Tamicka, Kei-Chan, Tashana, Emily, Ari, Muse, Sarita and a lot of other people that I have met through the year that have just given me faith that all people aren't assholes...

I am thankful for my family, thankful that my brother is everything I wasn't in College; Respected, Attractive, in Fantastic shape, Popular, and a Star Athlete. I'm thankful that I finally went to my mother's grave.

I'm thankful that I didn't die in a Walmart yesterday. I'm thankful for everyone that knows I love them but I didn't mention. If you want me to verify, ask me. I'll surely tell you if you're as is wrong or not. for instance "Fuck no I don't love or appreciate you, and I DAMN SURE AIN'T THANKFUL FOR YOU. GO FUCK OFF, WANKER!" That maybe my response. One never knows.

But chances are if you are in my life now I am grateful for you and love you. So I hope your Thanksgivings were great, and I hope you're Decembers are fantastic! OK, I'm finally sleepy. If you have a problem with not being mentioned, write me an angry letter or shoot me; either way I'll get the message.

That One

2008-11-05T21:32:00.001-05:00

That One

An Exit Eleven Remix

(to the tune of “No One” by Alicia Keys)

I want you to know

He only wants the House for 8 more years

Then you can try

Again to get it with no fears

You and him together

Campaigned day and night

But I didn’t worry cuz

Everything’s fucked up on the Right

That one, that one, that one

Got in the way of you being President

That one, that one, that one

Kept your old ass out of the White House, House, House

Kept your ass out of the White House

When McCain was shouting you down

And your Polls were suffering

Michelle was always around

Even when winning was uncertain

You and Joe together

Campaigned day and night

But I never worried cuz

Bush fucked up the whole Right

That one, that one, that one

Stopped McCain from being President

That one, that one, that one

Kept Palin’s dumb ass out of the White House, House, House

Kept her stupid MILF ass out of the Whit House

I know you fought halfway across the world

To protect our rights that we have here

I know you think you’re so smart and that he’s so not

But at this point in time there’s no one better for us

That one, that one, that one

Stopped you from being President

That one, that one, that one

Stopped Cain ‘n Palin from screwing us some more, more, more

Stopped the GOP from screwing us some more

O’ O’ O’ O’ Oooooo’, O’ O’ O’ O’ Oooooo’, O’ O’ O’ O’ O’-O, O-O, O-O, BA, MAAAA

Getting to Knooow Me

2008-10-28T21:42:00.002-04:00

A - Age: Thirty

B - Band listening to right now: right now, as in "now playing": Aaliyah, "Back and Forth". right now as in "in general": T.I., Lil Wayne, Weezer, Oasis, The Police.

C - Career future: Going back to John Jay College to get my Masters in Forensic Counseling Psychology so that I can get my L.P.C.

D - Dad's name: I don't remember.

E - Easiest person to talk to: Other psychologists and/or Sagittarius

F - Favorite type of shoe: Timbs

G – Grapes or Grapefruit: grapes. Grapefruit Juice

H – Hometown: Iselin, New Jersey Exits 11 or 131.

I – Instrumental talent: i can play the piano, but i haven't in a while. i bought a guitar back in august and have yet to touch it. i played the clarinet from 3rd grade until 10th grade.

J – Juice of choice: The one with all of the Vodka in it. That is, whichever juice has vodka in it at the time is my favorite juice.

K – Koala Bear or Panda Bear: polar bears.

L - Longest car ride ever: 12 hours to Atlanta. twice. Second place is 10 hours to Lexington, KY for a lesbian wedding.

M – Middle name: William

N - Number of jobs you've had: hm. let's think about this.

I first worked at Pathmark pushing carts. Then they brought me inside to the Dairy, then I spent a good long while in the Produce aisle. Then they decided I wasn't doing well there so they moved me to the registers as punishment, which I hated, so I did a crappy job.

Then came Stern's which was alternately fun and frustratimng. Especially fruustrating when they closed it and turned it into Macy's which sucked. I worked three Holiday seasons in Woodbridge Center Mall, which is akin to doing three tours in 'nam. Never again.

Then there was being a Community Serviice Officer at RU, which is a fancy name for student security. It was cool though, I got to work all the home football games my last year, which was actually pretty fun. Then I got my first real job working as a Case Manager fopr mentally ill people in a residential home, did that for a few years, got promoted to Site Manager, which was cool because I got to be tha Boss.

Then I became a Mental Health Screener, and I have been doing that ever since. First I did it in the Screening center for Middlesex County at UMDNJ in Piscataway, now I do it in Essex County Prison. Fun times, I tell ya.

O- OCD traits: Um... none really... I'm kind of an agent of Chaos.

P - Phobia[s]: I have fears, but no real phobias. Nothing that would actiually give me a panic attack.

Q - Quote: "What did I do now?"

R - Reason to smile: being alive. that's sort of all encompassing now, isn't it?

S - Song you sang last: "Don't Disturb This Groove" The System

T - Time you wake up: between 12-1 pm

U - Unknown fact about me: On three occasions I have considered being Poly, but neither time did it happen.

V - Vegetable you hate: beans, especially the big pale green ones. yuck. Though technically I guess those are legumes...

W - Worst habit: I unintentionally hurt others feelings and don't realize it till it's too late

X - X-rays you've had: CAT scan and teeth

Y - Yummiest food my belly likes: Lasagna and mac and cheese, both from my family

Z - Zodiac sign: Sagittarius

And I Am Outta Here!

Toxic Avenger: the Musical

2008-10-13T23:34:00.000-04:00

There is good, there is great, and then there is Toxic Avenger the Musical, now playing at the George St. Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ. Now, I am not usually one prone to hyperbole, but I am going to give it a shot here. This is by far the funniest play that I have ever seen. Not that I have been to see too many funny plays. In fact, the only other one I can think of is I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change I actually really liked that play, which is a musical as well, which may explain why I loved Toxic Avenger so much. Joe DiPietro wrote the book and lyrics to both. Apparently I am now a huge Joe DiPietro fan. He really knows his material, as he was born and raised off of Exit 166 of the Parkway (that’s way up North, damn!)

The biggest strength of this program is in its lyrics. The songs are exceptionally humorous and moving, and sang exceptionally well. Good material well executed is usually a reliable formula for success. The music and lyrics were done by David Bryan. Who’s that you say? Well, he’s only the keyboardist and founding member of Bon Jovi! If that is not enough reason for you to get your ass to New Brunswick and see this damn play I don’t know what else to tell you… Oh wait, yes I do, it’s in the following paragraphs. Do you really need to know the pedigree of Bon -120+ million albums sold to date-Jovi? OK, now that we’re all on the same page about Mr Bryan, I can tell you that his musical expertise is on full display in Toxic Avenger. There is a wide variety of musical styles sung in the different songs, and even a sly takeoff of The Boss on a couple of occasions. There are at least two tangos, which I was not expecting, and a decent amount of all-out old-fashioned Rock. These two NJ pieces fall together perfectly to produce a musical score that you are guaranteed to be humming all the way home. And now to get a little more specific about the subject matter.

For those of you who don’t know (and shame on you) this musical is an interpretation of the four Toxic Avenger movies all made by the infamous Troma Studios, where all truly great Bad Movies are made. In the original movie Melvin, our hero, is a 90 lb weakling who gets bullied to the point where his tormentors feel it appropriate to dump him in a vat of toxic waste. Now, rather than kill him like it should, it turns him into a giant, green, mutated superhero. Similar circumstances happen in the Musical, for different reasons (go see the damn thing for specifics!) but the outcome is the same; giant green freak runs amok in the name of justice and love. Yes, Love dammit! If there is one positive message everyone can take away from this play, it’s that if a Big Green Freak can find Hot Toxic Love, then you can too. And if not, then Everybody Dies anyway, so you can comfort yourself with the fact that whoever Tore Your Heart Out will die eventually too. The most impressive thing about Toxic Avenger the Musical is that there are about 15+ characters represented in the entire story, only 5 actors, and no intermission. One thing is for certain, if you want to be an actor in this play, you have to be in shape, because there are no breaks or time outs. Everyone is in action all of the time.

The cast is charged not only with keeping up this hectic pace, but also with doing justice to the wonderful songs and lyrics that they have been provided with by DiPietro and Bryan. As with every other challenge put before them, the Cast faces down this challenge and rips its guts out. Audra Blaser (Sarah) has great range, and proves it by singing a variety of songs throughout the story. She hits high notes and low, and even puts a good bit of soul in her voice for a little white girl. Nick Cordero doesn’t have as much range as the Toxic Avenger, but all he has to do is mutilate people and Rock Out, which he does admirably, so it’s all good. Demond Green (Black Dude) and David Josefsberg (White Dude) pull double duty, literally, having to sing as men and women. And the damndest thing is they pull of both sexes very convincingly. I have to say thought, I could have gone without seeing them in Tina Turner style Vegas gowns, but maybe that’s just me. And Nancy Opel does perhaps the hardest bit of all, singing one song as two different people. The performances really are not to be believed. I mean, this play should be seen just to marvel at the actors’ endurance.

I really cannot say enough about the play, but I want you to see it for yourself. You do not have to be from NJ to enjoy it, but it helps. I left that theater with so much Jersey pride I felt ready to burst. We are a state full of fighters, and we do not let anyone beat us down, no matter how much the odds are against us. We are also some funny s.o.b.’s apparently. Troma, as I said, are the masters of the Great Bad movie, and this is a Great Bad Musical. That being said, it is worth your time and money. The laughs are uproarious, and the Jersey in-jokes are great if you can catch them. If you go in their expecting Miss Saigon, you will be sorely disappointed, but if you go with an open mind expecting to have a great time, your every wish will be fulfilled.

Emoscopes

2008-10-09T23:26:00.002-04:00

Because Emo Kids look to the Stars for Advice Too.

Aries

Yet again the emphasis veers to romance, thanks to the fabulous solar/lunar aspect. Unfortunately, Romance is the most tragic area of your existence, and everyone knows it. For single Rams an intriguing individual is likely to grab your attention today! So will his/her boyfriend/girlfriend! There should be some good opportunities to get to know this person and their significant other better. Just remember that opposites attract! You will be greatly attracted to this person, but their significant other will hate you. Well, you could always sit and wait for them to break up… IF that ever happens…

Taurus

You are likely to surprise and impress someone significant today by taking the lead. You will soon regret it however, as you will fail spectacularly at your task. Opportunistic influences should put you in the right place at the right time, but as usual you will let them pass by as you once again fail to muster the motivation necessary to seize the day. You’ll be in an excellent position to dole out some very helpful advice, earning you much deserved respect! Too bad no one ever listens to you.

Gemini

You lose a potentially distracting aspect, which should help you to firm up on a financial or practical matter! Unfortunately, that potentially distracting aspect was your little sibling to influenza. He/she will probably pull through, after being on a ventilator for 6 months but hey, at least you don’t have to worry about them messing up your eyeliner collection for a while. It might feel as though you finally hit the nail on the head over a lingering problem, or it could be the chance comment of a friend that gets you thinking, but keep on cutting and the answers will come. Just be receptive to the signs today!

Cancer

You should benefit from some financial improvements today, which can only mean one thing; more My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World, and DeathCab for Cutie cd’s! An overdue shopping spree for some morose emo music for your iPod Touch will fail to provide the perfect lift for your feted, misbegotten life! Take a friend who will also never be satisfied with anything they have, so you don’t feel bad about your excessively fortunate lifestyle and upbringing. Whatever you do don’t bring someone who is less fortunate than you who will make you feel guilty, or advise you against buying anything too outlandish!

Leo

The fun and games that were lacking yesterday will be missing today as well. They should have been well and truly in evidence today, but come one, when does that ever happen for you? Romance sizzles for everyone but you, thanks to the both the lunar influence, and your piss-poor attitude. On a certain matter relating to a close friend you should go with your logic right now, rather than trying to follow a more instinctive approach! Remember, every time you’ve listened to your gut in the past it has resulted in disaster.

Virgo

Work or school is likely to provide the setting for some impressive defeat, as it has many times in the past. You’ll feel confident enough to take charge, but in no way should you; stay the course and keep to yourself. By all means, do not ruffle any feathers, who do you think you are? This is no mean feat, but for as long as you are you, with your personality, coming from where you come from, and looking the way you look, you’ll be in no shape to take charge! Please don’t go out of your normal position!

Libra

Thanks to a very beneficial aspect you are likely to have a day to remember when in comes to romance! No one will love you of course, or even regard you fondly, but you may just go one day without anyone making any disparaging remarks about your weight or appearance. And let’s be honest with ourselves, for you, you have to put that as a day in the WIN column. Singles could meet someone rather enigmatic, who will use them for money or sex, while attached Librans could be blown away by a sweet gesture that is used to cover up an affair by their significant other! However don’t attach too much importance to romantic words; we all know words are just promises waiting to be broken, don’t we?

Scorpio

You have not enjoyed the best of times over the past couple of days, and guess what bucko; you’re heading for a steep drop-off in the future! Work or school has been putting far too much pressure on you and so far you have not been complaining to anyone who can outrun you, but today the worlds is going to know exactly how you feel. Let’s see how they can ignore you when you take all of those aspirin in the middle of Lunch period! An evening out at the ER will be just what you need! God knows you don’t actually want to hurt yourself, but you will get the attention you crave!

Sagittarius

Your finances should improve significantly today, thanks to the solar/lunar aspect, and the side job you took exchanging money for sex. Honestly, it is your only skill. However, don’t spend it yet, no matter how much MAC eyeliner and Cure t-shirts go on sale. Hold on to it instead to guard against any more of your wild, violent mood swings, and for bail money. In the coming weekend, which is looking good for fun, watch out for abusive ex’s and any chances you have to vent your brooding rage. You’re still on probation remember…

Capricorn

It is likely to be one of those days where everything just clicks together against you. The planets indicate the possibility of an offer or a business based proposal coming towards a rival of yours today. But a minor aspect suggests that you read the small print, because it may enable you to foul up their sweetheart deal. Use your head, look for details, and your spite may end up ruining your rival’s life. Don’t leap in feet first, or someone else might experience some joy!

Aquarius

A stroke of good luck is likely to brighten your day today, but then soon, the other shoe drops and you will come crashing back down to Earth. Cash matters are looking good, until they’re not. On an emotional level though, your day might prove to be a little more demanding when you are forced to tag along with your ex (who you still have not gotten over) and his/her new significant other as a third wheel on their date tonight. Tensions with a friend might arise because of a confidence crisis; don’t be dismissive of their concerns! Especially since their concern is that you will kill someone tonight and go to prison for the rest of your life.

Pisces

If an unresolved matter resurfaces today don’t panic; there is no proof that you killed that hooker, you were meticulous! You could find you get support and help from an unlikely quarter, like Satan for instance… Delve deep into a problem to discover the real root-cause; don’t waste too much time on this however, because you know that the real cause of any problem is always you. Be prepared for some home truths, like your parents are horrible and suck for giving you everything you could ever want, but if you handle it calmly today’s planets could have a very beneficial effect! But probably not.

An Anti-Obama FYI

2008-09-22T19:47:00.000-04:00

Just a little FYI for those of you who are anti-Obama, I wanted you to know who your peers are. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/supremacist_group_blankets_rox.html ...And people wonder why I don't vote Republican... because these are some of the people who do! Granted, I hate hippies, and hippies generally vote Democrat, but at least hippies aren't in the intellectual neighborhood of lynch mobs.

The Football Proletariat Arises

2008-09-07T21:25:00.001-04:00

After a couple of weeks of football have finally been digested, I feel a lot better about summer coming to an end. Besides the fact that Hurricane season is just as exciting as Football season, (and both are 100x more exciting than baseball season), both the college and Professional football seasons are shaping up to look pretty interesting. By interesting, I mean that no one knows what is going to happen, especially not the idiots on TV. It is an inverse correlation; the more sure someone is of their opinion about a sport on television, the more sure they are to be wrong about it. But we all know those guys are not paid to be right or wrong, they are paid to be loud and say things that make you mad. And that is what they are good at.

But honestly, no one knows what is going to happen in either league this year. In college football, the proletariat is definitely making a move to cut the heads off of the ruling class. Notre Dame was already taken to the Guillotine last year, and it looks like many more big names will follow this year; names like, oh, say, the entire Big East.

I mean, honestly, really, what the fuck? Really guys? West Virginia? Only three points against a multi-directional Carolina team? And Rutgers… don’t even get me started… But then , that is the main example of what I am talking about. Teams like East Carolina, Bowling Green, BYU, and Fresno state… FRESNO STATE! Have put major hurtings on BCS conference teams. I think this trend is going to continue throughout the year, even though the experts will tell you that "order will be restored" Well let me tell ya something, like the Joker said in The Dark Knight, things aren’t ever going back the way they were. Talented high school kids aren’t going to waste their time at BCS school riding the pine when they can start at Mid Major schools and have the chance to make a splash upsetting one of those venerable BCS schools. The tide has turned, and that dreaded "p"-word, parity, is sneaking it’s way into the College ranks.

In the NFL, after this opening weekend one thing is very clear; the National Football League is dedicated to making singers with funny accents as popular as it can. 2 out of 3 performers at the NFL’s Kickoff Concert on Thursday, September 4th were foreign born, and I do not think this was a coincidence. Keith Urban, a Grammy Award winning country singer, grew up in Australia, he performed a long set after singer Natasha Bedingfield, who grew up in London. I believe the NFL is trying to subconsciously force feed us international celebrities and making Buffalo play a game in Toronto to take away focus from certain domestic products that, quite frankly just stink (coughnfcwestcough). Yes, I believe the NFL is doing everything it can to draw attention away from it’s crappier teams with bright and shiny objects from other countries. God knows any sane human would rather see good old gorgeous blond Natasha than the God-awful Detroit Lions. You know your team sucks when even in a City in which the Mayor has resigned because he has been charged with a Felony, your pathetic squad is still the more depressing mess.

Anyway, Everyone in the NFC and AFC East won their games today, except for the Redskins and Dolphins, who played Division foes. If that means we are going to have an all East Super Bowl again, I’m all for it. Screw the rest of the country, what do they have to offer? I am all about East Coast Bias, and if Northeast teams dominate, than so be it. Of course, in keeping with the theme (there was a theme?) of this post, I guess I should mention some potential surprises in the NFL this year. OK, how about this… Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw won’t sound like complete idiots for one whole Sunday at some point this season. I mean, it has to happen at least once, right?

Confessions of a Crazy Ex Boyfriend 8/19

2008-08-19T21:20:00.003-04:00

Confessions From One Ex to Another

This week I have something a little different for you. A few weeks ago I received an email from a guy who was going through a severe Crazy Ex Boyfriend phase, and he wanted my advice on how to extract himself from his situation. Here I will post his question (with the names changed to protect the unstable, of course) and what I wrote him in response. I would love for this to become a habit. If anyone knows any guys who need advice on troubling relationships, please point them in my direction. You know what they say, those who can't do, teach ;)

Hi John,

My name is Steve, and I'm responding to the blog you wrote. I'm acting
like a crazy ex boyfriend. Before I met my last girlfriend, I was a pretty even tempered man. I was peaceful living on my own and working on fixing my inner soul. I was on my way of working towards the being in the film/TV industry. Then came her, her name was Louise. We met online and starting talking for a while, soon we became an item. We were in love. Even though she was always annoying, self centered, and narcissistic, I put up with it. Sometimes she day by day stressed me out, and got on my nerves about me focusing too much on myself working. She'd compare her ex's to me and then continued to mock me, insult me, verbally abuse my ego and made me feel insecure. It was an on going emotional roller coaster for the both of us. I bought her things, drove for hours just to be with her and she did nothing. I did everything for her, when she wanted to be spoiled I did it. When she wanted to be loved, I gave her attention but it wasn't enough. When she broke
up with me, I went into a rage. Time and time again another woman takes advantage of my good heart. I acted out in revenge. I became a person I didn't even recognize, I was frighting towards her and myself. I became one of those online psychos. It felt like two dueling personalities fighting me, one that is still the same noble and honest man I was then the other is a side of me I've never seen before, full of wrath, envy, aggression. I started acting out; recklessly drinking, sleeping with strippers, just this self destructive person. I could handle the separation but it was the feeling of being used, hurt, and taking for granted and thus treated like garbage after. I started drinking more and calling her until she threatened to call the police. I can't get her out of my mind, and I just want to move on. I want to get my mind right but this past mistake is killing that. I'm trying Christ and self help groups but it's still too difficult. What should I do to get this woman out of my head?

-Steve

P.S I'm sorry this is long but I'm trying to change my ways. For good.

And this was my response.

You have some things going in your favor, and you can build on those to break yourself out of the situation you are in. you have enough insight to see both your own patterns of behavior, and those of the types of women you get involved with. That is the first step towards breaaaaaaaaaaking the haaaaaaaaaaabit tonight (sorry, I almost sounded like a Linkin Park song there for a second). First thing that helps is to not lose your sense of humor. Or if you have lost it, send out a search party for it. Life is too serious already without you making it more so.

Basically, you have four emotions that are running rampant in your psyche like rabid dogs; in fact it may help you to think of them that way. Mad, rabid Dogs named Rage, Envy, Hurt, and Sorrow. It seems that what happens is you let yourself be hurt. And yes, this is sometimes a conscious decision. Sometimes our hearts get broken out of nowhere, but you saw the signs, and you knew that this women, and women in your past were doing things to hurt you, but you stayed anyway. You probably have some Romasochist in you (see my latest post if you haven't already), which isn't awful, but is something you need to be aware of. Either consciously or unconsciously you attract or chose women who take advantage of your good nature. There could be any number of reasons for this, and until you figure out why this pattern is going to continue. You have to figure out why you continuously subject yourself to such torture. Do you have a "Hero" complex, in which you seek out damaged women and have the need to save them? Do you have low self-esteem and think that you somehow deserve the abuse you get from these women, or that you cannot do any better? Do you feel that you cannot or will not find a decent woman to be with? These are all questions that will take some soul searching and a good friend, relative, or therapist. You are doing the right thing by seeking help, but you have to know what questions to ask to get the right answers.

Your immediate problem though, is you have these Rabid dogs chewing on your heart and mind and you don't know what to do about them. You feel Envious, and you are overtaken with Hurt and Sad, which leads to Rage. And when you feel that Rage you don't care who you express it on. There is one more Dog in this Pack, and it's the Alpha, the Leader, and its name is Love. You, like most Romasochists fall in Love incredibly easily and hard and let Love rule you. Unfortunately, Love brings the rest of its pack with it, and that is where the chaos begins. So I say to you, Master your Love, and you'll master the rest of the Pack. Don't let your Love lead you into a situation where you'll be taken advantage of, and you will not have to deal with the rest of the dogs that follow Love. Even though Love is the leader, Rage is the most dangerous because it can turn inwards, and that is when you become self destructive. And you can only destroy yourself for so long before there is nothing left to break. First things first; get away from the stressors, get away from what's feeding the Rage, lock up your Love until your ego can heal itself. Right now you can't trust yourself to be with a woman because you don't know what is leading you into these poisonous relationships. Until you do, stay out of them. Muzzle your Love, and the rest of the Pack will follow suit. You can't think straight while you are still fighting the war, so take yourself out of the situation; cut off all contact with all women who hurt you, or who you have hurt; you don't want to add Guilt to your pack of dogs. Guilt will only make you obsess about the women even more, and that obsession is where a lot of the restraining orders and police activity stems from. And that is something we would all like to avoid, right?

The way to not be a Crazy ex-bf is to first, not be crazy. And the thing that makes most of us crazy is some kind of intense chemical reaction with the former object of our love. Cut that off, and the reactions die down, and sanity returns. Sometimes, you can never re-establish that contact. I have an ex that no matter how long it has been, when I see her I feel the insanity start to creep back into my brain. You have to consciously master your emotions, and save them for someone who is worthy of the Noble and Honest Man you can be. Those are the Dogs you want leading your Pack of Emotions. The second way to not be crazy is to not date Crazy… like attracts like, and Crazy girls will draw it out of you like putting a magnet on an Etch-a-Sketch pad. So if you want to move on you have to cut off the negative stressors from the past, even if they weren't all negative. Your personal growth is going to have to come at the cost of leaving some people in your past and locking them up there. You have your Hollywood Dreams; you still have YOUR LIFE TO LIVE. Write, go to writing groups, do things that will help you be the person you want to be, the person you know you can be. Do that and forget the women who want to tear you down and use you. When you heal yourself, you'll be able to see with clear eyes, and you'll be able to easily steer clear of the girls who are traps for your inner soul. You have pro-social factors in your life, support groups, God… go to them, leave the insanity behind, and you'll be on your way to being an ex-ex-crazy bf.

So yeah, I like this, it feels right for me. There's an obvious reason for that, but whatever. You have my contact information, and you can always leave comments, And as you can see, I am very enthusiastic about helping people with problems, so don't be scared, get things off your chest. As men we are so often made to feel like we should keep things in. That's why we occasionally go on shooting rampages. I'd much rather you email me instead.

Confessions of a Crazy Ex Boyfriend 8/13

2008-08-13T20:53:00.001-04:00

Present Tense(ion)

For those of us who may or may not be affiliated with the “Crazy Ex-Boyfriend” demographic, one of the trials faced by such men is leaving the past behind. That is, in fact, what exacerbates the Crazy. The brain has a way of taking all of the good memories of the past relationship, making them seem even better than they were, and then mixing them in randomly with the comparatively miserable realities of the man’s present situation. The person almost always idealizes the past, remembering things to be better than they were, and forgetting the parts that were not so rosy. In some occasions, the past was actually rosy, and nothing was wrong; sometimes the man was the one who did all of the very bad things, and the woman was in fact pretty damn decent the whole time.

Obsession is the motor of any crazy ex, and the gas for that motor is living in the past. We all have moments in our life that we wish would never end. For some of us that wish is so strong that our minds actually make it a reality. Those moments literally do not ever end. The problem is, those moments are not always mutually valued. I remember specifically for me, there are some instances where I was with a certain person that meant more to me than they did to her, and that is what makes it hard to let those memories go. At some point there comes a reckoning, a moment when the man and women realize that they both have placed a significantly different amount of importance on a certain event or time in their shared experience. If it is the man who has exalted a time in the past, then he is not going to just let that go of that zeitgeist for anything or anybody. He becomes obsessed with making that moment in time be forever, whether the woman even believes that the “golden age” he is referring to ever existed at all or not. It is usually at this point that the man crosses the line into Crazy Ex territory, doing all he can to recreate something that has long since past, or never existed. Then come the restraining orders.

I personally believe that some of us, if our ego strength is not, well, strong enough, simply become only the sum of our shared experiences. What I mean by that is our Ego strength is similar to the main tent pole for our personalities. Our experiences are like the people who fill the arena underneath the tent. If that tent pole, our basic personality that should be stable over time, isn’t strong enough, and those people are really rowdy and drunk, eventually those experiences will break the pole and collapse the tent. Our personality then becomes entirely dependent only on our experiences. Since experiences, and our perceptions of experience, are rapidly changing and subjective, so too does the personality of that particular person become rapidly changing and prejudiced. Eventually the person who becomes the Crazy Ex, their subjective experience of the past becomes their objective reality. The person with low ego strength has based their entire personality and reality on positive shared experiences from the past that may have never existed. They CAN’T let the past go, because then there is nothing else left to hold up their tent, their psyche. Without their past, without the relationship they had, the Crazy Ex feels a complete loss of self. If there is no “them” there is no “him”. And the fact that the person’s ex is now denying that golden age and the concurrent present reality leads to confusion, frustration, obsession, and eventually, anger.

So, how do we untangle this Gordian Knot? The same way Alex did, we cut it. Cut yourself off from the past. One important step towards not being a crazy ex is to not think of yourself as an ex anymore, but to think of yourself as a person, whole and complete. And do not think of the woman you were with as your ex, but as a person you had some pleasurable memories with, but who, ultimately you could not be with in the long run. Do not let your emotions chain you to your past; don’t demonize the person who you were with, nor should you idealize her. She is a human being of flesh and blood, prone to mistakes and successes just like all of us. This is going to take some soul searching, and, most importantly, an accurate recollection of past events. The past is never how we remember it; if you don’t believe me, look up some studies about the reliability of eyewitness accounts. Our brains always twist the truth to make it a little more or less palatable to us. The point is that you cannot change the past, and like Michael McDonald says, things will never be the same again. That’s not to say your life cannot be better or worse, it just won’t ever be the same. Once you accept that, it helps towards letting go of the past. It hurts to let go of good memories, but you do not have to obliterate them; just put them where they belong, and stop trying to make them the present again. Disengage them from your waking present life and look towards the future. Concentrate on making more good memories in the future. Occupy your tent with hopeful, sober experiences, and that tent pole should get stronger and more stable, so the winds of change don’t blow it down again.

Romasochism

2008-07-25T21:53:00.000-04:00

There are still romantics in the world; I should know I'm one of them. Romantics are a dying breed though. We are killed every day by assassination squads of cynicism, betrayal, denial and frustration. But some of us, the ones who hold onto hope against hope, still manage to carry the torch of the romantic. Some of us take it too far though; some of us are diehard romantics. Some of us are such diehard romantics that nothing can kill our spirits; nothing can make us drop our banner, even when we really should. I call those people Romasochists, because we hold onto our romantic notions unto the point of emotional pain. And yes, I have been among their number on occasion. And many of you have as well.

Romasochists first and foremost always believe in the Happy ending. They have usually watched too many movies on Turner Classic Movies for their own good. They believe everything that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have ever taught them. They know every line from almost every Jon Cusack movie you can name. Jon Hughes movies ushered them through many a hard time. As an aside, I personally believe that every single person who does outpatient mental health today in some part owes their livelihood to romantic comedies from the 80’s and 90’s. Those movies have given so many boys and girls such unrealistic expectations about the way relationships should be, and caused so much neurosis because of it, that I think we all would be a little poorer without those thrice-damned movies. I mean, come on, Pretty Woman? Really? This is what we, as impressionable human beings, are accepting into our romantic fantasies?

The inevitable outcome of believing too much in these fantasies is heartbreak. Repeated, inevitable heartbreak. Some people become bitter from this heartbreak and vow never to love again, to become crazy cat-ladies, or move out into the woods and live alone in a one room shack. But the ones who repeatedly go back for more are the Romasochists. This isn’t good for the psyche, like repeatedly smashing your forehead against jagged rocks isn’t good for your IQ. So, you are probably asking, how does one avoid, or in some cases stop, being a romasochist? Well, since romasochists are by definition passionate people, they tend to only engage in extremes. If they get hurt badly enough, they usually engage the other extreme and either become emotionless robots, or swear off love entirely. Neither of these approaches works, because eventually the rubber band snaps back, and we end not where we started, but someplace worse. The romasochist always falls in love again, only the next time the set point for love is a little lower because deep down we want it even more. We maybe successful in fending off most romantic stimuli, but eventually one will get through those white blood cells we developed to kill off any love bugs that come our way. The next time the Romasochist falls in love after a bad experience is likely to be far worse than the previous time, ostensibly because the stimuli will have to be far stronger to get through the thick scab of bitterness that the last disappointment left.

And so it goes. Love, Hurt, Reject, Repeat. Until we put the breaks on the entire process. The problem with this series of events is its rapidity. All of this happens so quickly that its progress generates a large amount of emotional friction, and we all know friction ultimately leads to fire. Problem is that fire doesn’t always end up in passion; it most times ends up in the person with the vulnerable heart just getting burned. So there are two ways to deal with this process, slow it down and reduce the friction. We can slow it down by doing just that; control the rate at which we fall for people. Put on the breaks. It may seem like an impossibility, but love at first sight, as I’ve covered in previous posts, is a myth, and you can take more than a few minutes to decide if you are meant for someone or not. That alone may help you avoid 50% of situations that would eventually end in heartache. The next thing is to lubricate the relationship so as to avoid friction. By this I mean when you enter into the preliminaries of meeting someone, don’t gush, don’t tell them everything about yourself, see if you are compatible, and even if things are going great, make sure that they go great at a slow pace. That way you cut down on friction and sparks. Do not invest more of yourself than the other person is. That is a sure way to get your heart broken.

No matter how conscientious you are about your relationships however, some are still bound to fail, and that is the real test; when you do everything “right” and still end up with a broken heart. That is when you rely on your friends to pick you up, dust you off, and get you back to your feet. Romance should not be a painful experience; if it is something is wrong, and chances are that something is not you. So do not take too much blame when things go wrong, and do not give too much either. Reduce the stress and strain of going between the extremes of love and hate by trying to maintain and learn from experience until the right one comes along. Try and accept what happened and make sure it does not happen again. Your Brain is your most important organ, but your Heart is your most important Muscle, so stop leaving it open to so much abuse. Be more careful and don’t play so fast and lose with your emotions Romasochists. At the end of the day, no one cares more about you than you do.

Special Crazy BF/GF Section
Unless you’re one of those like, crazy stalkers, then ignore all of this and when someone says no to you, just except it and move on. It probably is your fault. If there is a restraining order taken out against you, take a hint. If the person you love moves and doesn’t tell you, take a hint. If they call the police on you, take a hint. If you find that you have to threaten to kill you/him/her/all-of-the-above to get their attention, then give up and move on. In fact, never mind that, maybe you should try being single for a while… like 20-30 years.

How to Save Your Life

2008-07-10T06:55:00.000-04:00

Nobody ever really tells us this one. There is no pamphlet for it and no instruction manual. Some of us spend our whole lives trying to save other people, some of us see it as our calling, some of us make it our profession; our religion. And we become good at it, more or less, to the detriment of our own welfare. We learn how to save the lives of others, but every time we do we lose a little bit of ourselves in the process. Every time we acquiesce to the needs of another do we somehow lose a bit of ourselves, or do we gain something back from the act of giving?

Some people do, and some people don’t. But at some point, most people reach a point in their life where they look at their energy meter and see that it is on “E”, and that does not stand for “enough”. Sometimes you are just done; you have had enough, you are through, ready to throw in the towel. There are times when you feel like life has won, and you just want to give up. You fall to your knees and look up at the night sky, wondering why this is, this life, this everything so goddamned hard? All you want is peace, quiet, all you want is to pick the road less traveled, the silent path… But you cannot really, you have to keep on living… or do you?

At times like this, some of us, our thoughts turn to darker places. When we are sick of playing The Game of Life, there really is only one winning move, and that is not to play. Our consciousness begins to dwell on suicide, and some part of your brain, the part responsible for self-preservation, searches desperately for a lifeline, some single thread of light to shine through the opaque depression that covers you and everything you think and do. Because really, none of us wants to die; it is a conclusion we come to like question on a multiple choice test where we just want to pick “none of the above”. It’s like a wrong turn that leads to a dead end. Suicide is a 6-sided Rubix cube that has 8 colors. This is where our pedagogues and politicians have failed us; they have taught us everything; how to save and conserve every life but our own. What do you do when the person threatening your very existence is yourself? How do you do it, how do you save your own life?

First of all, you cannot save anyone else before you save yourself, and the first step is to never, ever give up on yourself. You may give up on everything else in your life, but never, ever give up on yourself. You may lose faith in every institution, every politician, every religion, everyone around you, but you cannot go on if you lose faith in yourself. You can’t ever escape yourself, so never let yourself down. No matter how much you drink, or how many drugs you do, you’ll still be there in the morning, unless you do so much that you find the cure for Living. But we are trying to avoid that, remember? So I say again, never give up on yourself. Some of you may not understand what I mean by this. Well, there is something of worth in all of us, something worth keeping alive, one little spark of light worth keeping alive. Most people have more than one spark, we have great big blazing fires of potential that are gradually buried beneath an inveterate deluge of shit over the course of months or years. Even the most stalwart of personalities can only take such a life for so long. Even if you are mostly useless, there has got to be something good about you. Maybe you’re dumb as a brick and have the personality of one, but you are good looking. Or you are devastatingly intelligent but also devastatingly hideous. That’s something. Find whatever that is about yourself and hang onto it, and make that spark grow, because I guarantee you somewhere, someone in the world needs that talent. Someone needs you and that ability you have. You just cannot give up on yourself before you find that spark and make it grow. And when you appreciate yourself, and your spark, others will see it to, and they will appreciate what you are and what you have become because you have recognized your own sense of self worth.

Through Hell and High Water, do not give up on yourself; bang your head against the wall, punch it till your knuckles bleed, but don’t you dare give up. That is how you stay alive. Some people say the only way they know they are alive is through pain, so they cut themselves; that isn’t pain. Pain is going through a whole MA program only to discover that you cannot get you license in counseling because of the wording of your Masters Degree. That’s more pain than any Emo cutter will ever know.

Real pain is loving someone knowing full well that they won’t love you back, but honestly and truly in your heart wanting what is best for them. That is pain. I don’t make it sound appetizing, this living thing, do I? Most of the time it is not. There is one reason, one thing that makes living worth it; perseverance. Proving people wrong, beating the odds and coming out on top anyway. Like Kanye said, “giving up is way harder than trying”. Become stronger from every defeat. Double your resolve every time someone tells you no. Do it again and again, harder, faster, better, stronger, until you can’t tell what’s your blood and what’s your sweat anymore. That’s the only way to get ahead in life, risking it to get what you want.

Life can be cruel, life can revel in the abject destruction of everything you have, and laugh at you while you try to pick up the pieces. Life can take your mother from you suddenly at the age of 23 with no warning whatsoever, and leave you with no reason to go on with your meager reality. But what can you do? Give up on the people who are counting on you? It may be easy to, they don’t know what pain you are going through, but can you give up on yourself? Can you give up on all of the promises and dreams you have had since you were a child? Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to make the best of your life, no matter how hard life fights you along the way? Fight back. You may not win the first time, or the 5^th time, or the 60^th time, but never let life beat you. If you take that approach, no man or woman will ever be able to sway you either. If you are constantly at war with the fates for your destiny, what does it matter what some guy or girl says about you? You do your best and leave the rest up to fate to decide.

Finally, not everyone in the world will be against you. Sometimes, you will be lucky enough to find an ally, a friend who believes in you despite the fact that you don’t. Hold onto these people as if your life depends on it, because it does. If you want to survive the low points in life, you have to have good friends. They cannot save you though; just like you cannot save them. But they can be the tools you need to help you save yourself, and that’s good enough. If you have yourself, and you really care enough about yourself, what you went through to get where you are now, and what your family did to put you where you are, you have part of what you need to save a life. If you have friends to look after you and pick you up and dust you off when you get knocked down, then you are damned near invincible. But the most important part is the belief that no matter how many times your face hits the floor, you can get to your feet and keep swinging. Life isn’t like boxing, it isn’t about how many times the wind gets knocked out

5 AM

2008-05-08T06:17:00.000-04:00

It's really the Nothing Hour. No one is awake who wants to be awake. Nothing good happens at 5 AM. No happy surprises happen at 5 AM. 5 AM is the point in insomnia where you are ready to strike yourself with a mallet in order to be unconscious. 5 am is the last bit of sleep before most people have to get up. No one is on Facebook, no one is on Myspace, no one is on LJ. It's so bad that even teenagers have torn themselves from the internet and head off to bed. Everyone but me. I'm here. I'm here, awake, taking care of emergencies, because like I said, no one who is awake now is particularly doing well. Not just me, there are maybe, I'd guess 10% of the population getting the world ready for the rest of you, taking care of things no one else in their right mind would do. 5 AM is when I update Exit Eleven the most. 5 am is when i usually send out my emails, so my sleep deprived brain is usually saying things that shouldn't really be said, but I am too tired to know better. No one likes 5 am, even those who like the sunrise, because the sun usually doesn’t officially come up till around 6. Trust me, I know. In fact, I'll go check right now, hold on...

Actually, it's a cloudy morning, so it looks like there will be no sunrise for anyone. It's actually... 6:12 am now, but I conceived of writing this at 5 am. The mind works slower at this time of day, if you can call it that. It truly is an ungodly hour 5 am, I don't know why they call midnight the witching hour. If I was going to do any evil, guess when I would do it. Who is ready to deal with anything at 5 AM? I guess there are good things that can happen at 5 am but one would have to work really, really hard at it. And I can't think of anything right now... why? Because its 6:15 AM, who can think at such an hour?

You know you heard me on the Radio

2008-05-05T05:43:00.001-04:00

I don't know if you guys know, but I do a lot of different things. I write, I'm a screenwriter, I act, oh, and I'm on the radio. The show is called NONPRODUCTIVE and it is aired live Thursdays from 8-10pm on http://www.hearnewbrunswick.com every week. If you miss it, don't worry, you can listen to the whole show on http://www.non-productive.com through their podcasting system. I'm not the Host, I'm really just one of the crew, the hosts are Frank, Sam Little and Lindsey, but I'm there, and we are all funny, so you should check it out. We do sketch comedy, talk, satire and variety. How can you pass that up?

John

Confessions of a Crazy Ex-Boyfriend

2008-04-30T03:39:00.003-04:00

My name is John, and I’m a crazy ex boyfriend

(Hi John)

Now it was not easy for me to come to this realization, but events over the last year have made me see that a lot of my actions in the past have definitely been of the "crazy ex-boyfriend" variety. Even more startling, some of my actions have been of the "crazy boyfriend" variety. As sobering as these thoughts have been I have been able to take solace in two things; One, I am in no way the craziest ex-boyfriend out there, not by a longshot. I have heard some incredible insanity lately, from many different sources, and my conclusion is that as a crazy ex boyfriend, I was really pretty tame. And two, I am very confident that my craziness is in remission. I have consulted everyone from Buddhist scholars to Psychotherapists, and I am certain that I have learned from both my own mistakes and the psychoticism I have seen in others. My purpose in writing this article (and if it gets a good response I’ll write more) is to give women (and men for that matter) fair warning when their boyfriend is crazy, is going crazy, or will be crazy when they break up with them. I also am making myself available to give advice and answer questions about whether your significant other is batshit crazy. I suppose I should give you my credentials as a crazy ex boyfriend

One of the main behaviors of a crazy ex boyfriend is a escalating pattern of crazy behavior. That pattern usually escalates because of one thing and one thing only; attention. Crazy guys hate to be ignored, and they cannot stand the idea of their ex girlfriend “getting over them”. For one reason or another, guys like I used to be seem sweet and kind and generous when we get into a relationship, and we get used to the attention we receive from our girlfriends. But that can’t last forever. At some point we will become unsatisfied at one thing or another, and arguments will occur. In the case of my last ex, I was ambivalent about whether I wanted to date her or not, so she went out and got another boyfriend. That was rough, but it was not what sent me off the deep end. She then had the absolute gall to get over me! That’s what sent me into crazy ex mode. I started doing anything I could to get her attention. I did all sorts of romantic things like bring her flowers and send her cards, things I never did when we were actually dating. But she still didn’t come back to me. The more she insisted on not breaking up with her bf, the more desperate I became. Eventually I started fights just to make sure that she still had feelings for me, even if they were negative ones. Now mind you, I never did any of this on purpose; it was just what my crazy mind thought of at the time. I’ve heard of guys doing much worse, and better. My last ditch effort was putting a personal ad in her local newspaper declaring that I still loved her and wanted her back. That s the Light side of crazy. I’ve heard of guys threatening to burn their ex’s stuff, accusing their ex’s of cheating on them during their relationship, telling their ex’s that they never loved them, and just flat out looking for anyway to hurt them in order to elicit a response.

The worst thing you can do to a crazy ex is to ignore them. They always want you to be thinking about them, either good or bad. They want you to think that they will never get over him. They want to believe that they were the best thing to ever happen to you, and every piece 0f evidence that refutes that just feeds into the crazy. If you happen to be reading this and see yourself in it, trust me, you are not the best thing to happen to anyone. There are just too many people in the world for that to be true. Even if it is true up to that point, it is quite likely that some guy will come along who will be better, and most decidedly saner than you, so get over yourself. I had to, and that’s when I took one step towards being in remission. If you have any comments, you know how to leave them, but if you have any questions or need advice about a crazy ex-boyfriend, email me at exit.eleven@gmail.com. Remember, it takes one to know one.

Stupid or Racist?

2008-04-22T05:07:00.002-04:00

These are some comments about a Forum post I saw on Adult Swim.com about the Boondocks cartoon show a while back. Now I know you should never get too upset over anything you read on a forum, but every now and then you see something that really burns your biscuits. This is what happened on my particular day...

OK. So I never really listen to the people who don't like Boondocks, because they are usually not Black, and therefore do not get it. Which is not to say that white people do not get it, because these forums are full of white people, and full of people who love Boondocks. What I hate is people who can't discern the purpose of what different characters in a show mean. For instance, on all in the family, Archie Bunker was a racist, but there were a lot of other characters on the show who disagreed with his stance on things. But a stupid person could look at the show and say since he was racist, the show is racist.

Now I personally don't feel that Huey is racist, because I agree with a lot of the things he says. Huey is just full of opinions, as am I. What people who are stupid don't see, is that Huey’s views often make it hard for him to enjoy the nice things in life. Maybe it isn't the stupid people's fault, Caesar hasn't been on the show. He is a good foil for Huey, and does his best to get Huey to Lighten up. People who think that Boondocks is against white people do not know anything about Black culture. The overwhelming theme of Boondocks on television has been that Black people are our own worst enemy, not white people. But stupid people would only see what their stupid, racist minds will allow them to see. I am at the point where I don't think I could be friends with someone who doesn't get Boondocks, because that means that they are not intelligent enough to understand what is going on, and I generally dislike stupid people, unless they are hot girls, but that's my own personal hypocrisy at fault there.

Basically, if you get Boondocks and disagree with a certain character's point of view, I can talk to you. For every opinion that is expressed on that show, you can find a dissenting one. In fact, Riley never agrees with Huey, and teases him mercilessly for his conspiracy theories. So saying that the show is one way or another is quite possibly the stupidest thing one can say. Though racism and stupidity often go hand in hand, because you have to be an idiot on at least some level to be racist, I believe that this particular topic was started by someone who is less racist than just a complete idiot.

White People Be All Like Dis

2008-04-15T05:24:00.000-04:00

Comedians have gotten a lot of mileage out of the whole white people do things this way, black people do things this way bit, and for the most part it ever gets old because we all believe it ton be true. I am a personal believer that perception equals reality, and what it is that we see and feel to be true about each other is only as true as we believe it to be. So stereotypes are only as true as they are believed to be, and as true as they are reinforced by their respective members.

I say all that to say black people and white people do things differently than Black people. Especially German people. Germans seem to be the Whitest of White people, the most ethnically Caucasian of the Europeans, the fount from which all honkiness flows. I thought it was just a coincidence that the person I knew who was most devoid of any brown sensibility was German, but then… then came Dirk Nowitzki. One person is a coincidence, two is a trend.

In basketball there is a practice called “popping your jersey”. It’s a simple little taunt done after making an especially important shot where the player takes the edges of his jersey across his chest, usually the part that has his team name or his teams home town on it, and “pops” it out from his chest. Easy right? Well, it is for the 90% African American NBA. but poor German Dirk couldn’t get it quite right. In his first game back after a major injury, he made a game winning shot with 9 seconds left to go. The opposing team (the Utah Jazz) took a time out and the arena exploded as the Dallas Mavericks were home for this game. Dirk had put his team ahead with a three pointer in transition, and to celebrate, he attempted to pop his jersey. Instead of doing what I described above however, he pulled the bottom of his jersey out of his shorts and yanked it down, as if he were trying to stretch out a too-short shirt. It was almost an “awww” moment because you knew what he was trying to do, but in his zeal and his German-ness, he got it completely wrong. He looked like an old woman having a hot flash trying to cool herself off.

It was then that I realized that no matter what, our actions were destined to provide fodder for race comedians for generations to come. As long as group A does what appears to be action B, and Group C does what appears to be action D, then stereotypes will continue to flourish. Does that them true, or does it just make the perception of said stereotypes true? I think the answer is the latter. We can fight it, try not to reinforce our stereotypes, but the fact of the matter is, everyone will subconsciously act the way they are “supposed” to act at least once in their lifetime, and chances are that one time will be in front of 1 million people of other races who will look at you and say “see, they’re all the same”. Just like I looked at Dirk and said “man, he is really, really white.” But there is nothing wrong with that. The problems come from ignorance and hatred of our differences, not from the differences themselves. Finding humor in our differences is not such a bad thing, it is better than, say, lynching each other for them, or say, doing things like not dating Black Guys because you are not Black. That is the wrong way to approach differences.

So yeah, the White/Black/Asian/Spanish people do things differently plot line maybe overplayed in comedy, but it’s still funny. And let us hope it stays funny, so that it does not become something darker and altogether more sinister.

Love: Weakness or Detriment?

2008-04-03T04:23:00.000-04:00

People say love is a many splendor thing. I say it's a many splintered thing, as in the pieces of sharp wood that where stuck under the fingers of prisoners of war in Vietnam. Or as in the pieces of fiberglass or plastic that accidentally slip into your skin and are impossible to get out without digging into your skin with a sharp pair of tweezers. Love can be compared to not just splendor or splinters, but thorns, like the thorn bushes you trip and stumble into in the woods, causing you a million stabbing points of intense pain. Really, no one ever wants to be in love, which is why you "fall" in love, just like you "fall" into a trap. You can also think of love as something you step in or on, like a pile of shit, or an old rusty 12 in. screw that goes straight through your foot and shoots out of the top like a budding seed breaking the surface of the Earth.

My point is that being in love is detrimental and a handicap to anyone because of the intense pain associated with it. Anyone in love is at a disadvantage in life, especially if they are in a relationship. In any relationship, the person who is most in love is in the weakest position in any relationship of their life. The person who is less in love has all of the power, and they can command and control the other person because they do not need them to be happy or complete. They can toy with, fiddle with, manipulate and complicate the life of the person who loves them for no other person than they can. Anyone who happens to be in love is at a disadvantage; they are in fact, mentally handicapped. The only time a relationship is equally developmentally disabled is when both parties are equally in love which is why relationships like that are disgusting to see. Basically you are seeing two weak and disabled people engaging and enabling each others weakness. People who have had frontal lobotomies are in better control of their faculties than those who are allegedly “in love”.

In fact, these people are kind of like the retarded. And two people in love are like two retards in love; you stare at them, and in a way you're happy for them because they found each other, but in another way you're laughing because they're still just two retards tarding around together. It’s sweet but kind of fucked up as well. That's exactly how I feel about couples in love. And if you feel that as an insensitive statement, don't; that was actually way more insulting to the developmentally disabled because of me comparing them to normal people in love than anything else. I actually apologize to DD folks for comparing them to idiots in love.

In essence, Love is a fruitless endeavor, an intense weakness in character and judgment, and should be avoided at all costs. The more in love you are with a person, the more they own you, and the more of your soul they can manipulate and toy around with. Why do you think that when you break up with or are broken up with, you feel like you’ve lost a bit of yourself? It is your soul that’s gone, stolen by that evil force of malevolence called love. My research has concluded that you should never love someone more than they love you and least of all, more than you love yourself. That’s the easiest way to keep control of your soul, and never feel that emptiness that love can leave you with. The best way to live is to get people to love you, much like cult leaders do, because then you can get so much power over people that you can get people to kill themselves. Follow this advice, please; unless, you know, piercing yourself with rusty screws is what you’re into, and then have at it.

Commies Aren't Cool

2008-03-24T04:04:00.001-04:00

You know I don't normally agree with anything a Conservative person has to say, but commies are indeed, not cool. Communism has killed almost as many people as Christianity has over the centuries, and Communism has only really been prevalent in the last century.

I read up on Che Guevarra, and he was basically the Osama bin Laden of the 60's and 70's. He wanted to foment Civil War wherever he went, in the name of Socialism. He is seen as a hero of the common people, and the class disparity in South America meant that he had many people willing to listen to him. The huge wealth gap in South and Central America today is why Che is still revered there. The problem is that most Civil Wars only end with the slaughter of those who they are ostensibly supposed to be helping - the poor and voiceless - and the people who win are generally as bad as the ones they replace. Much of the wrath of South American Revolutionaries is directed at the U.S., but the U.S. only screwed with South and Central America so much because of the Cold War. If Che and Fidel hadn't aligned themselves with the United States greatest enemy, then we most likely would have left them alone.

And for those who love Che, btw, he has said that he would have launched the nukes Cuba had against the United States. So if it were up to Che, none of us would be here right now. The man himself was less important than what was made of him postmortem. He became a symbol of revolution. The fact is none of his actual revolutions produced anything more than brutal military regimes. The only one that survived was Cuba, and that is due way more to Castro than Che. In fact, Che seemed to fail at his only chance to really be in charge of govt. in Cuba. His methods of violence were antithetical to a peaceful society, and in that way he showed more of a Stalinist nature. which we all know isn't good for anyone.

In the end Che is really more of a tragic figure than a romantic or inspirational one. Right now his image fuels capitalism in the form of Che merchandise, and how much of that money do you think goes to poor people in South America? Che is the Tupac Shakur of social revolutionaries, more important in Death than in Life. What he fought for was worth fighting for; how he went about it was wrong. Even Castro said that Che had aggressive tendencies, and his inability to work with others is what doomed all of his attempted revolutions. That's why the only place he was really successful was in Cuba, where he had Castro to temper his passion and ideas.

Author Christopher Hitchens, who was a socialist and a supporter of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s but has since changed his views, summarized Guevara's legacy thus: "Che's iconic status was assured because he failed. His story was one of defeat and isolation, and that's why it is so seductive. Had he lived, the myth of Che would have long since died." [stolen from wikipedia].

In the end, Capitalism isn't perfect, but there is not one Communist country in the world that is doing well economically, except for China, and China has more problems than you can believe, including intense religious persecution and more Civil Rights abuses than in all 8 years of Dubya's administration. Not a good track record for the Commies, but they kick ass at the Olympics

O.E. - Original Emo

2008-03-12T09:25:00.000-04:00

First of all, R.I.P. to the NO-TO-RI-O, US, you were the Best. Christopher Wallace, May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997.

Ok, that being said, let’s move on to this week’s topic. Emo Music seems to be a recent affliction, a plague that is being suffered only by today’s younger generations. But like most music, Emo existed in a purer, better form long ago when it existed under another name; Soul music. Sad love songs have been around forever, but I believe that the particular sort of woe-is-me genre of sad love song that typifies Yes, I’m not talking about punk music where Emo is generally thought to come from, the origin of super-sad love songs comes from the Soul music of the 60’s and 70’s. If you don’t believe me, I have some examples for you.
Let’s start with "Sideshow" by Blue magic, 1974.

"Let the sideshow begin (Hurry, hurry)
Hurry, hurry, step right on in
Can't afford to pass it by
Guaranteed to make you cry

See the man who's been cryin' for a million years, so many tears
(So many tears)
See the girl who's collected broken hearts for souvenirs
It's more exciting than a one man band
The saddest little show in all the land"

That’s just a small sample. If you listen to the whole song, you had better be in a pretty good mood or it will really get to you. This song is just sad for no damn good reason. It is especially horrific if you visualize a circus where people go specifically to see people who are horribly and irrevocably depressed and/or get off on the sadness of others. It would be like having tours of Psych Wards. Even I think that’s sick, and as you all know, I’m an immoral savage. Next up we have "Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles from 1967:

"Now if there's a smile on my face
It's only there trying to fool the public
But when it comes down to fooling you
Now honey that's quite a different subject

But don't let my glad expression
Give you the wrong impression
Cos really I'm sad, Oh I'm sadder than sad
Well I'm hurt and I want you so bad
Like a clown I appear to be glad ooh yeah"

This one I’m sure we can all relate to, and it was written back in the 60’s. This is also what I consider to be one of the happiest sad songs ever. Seriously, if you haven’t heard this song, #1 shame on you and #2 try and sit still while listening. It has an incredibly upbeat and danceable rhythm to it. Just like the song, the happy music masks the sad content of the lyrics. The song has the added bonus of self-flagellation by referring to the singer as a "clown" for letting the woman go, and for playing the part of a happy guy while he’s a mental wreck inside. There is so much subtext to this song, it really is the ground floor of Emo. We like to think that everything great was made in the last 3 years, but it turns out that this just isn’t true. Let’s go to another heart breaker, "Cause I love You" by Lenny Williams, from 1975. The setup is pretty simple; man loses woman, who, apparently, he loves.

"And finally I went to bed, but I found myself waking up a few hours later
And the tears were running down my face
And my friend told me, he said, Lenny,
You just oughta forget about her
But I told my friend, I said, You know
Maybe you’ve never been in love like I’ve been in love
And maybe you’ve never felt the things that I’ve felt
But this is what I told my friend
I said, You know, sometimes you get lonely
You get lonely, you get lonely
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
And I cry, I cry"

Not only are the words to this song powerful, and there’s a heart rending spoken part, part of which is quoted above, but the real emphasis is from the way Lenny sings it. You don’t feel like he’s singing a song, you feel like you’re watching a play, you feel like he’s on his knees in the rain and the woman he loves is on her porch in front of him shaking her head no. He is literally pouring his heart into the microphone and it was recorded. I personally doubt Williams sung this song more than once, because he lost party of his soul when he sang it the first time. I really think he put more into this song than he meant to. There’s a rare film of Lenny Williams attempting to sing this song, but only being able to croak out vague resemblance of the original version. I dare you to find a Deathcab for Cutie or Yellowcard song that elicits this kind of passion. You just can’t.
If you want more examples, email me. I can keep them coming The point is anything you like is probably stolen. And if you really like it, it was probably stolen from a Black person ;)

It's a Jungle Out There...

2008-03-04T05:25:00.004-05:00

It’s gotten to the point in this world where online dating is just as bad as going out into the real word and doing the same thing. I am not sure why this is, but it has driven me to the point where I almost want to be in a relationship just so I don’t have to deal with having to find a date anymore. Thankfully, I work with married people, who strongly, STRONGLY encourage me to stay single as long as possible, so it all seems to balance out. But honestly, it seems that people are more paranoid about meeting people online than in real life, yet they engage in the activity of looking online more than looking in real life. For example, I wrote to one woman on OKCupid, who I actually had known in the past but lost contact with. I sent her two extremely friendly messages suggesting we meet for coffee; in broad daylight in a public place. There was not a hint of “lets meet in a deserted alley around 4 AM” in any of my messages. This was the response I received.

“John,

I appreciate your persistence and diligence in trying to make contact with me. However, I have to tell you that I am not interested in pursuing anything with you. I haven't responded to your messages, despite the many you've sent, because I was hoping I wouldn't have to say it outright - generally these things are communicated through more subtle means.

I wish you luck in your life and in your loves, but I don't have a place in either of those.

Thanks,

L”

First of all, can I say how much I hate the "soft" rejection? Rejection is rejection, and no amount of sugarcoating is going to making it better. No one's feelings are going to be saved by being ignored, in fact, that feels 100x more painful, believe me. And women, for the love of God, PLEASE stop this nonsense where you think that ignorning someone communicates that you have said NO to them. You know what means no? NO MEANS NO!!! And don't give me the line that guys should get the point, because A. no one is a mind-reader, and B. for every girl who says non-communication should be a hint, there is a girl who says she is too busy to answer her emails and that people shouldn't be offended if they don't get an answer right away. Basically, for every excuse a woman can give for not being straightforward, there is another woman somewhere who can present the exact opposite argument. We as men (and even for women who like women) can't know automatically which is which so please, practice being straightforward. It is in everyone's best interest.

Now for the record, I sent this particular female 2 (two) messages, the second of which was a two sentence missive asking if she was well and if she had heard about my blogspot. That’s what prompted this telenovela-style “Dear John” response. Also, this same woman had no more than a week previously written a journal entry about how she liked to be pursued by men, leading one to think that she liked persistence. She forgot to mention, that she only likes persistence from guys she considers to be attractive and not from, say, me. Not that I am not attractive, I happen to know people who believe that I am… she just does not happen to subscribe to that particular philosophy. I'm fine with that, can't please everyone after all. I just hate the passive-aggressive way she went about it. I wasted time on a lost cause when I could have been writing or reading webcomics instead of writing to her. At least in a bar you don't have your rejection drawn out over a space of a few weeks.

I’m not really sure why this happens. I guess in some cases maybe I just have a mutant ability to pick crazy paranoid girls who freak out easily. It’s been brought up on several occasions that I may have a tendency to just subconsciously pursue women who will flake out extra easily. Some people have flat-out stated that I’m a crazy-chaser, but I don’t think that’s true. I have found that the more interesting a woman is, the more prone she is to have certain eccentricities, but that does not mean that I necessarily look for signs of personality disorders in the women I want to date. That’d be more psycho than anything. And even I’m not that crazy. Then again… the last girl I talked to on OKCupid went from wanting to date me to saying we could never talk to each other, and every spot in between, in the space of two weeks, so maybe I should lay off the “special” girls for a bit.

This does not just happen to men though, as I thought it did. I know exceptionally attractive and desirable women who get this same crazy illogical treatment from men on the internet, but I have a hypothesis about this. Men are lazy, barely evolved pond scum 80% of the time. The kinds of men that absolutely have to use internet dating sites are almost entirely of the pond scum variety. Now this type of man is usually only looking for one type of woman; dumb sluts. If a girl looks like she’ll be any type of work at all, then he is not interested. The first thing he is turned off by is intelligence, as he probably is not too intelligent himself. This man knows that any halfway intelligent woman will see right through his stupid lines and lame ploys, and that automatically is too much work for him to get the sex that he’s after. Basically this guy can look at a woman and tell if she’s gonna fall for his line of BS or not. He is easily intimidated by confident woman, and usually looks for women with low-self confidence who he knows will be easily impressed with a few compliments and a few drinks. Bottom feeders like this are equally dangerous because they make confident woman doubt themselves, when in reality those women should be glad they scare thee assholes away.

Some of these guys maybe actually intelligent, but these types are even worse, because they are incredibly picky and snobbish. They are the first ones to find any flaw in a woman (usually physical) and hold that against them. These douche bags will take any opportunity to make another person feel bad about themselves. I personally want to snap these guys necks with my bare hands when I see them in person, but since they know they are universally despised, they usually do their dirty work from the safety of the internet. They can get a woman’s hopes up by have coherent and attractive profiles, but then turn out to be the same kind of genital-inhaler as one would find in any bar at 2 AM. The only difference is that they have the internet to be able to reject woman to make themselves forget about their tiny pride and even tinier penises.

So what’s to be done about all of this? I suggest the neutralization of a major percentage of the adult population of the world, through perhaps a robot/zombie holocaust. It’s the only thing that will for sure keep men and women from hurting each other.

Risk of Dating a Negro, 2008

2008-02-26T02:15:00.000-05:00

This is the new version, updated for 2008. Some things have changed, but some things stay the same. Many people are unaware of ways to tell if they or a loved one are at risk for dating a Negro. Here, as a public service, I provide for you 10.

1 You’re A White Female, Especially Italian, With a Big Ass.

As always, the reasons for this one abound. Especially since Ice-T has his white girl with a big ass, not only is such a woman sexually desirable, they are also seen as a status symbol. There has been much speculation that CoCo T has Ass Implants (honestly, who was the first person to ask for those?) but the effect on the imaginations and libidos of American men has been unmistakable. Witness the popularity of Kim Kardashian, Jessica Biel, and (thick) Britney Spears. They were always thick, but their Hollywood managers wanted them to hide it. These same Hollywood types occasionally make Beyonce lose a lot of weight so that she can be more appealing to white moviegoers, which is absolutely ridiculous because it’s pretty certain by now that all men like curvy girls anyway.

For some reason, and the hypothesis out there are numerous to be sure, the I-talian women have rear ends that draw black men like moths to a flame. A white girl with a big ass is like chocolate and peanut butter; two great tastes that go great together. At this point you are at risk simply because of the enormous volume of demands for your attention. Unless you have a personal bodyguard, any appearance in a mixed or, God help you, hip-hop crowd will have you drawing a crowd like a Black man at a routine traffic stop. Honorable mention; the Latina’s butt, the Polish girl’s butt.

Rule-outs: Here we will rule out the wide, flat butt, as no one likes a two-dimensional ass.

2 Good “ratio”

The ratio I speak of is waste-to-hips, and is closely related to number 1. Although for some reason the white girl with the big ass is most preferable, any girl who has a positive WtH ratio is fair game to the Black man. For instance, if you have 24 inch waste and 42 inch hips, you might as well start picking out names for your future mulatto children now. Again, the overwhelming volume of offers of love, money, and affection will wear down even the mightiest will.

Rule-outs: There aren’t very many rule-outs here for a good Ratio, unless, you know, she has a developmental disability or something… that’s just wrong. Also, rule-out Indian girls, for even though you may find one with a Good Ratio, chances are her parents would disown her for dating a Negro, and let’s face it, Indian girls just aren’t rebellious enough to risk getting cut off from their parents money.

3 Excessive BET Viewing or Hot 97 Listening

Look, Black people don’t even watch BET excessively. If you or a loved one is watching more than 4 hours a day of BET, then going Black cannot be far off. Actually, now that I think about it, my brother watches a lot of BET. This concerns me and I’m trying to get him into treatment for it. But in any case, if you are anything but Black and you watch a lot of BET… You are gonna date a Negro.

Rule-outs: If you’re doing this for research for a paper on screwed up gender roles in Hip Hop.

4 Tupac

Tupac is a definite risk-factor for dating a Negro. If you find that you have a definite appreciation not only of the man, but if his message and his music, this denotes two things: 1. you most likely harbor a deep attraction towards African Americans, and 2. you have just enough white, liberal guilt that you feel the need to make up for slavery with oral sex. I, personally, commend you on this act of reparation.

Rule-outs: Maybe she just really, really, likes his lyrics. Yeah, right…

5 General Rebelliousness

Do you have staid, conservative, stick-in-the-mud parents? Nothing will put a bug up their ass faster than bring Tyrone from Marcy Projects over for Christmas Dinner. And I’m not talking about a Sidney Poitier “Guess Whose Coming to Dinner” cultured African American either. For maximum effect, have him bring one or more of his “baby-mommas” over, if applicable. If your Black BF/GF is an upstanding member of society, he or she can always have a more uncouth sibling and/or cousin stand in to gain the necessary pants-wetting effect from one’s parents.

Rule-outs: If the subject has to chose between Tyrone and having her parents cut off the payments for her new Jetta, bye-bye Tyrone.

6 Jewish Rebelliousness

Do you have staid, conservative, stick-in-the-mud Jewish parents? Well, nothing will put them off of their Matzah faster than bringing LaDanien home for a nice Passover dinner. The only thing that will twist your mom’s panties tighter than bringing home a Gentile will be bringing home a Gentile Shvatza! Oy vey!

Rule-outs: Same as above.

7 Previous History

Say it with me, “Once you go Black, you never go back.” Actually, statistics prove that up to 20% of those who go Black do indeed go back. Still, if your subject goes Black 3 out of 4 guys, then that’s a statistically significant percentage of times gone Black. Trends like that do not just reverse themselves.

In a longitudinal study done by the University of Wisconsin, it turns out that previous studies about how many people go back suffered from Validity and Reliability errors. In their new double-blind cross cultural study, it turns out that the actual percentage of those who do go back is closer to 15.35%, which is still statistically significant at an Alpha level of .1%

Rule-outs: Some of those who go Black one too many times end up getting the shit kicked out of them by an irate baby-momma. That significantly reduces the likelihood of going Black again.

8 Substance Abuse

Do you or someone you love have a very large Marijuana habit? Do you have a tendency to listen excessively to Snoop Dogg and Cyprus Hill songs? Combined with certain aspects of number 4 and you have a sure-fire Negro-Lover.

Rule-outs: The Grateful Dead/Phish dirty hippy marijuana abuser avoids Negroes like the plague, because they know we absolutely hate White people with dreadlocks. Drives us mad. They also avoid the Police for that matter, and by the Police I do not mean the band lead by Sting.

9 Social Influence and Naming

Where you the only white kid in a sea of Black faces growing up, and consequently, is your snowflake of a daughter named Shaniqua? And now is she the only White girl in a sea of Black faces? Do you really think she’s going to go out of her way to find the only other White person in the school to date? No. If the subjects entire peer group that she socializes with regularly is black, and her friend’s call her “White Chocolate”, and most of your friend’s are Black, there’s virtually no chance that your gene pool is going to stay melanin free for much longer; that is, if it has stayed so already. You might as well invest in some Magnum condoms for her now… “just in case”.

Rule-Outs: If said “White Chocolate” speaks hip-hop very well, is immersed in Black culture, but hasn’t actually spoken to a Black person face to face in 3 years, then the likelihood of dating a Negro is similarly low. Such “suburban hood-rats” can be tantalizing to the average Black man, but they usually turn out to be no more than teases who appreciate everything about Black culture except for actual Black people.

10 First Contact

If you’ve been sheltered your entire life, cut off from any “negative influences” and somehow, somewhere you come across the first Black man in your life… in person? Well, everyone has an attraction to what’s new, mysterious, and exotic. It only takes a few right words for that exotic man to have that girl exploring his exotic penis.

Rule-outs: Some women have never been exposed to Black men for a reason… Say, they believe we are all gun-toting rapists and murderers. Now, I wonder where they would get that idea? *coughFOXNEWScough*

Being a Good Man

2008-02-19T02:47:00.001-05:00

For me, being myself, being a man, and being a good man are three totally separate things. I will explain. When I am being myself, I am considerably strange. Most people cannot understand me. I in fact, kind of scare people. Very, very few people know how strange I really am. Extremely few. And it is not the ordinary amount of when people say “if you knew what I really thought you’d be horrified”, because no, I wouldn’t. I have encountered the worst of humanity, so what bad thoughts you have about your mother really would not impress me. I’ve heard people’s worst fears and darkest secrets, and I was not taken aback. What is going on in my head is a dozen times worse. So, being myself is out of the question, completely out of the question. The me I am is an approximation of me based on what I feel my environment can handle at the moment. Then again, maybe that is what everyone believes; that their thoughts are worse than everyone else’s. Maybe my thoughts really are tame compared to the basest desires of the most innocent looking person I could find. I guess with myriad personalities on the world, I really could not know for sure.

Then there is being a Man. That one I think I have down. I have some extremely girly moments, but I got thrown out of a bar a year or two back, and I think that puts me firmly in the Male category. Also I am unabashedly into guy things. I like violence, sports, fighting, and crassness, all things typically associated with males. I have a reputation as being a skirt-chaser, which is somewhat groundless, but I will not deny that I am in love with women, the entire gender and all contained therein. I also would say that I possess the more noble attributes of my gender. I consider myself to be strong in mind and body, and am fiercely loyal to my friends and family. Fiercely might be an understatement; it is the reason why I was thrown out of said bar, Olde Queens. I am rabidly devoted to my friends and the women I love. Unfortunately this leads to another unfortunate male trait, jealous rage. I know women can have jealous rage as well, but it seldom reaches the intensity of mine I think; maybe it does and women just have way more self-control than I do. That is entirely possible. But in the end, I think I am a fairly decent example of what a man is and should be.

The last part is the hardest, being a Good Man. Being a good man does not come naturally to me; I have to work at it. My definition of a good man is shown by the things I am trying to be. I am trying to be more considerate of the feelings of those who care for me. I am trying to be more considerate of others feelings in general. I am trying to use my talent for empathy for good instead of evil. I am trying to be a one woman man. I am trying to think about things that affect the planet. I am trying to be more considerate of my fellow man, and brighten up the days of those around me. I am trying to not let my bad moods spread to those around me. I am trying to not take anyone or anything I have for granted, to be appreciative of everyone who loves and cares for me. I am trying to be more responsible, more productive, and more self-sufficient. I am trying to be less selfish and more giving. I am trying to achieve better health, both mentally and physically. I am trying to not let the ghosts of my past catch up to me and bring me to a similar fate as my mother. I am trying to be a better brother, grandson, and nephew. I am trying to put myself in a position to be the best father ever one day. I am trying to make right what once went wrong, much like Scott Bakula, and do right to those to whom I have done wrong. I want to be stable and interesting, to be me but better, more refined, more desirable. I want to be a good and decent man. And I am close, so very close… but not there yet..

In my opinion many, many people get by in life but just being themselves, or some very few manage to just be men. So few strive to actually be good men. It seems that in my life, people will not let me get away with just being a man, or much less being myself. Mostly it seems that people expect more of me. I cannot get away with being a lousy, piece of crap scumbag like most men. I have to strive to be better, because when I do not the people who care about me become very disappointed and disillusioned, and that is not a pleasant feeling for me. I have to achieve a higher standard of behavior than most guys, mainly, I think, because I seem to be capable of it, or at least that is what people tell me. Even people who have only known me for a while seem to think I have the capability to be much more than I am, in fact, more than most men have the capability to be, if I can just figure out how to fulfill my true potential.

Not that I should feel any pressure… I remember, when I was young, very young, thinking highly of myself for being a good person. When I was in 5^th grade I found a wallet full of cash and returned it. I probably did more for my race at that moment than at any other point in my life, seeing as how I was the only black kid in the school. But as time went by, my sense of morality slid and slid and slid, to the point where I am the writer you are reading now. I’m fairly immoral, or “morally flexible” as I like to say. I think I can be a good man and be morally flexible (being myself) all at the same time. I can be a synthesis of the immoral me and the good man I want to be. I am trying and I think I am getting there. But being a Good Man takes a lot of effort, more than people realize. It is so much easier to be evil, and sometimes it feels, more rewarding.

How to Properly Celebrate Black History Month

2008-02-19T02:31:00.002-05:00

There is only one way to properly celebrate Black history month. There are many ways that people do so; they educate themselves on famous Black people, they visit museums, they may even think twice before shooting Black suspects. But really, there is only one surefire way to celebrate Black History month, and that is by rescinding white privilege. Now I know many of you are unaware of white privilege; by it’s definition you should not be aware of it, especially if you happen to be white, so I will attempt to define it for you. Wait, better yet, why should I define it when I can have someone else define it for you;

"white privilege, a social relation
1. a. A right, advantage, or immunity granted to or enjoyed by white persons beyond the common advantage of all others; an exemption in many particular cases from certain burdens or liabilities.
b. A special advantage or benefit of white persons; with reference to divine dispensations, natural advantages, gifts of fortune, genetic endowments, social relations, etc.
2. A privileged position; the possession of an advantage white persons enjoy over non–white persons.
3. a. The special right or immunity attaching to white persons as a social relation; prerogative.
b. display of white privilege, a social expression of a white person or persons demanding to be treated as a member or members of the socially privileged class.
4. a. To invest white persons with a privilege or privileges; to grant to white persons a particular right or immunity; to benefit or favor specially white persons; to invest white persons with special honorable distinctions.
b. To avail oneself of a privilege owing to one as a white person.
5. To authorize or license of white person or persons what is forbidden or wrong for non–whites; to justify, excuse.
6. To give to white persons special freedom or immunity from some liability or burden to which non–white persons are subject; to exempt."
From http://whiteprivilege.com/definition

So yes, there ya go. White privilege. They enjoy every day of their lives and are many times not aware of it. We as Black people are quite aware of it, because we do not enjoy such privilege. We in fact suffer from something that can be called Black Disadvantage. Black Disadvantage means you have to work two or three times as hard just to achieve the same level as white people are given on a silver platter. For instance, I have not spelt the word "privilege" correctly once in this entire essay. I blame the public school system for giving me a substandard education compared to my white classmates, and not on the fact that I am for some reason convinced that privilege has an "a" in it.
I digress. I celebrate Black History Month by denying white privilege to all white people I see. I don’t grant them special privileges. I cut them off in traffic. I don’t let them merge. I cut them in line. I steal their girlfriends (especially if they are dating Brown or Black girls). I urge all of you to do the same in any way you can. Deny White people loans, keep them from moving into good neighborhoods, don’t pick them up in your cabs in favor of Black people. The best way to celebrate Black History month is to give White people a month long taste of what it’s like to be Black. Black men; date lots of women even though you’re ugly, have terrible bodily hygiene, no personality, and no social skills to speak of, but get the benefit of the doubt simply because you’re Black (the most coveted of White Privileges, being able to date any race of girl despite being a troll). Black people should be allowed to get out of all sorts of legal trouble because of either A. being cute and blond, B, having big boobs, or C. knowing somebody. Also, the rate of White people being pulled over, ticketed, and arrested for no good goddamn reason should increase by 70% during Black history month.
White people, you can do your part too; give up "Friends" for Black History Month. Forego all your white niceties for a month. Try your hardest not to call us niggers when your alone with your friends (don’t pretend you don’t; we know). Eat soul food until your blood pressure gets dangerously high. Get rid of your health insurance for the month and see how hard it is to get by. Go Up to Harlem and see how we feel in small suburban towns in New Jersey. Get shot 20 or 30 times by NYPD. Really get the feel of what it is like to be African American in America today. This part might be hard, but try mightily to give up your air of self-entitlement, as if the world owes you something; don’t enter every establishment with the attitude that everyone there should kiss your ass. This is more a result of a lifetime enjoying white privilege than of white privilege itself, but still, it’s extremely annoying. Try to accept that you aren’t always in charge of everything; everyone doesn’t have to speak your language, everyone doesn’t have to like your music, and everyone does not have to do things your way. Once you have accepted these facts, you are well on your way to rescinding your own White Privilege, and truly Celebrating Black History. Oh yeah, and don’t Lynch anybody; that’d be in extremely bad form.

Crouching Fierce

2008-02-16T22:39:00.002-05:00

I love Street Fighter. If you did not know that about me, I would be quite surprised to think that you are my friend. Wait, I more than love Street Fighter, Street Fighter is like a cherished pet that I’ve had for the last 15 years. I love Street Fighter. Chun-Li, Ryu, and Ken are like brothers and sister to me.
So, that being said, the decline in popularity of fighting games is very distressing to me. It reflects the incredible puss-ization of America’s youth. The same way kids are more prone to shooting each other than having hand-to-hand fights and taking the possibility of being humiliated publicly, kids these days don’t want to play someone in an arcade head to head. They just want to sit n their x-boxes and PS2’s and trash talk each other from the safety of their living rooms, never once risking actual humiliation, or in fact real human interaction. Kids these days suck. They don’t know what it is to gloat over another persona’s fallen digital form. They do not know the joy of a UUUUUUUUUULLLLTRAAAAAAAAAAA COOOOOMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They don’t know that an Aerial Rave can be just as exciting as a real one. It really is sad.
Samurai Shodown, if you hit someone just right, you cut them in half when you beat them. THAT’S COOL! Of course nothing beats that Innovator of Violence, Mortal Kombat. When I was in school MK people and SF people did not get along, they were like cats and dogs. I, as you know, was a SF person, I hated MK people. They were just generally bastards and jerks. They preferred things the easy way. Street Fighter was too complicated for them. They also were those really, creepy heavy metal guys who always drew bloody pictures in their notebooks and didn’t smell quite right. But, for what it is worth, I always liked watching MK. I remember the first time I ever saw it was in the arcade at Middlesex County College. I was mesmerized, my eyes had been opened to something fantastic and wonderful. I just could not stop uttering those magical phrases in that famous guttural tone, "EXCELLENT! FINISH HIM!" I was in another state of mind. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered how terrible the gameplay was, and how hard the fatalities were to execute. Back to SF for me
Samurai Shodown came from the SNK camp of fighting games, those geniuses who brought you Fatal Fury and King of Fighters. Nobody put more effort into fighters than SNK, and that’s including CapCom. SNK is out of business now, and I think that was a major blow, but they've been bought, so at least their characters are still alive. CapCom owns the rights to many of the characters, but they seem loathe to do anything new with them. Except now, there is the news of the orgasm-inducing Street Fighter 4. Everyone is into first person shooters now. Cold impersonal games where you run around shooting people with exotic weapons. No strategy, no tact, no personality, just running and shooting. No creativity, no action… it seems incredibly boring to me. But it is more popular now than ever, certainly more popular than SF. But then there are sites like http://www.shoryuken.com/, that reaffirm my faith in humanity. The real fighters are still out there. It kind of makes me feel good to know that I am the last of a dying breed. I feel like a guy who makes guns by hand, or a blacksmith or something. Fighting games are a niche now, a psychotic subculture that worships the crouching fierce. We know chain combos like the back of our hands, and we can do Hadokens in our sleep. Most people don’t understand us, but we understand us. It’s nice to belong, it’s nice to know that no matter what I’ll always have a scar because of my first Shoryuken. I know when I’m old, there will only be a few of us out there, but even when I’m 80, I’ll still smile when I hear the words "TIGER, GENOCIDE!!!"

Extrastentialism

2008-02-16T18:59:00.003-05:00

"We Do All That We Can Do, the Best We Can, and Await the Results"
- Literal translation of the Japanese word "Nintendo"

It has been established that I have some unique views about spirituality, philosophy, and the function and purpose of the Universe, as well as our places in it. Most people get the answers to these questions from organized religion. My sources are no more or less real than that, but they are generally more entertaining. My view of the world is mostly cobbled together from pieces of Futurama, Native American Mythology, Boondocks, large doses of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and bits and pieces of whatever theologies I find convenient at the moment. From these sources, and many more, I have cobbled together a word to describe my world view. This sorta new philosophic theology I call Extrastentialism.
Extrastentialism is on the surface the exact opposite of existentialism. The main theme of existentialism is "A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts." The way I see it, the universe is anything but indifferent, but it is definitely hostile. The world as we know it is not set up to let humans survive. This is largely our own doing, but we love to blame the things that are wrong in the world on God. Even worse, we constantly ask him or her to fix the messes that we, as humans, have made for ourselves. And I’m not just talking about things like pollution, war, and general cruelty. I’m talking about the little stupid things that we do to ourselves, like getting pregnant when we have no business having children, pushing away the men and women who love us most, or drinking and driving. These are afflictions that do not come from God, but from our own foolish choices. And instead of doing what we have to to fix these problems, we pray, or have lucky charms, or trust in any number of invisible forces to pull our fat out of the fire.
The Universe is not, however, indifferent. Simple physics teaches us that everything is interconnected, that everything in the universe is affected by everything else in the universe. Existentialism leads most people to a feeling of nihilism where they believe that nothing matters, least of all arbitrary distinctions such as good and evil. That is part of the equation, but it is not the whole story. That’s where my thing differs, I say that everything you do matters to someone or something. The problem with humans is that we tend to get so wrapped up in ourselves that we stop seeing how interconnected we are with the world. If we spent more time thinking about all of the positive and negative effects we have on the world, no matter how large or small, I believe there would be less suicides. Suicide happens when people lose their connections, when they feel that they have no effect on anything in the world. The ironic and sad fact is that suicides cause a huge negative effect on the world. They create a vacuum in the string of cause and effect that powers reality, a vacuum which is inevitably filled in with negative emotions. Everything you do causes far ranging effects, a theory known as the "Butterfly Effect". The butterfly effect is a mathematical representation of chaos that shows how the smallest action has the biggest effects. Whether you leave for work at 8:10 or 8:15 matters, and it likely effects a large number of people in the world. Therefore, careless actions should not be done so carelessly, because who knows what you are doing when you say things like "I am having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle". The point? Do whatever you can, and do it well. Chances are if you do something good, it will spread and have many more positive consequences than you intended, most of which you will never see. Likewise, negative actions spread out in a wave of negativity across the universe, carried by hundreds of trillions of little cause and effect coincidences and actions. So everything you do does matter, so try to make the things you do improve the world. It will help, even if you don’t think so.
This brings me to the point where extra and exi-stentialism cross over. I believe that we make our own miracles, luck, fate, etc. We have freedom of choice, we have knowledge and freedom of thought, which is either a blessing or a curse depending on your theological views. I learned that invisible forces may or may not effect our lives, but we can have a more immediate effect on our realities. There is no fate but that which we make for ourselves. We have to give our own lives meaning. If you count on outside forces to give you a purpose for living, you will be waiting a long time. The Universe may not be indifferent about what you do, in terms of cause and effect, but that does not mean that it cares about, say, whether you chose to become a dentist or not. It is only concerned with the effects of you becoming a dentist or not. As Shakespeare’s Caesar said, "The fault lies not in the stars, dear Brutus, but in ourselves". That’s basically the point of Extrastentialism. Things are not going to get done unless you get off your ass and do them. Everything has a point, a reason, and cause and effect. You just have to assign meaning to events in your life, and no matter what happens after that, you have done a little bit more to order your universe. Of course, life is not going to go the way you want it to, but my philosophy allows people to change, adapt, and move with a chaotic and hostile world. In the end, the only thing we can depend on is ourselves, for we always have ourselves there to depend on. Again though, you can only depend on yourself if you believe you can. Faith and belief really are the basis of functioning in this world, but that faith and belief has to be personal for it to be of any good. And that, in a convoluted and confusing way, is extrastentialism. It may sound silly and impractical, but it works for me.

Dying to Live

2008-02-16T18:56:00.001-05:00

You know, I wonder if they'll laugh when I am dead
Why am I fighting to live, if I'm just living to fight
Why am I trying to see, when there ain’t nothing in sight
Why am I trying to give, when no one gives me a try
Why am I dying to live, if I'm just living to die

I have been under the assumption that I have been living for the past few years, but at times it seems like I was mistaken. I have been in a funk, a malaise if you will, and I have been laboring to get out of it. I have spent most of the last 5 years of my life chasing something. I do not know what it is I have been chasing, or running after if you will, but I have been running hard. I suppose you could say that I've been running from some things and chasing other things at the same time. I’ve been chasing women mostly, mostly out of habit. It’s all I knew to do. I was chasing women because there was a great hole in my heart, a deep seated longing that was left by a woman. I guess unconsciously I believed that a woman could fill the need that a woman left me with. As time went on I found that one woman could not fill the hole in my heart, so I sought out more, and for a time I believed that no one woman could help me, help me fill the great sucking emptiness that lay where my heart had been. So I chased every woman I could, and believe me, I got around. In the process I destroyed many relationships that could have made my life a nice, fulfilling, loving one. The hole sucked up every bit of love that came my way, but it never got smaller. It just got hungrier.
So then there is the thing I was running from. I’m still running from that, and I think if I run fast enough I can get away from it. What I’m running from is worse than what I stated in the previous paragraph. And it’s faster, and it will probably catch up to me eventually. It is my Fate from which I run and I do not think I can escape it. It’s dark and foreboding, but it’s there. And I can’t avoid it. I have a history of mental illness, heart disease, and cancer in first degree relatives. That’s a lot to deal with.

Now I used to live my life as an illusion
But reality will make my dream come true
So I'll keep fighting to live
If there's no reason to fight
And I'll keep trying to see...
Until the end is in sight
You know I'm trying to give
So come on...give me a try
You know I'm dying to live
Until I'm ready to die
-Dying to Live by Edgar Winter

And now I find that I have had a change of heart in many ways. I met women who cared enough about me to stay around me even though I am broken. They hugged me even though doing so was like hugging broken glass, and they put me back together, cutting themselves many times in the process. They gave me all the pieces I need to get better, I just had to see that they were there. And I have. In the process I seem to have found some old parts of my personality that I had thrown away, that I had not used because they lead to me getting hurt time and time again. It seems like I am at last ready to feel again. I am ready to love someone the way they love me. I am not afraid if hurting everyone, because I have far less sharp edges than I once did. I know what I want, and I can pursue what I want with a single-minded resolve that I hadn’t had before. When I was in High School I was a one woman man, but I could not find one woman who wanted me. Now if I do find that one woman who wants me, and who I feel can handle me, I think I can be happy again. I did not think that I had the capability to be happy anymore,. But I know now that I can be, because I know some of the greatest women in the world. I think I can be happy with one woman now, I really do. I feel more stable, like I have a sense of direction now. It’s a sign of healing, but that does not mean that I can escape my fate
I know I can’t but I know that my friends won’t let me face my fate alone. I know that one day I’ll get sick and depressed, but I won’t have to do so alone. I have my friends to help me get through whatever may come, and for that I will be eternally grateful. I just have to prove to myself that I am worthy of having friends like I do. I have to prove to myself that I am worthy of a girl who is worthy of me. I have a lot of things to prove to myself, and for the first time in a long time I feel like I have a reason to get up in the morning. I feel like I have goals, things to move towards, things I want to achieve. I want to change, to be the best man I can be. I want a girl who loves me to be secure in the fact that I love and only want to be with her. I am very, very close, and I think I will get to that point soon, when I can look at myself and say that I deserve something good to happen to me. Hope has always been a four-letter word to me, but for the first time in a long time I feel it, and it’s scary. I hate being disappointed, but you have to risk it to get what you want. The things I want are very important to me, so I will have to risk a lot, but it will all be worth it. And if I fail, my friends will be there to help me up, like they always are. I’m not ready to die yet, not by a long shot. Now, here’s to hoping I live past 65.

The Love Myth

2008-02-16T18:51:00.002-05:00

I believe in the idea that humanity invents what we need to explain things that have no explanation. This idea is illustrated by the hypothesis that if there was no God, humanity would invent one, because it is something that we as a species need in this stage of our development. Many people need the idea of "God" to be able to lead their lives. It is a lot easier to believe in God to explain why things happen than the idea that we live in a random and chaotic universe where the only laws that really apply are the rules of nature. And, therefore, since humanity believes in God, God is real. Belief is perhaps the most powerful tool human beings have, for it can shape the present, future and past, and make miracles. Maybe it’s true that there is a little bit of God in all of us, and when we effect reality with the power of our beliefs, maybe we are tapping into that shard of the Maker that’s in all of us. Or maybe it’s all in our heads.
Which brings me to the subject of my discussion; love at first sight. Now before you people go getting your panties in a bunch, this does not mean that I do not believe in Love, whatever you happen to define that as. I just do not believe in Love at first sight. First of all, first sight is just that, sight, it’s visual. I maintain that you cannot fall in Love with someone just from looking at them, unless they are doing something spectacularly good for you when you first see them, like saving your mother from a burning building. Then I could maybe excuse Love at first sight. But in general one cannot fall in love at first sight. You can fall in Lust at first sight, you can fall in Lust from 200 feet away, but love? No. People are very good at rewriting their own personal history. It’s one of the perceptual biases we all have. People rewrite events to be what they thought it was, or what they believe it to be. For instance, a person may have only been physically attracted to another person upon their first meeting, but then fall in love later. What will happen is that the first person will superimpose their feelings of love onto their memories of the first meeting. So in their minds they will remember being in love at first sight, but that is not what happened. This is part of the power of the human brain to rearrange the past. That’s why police have such problems with eyewitness testimony; often people did not see what they thought they saw.
Like I said this does not mean that Love cannot happen ever, it is just that Love is a construct, a thing that we make, not something that happens. What people fail to understand is that their anecdotal evidence of something happening is flawed by not only their perceptions, but by their failure to take notice of when their individual theories about the workings of the world are wrong. In other words, we never think about how many times we don’t fall in love at first sight with people who we might otherwise. To go back to my previous example, if the first time you saw your future significant other he were, say, kicking the shit out of your mother, I don’t care what he did after that, you would not fall in love with him. I don’t care how good a reason he had for kicking the shit out of your mother, you just would not be that into him. And these sorts of things happen all the time. We often see people we would otherwise fall in love with, but it doesn’t happen because they don’t give very good first impressions. In fact, I would say that these occurrences happen a lot more than love at first sight. A lot of things that we attribute to fate or luck or God are usually just constructions of our minds. But our minds are so powerful that what we imagine can sometimes be very, very real to us. When our personal realities clash with consensual reality, we run into a lot of problems, which is where some mental illness springs from. What people fail to do is look for events that contradict what we believe. If you looked at the world truly objectively, one would find that an equal number of events happen to counteract those events that we wish or think were true. The world is truly random, which is the major truth I want to bring out here. That doesn’t mean that good things can’t or won’t happen, it just means that we should take a little more personal responsibility and initiative in making sure that those good things that we believe in actually do happen. We can’t expect God to do the work that we can do ourselves. We can’t let faith be responsible both for the cracks in our understanding of things, and for those things that we actually do understand and have control over.
Of course I expect that some people will disagree with me, and claim that love conquers all, etc. But some people need that sort of thing to fill in the parts of their life that they don’t understand. We all have cracks in our understanding of the universe and reality, and faith is what we use to fill in those blank spots. Whenever I express my theories about things, people inevitably crawl out of the woodwork with thousands of stories that directly disprove whatever I think. But these stories never stand up to reasoned questioning, and the person I am arguing with usually just gets angry and shuts down. It’s really hard being right so much, but I don’t know any other way to be.

On the Matter of Donovan

2008-02-16T18:43:00.004-05:00

I like to think that being an empathetic person, I can imagine anyone else’s situation as if it were my own, and for the most part I can. It’s an ability that has served me well in life. Many other people have this ability as well. Part of empathy Is being able to take a piece of your life, and superimpose it over a similar piece of someone else’s life. Allowing this, it follows that a person could not be empathetic to s situation they have never experienced. If the experience that they are trying to superimpose is too different, then the images won’t fit, and the empathic experience will be incomplete, to say the least. This is usually defined by this exchange;

Person A "Hey man, I know what you’re going through."
Person B "You have no idea what I am going through!"

This is a situation that is preferably avoided, since there are few times when a person feels worse than when they reach out to connect to another person’s experience, and fail. The time when such attempts tend to fail the most is when people who are not Black try to understand something that is uniquely Black. Some Black things really can’t be understood unless you are really immersed in what it is to be Black. This issue came up during the Donovan McNabb - T.O. saga. Many people in the media did not understand that the real rift between McNabb and T.O. wasn’t over money or playing time, but it was over status in the Black community. Some Black people perceive Donovan to be a "House Nigger" and T.O. basically referred to him as such on national TV. Black people have had a perception about ourselves since slave times, that some Black people are down for the struggle, and others of us suck up to white people in order to gain favor. In slave days, those slaves who sucked up where called house niggers because they got to work in the big house instead of out in the fields. House niggers were generally light-skinned, as the slave masters found the darker skinned slaves to be more offensive somehow. Because Donovan is the face of the Eagles, and the person they hold up as being their premiere player, T.O. and some other Eagles players viewed him as a sellout. Throughout Black circles this was debated far and wide. The head of the Philly chapter of the NAACP echoed these remarks. The national head of the NAACP told the Philly head that he had far better things to think about than the Eagles, and that there was nothing wrong with McNabb.
Things like this happen all the time in the Black community, and most people don’t know it. There is a racial subtext to everything that happens in the world, and unless you have known the shared experience that is being Black in America, you really can’t understand some things. There are several groups who have attempted to equate their struggle with ours, and it really just does not work. There really is nothing worse or more stressful than being a Black person in America. Women try to say that they have a claim, but even then, if you’re not a Black woman, then you’re life is fairly good, especially if you’re a white woman. Gay people try to say that they have it as bad, but that’s not true as well. They can hide their gayness, I can’t hide my Blackness. No matter what group you are, it’s worse if you’re a Black member of that group. Some Hispanic peoples have it pretty bad in this world, but it is always worse if you are a racially Black member of a Hispanic group. Did you know that there are Black Cubans? Of course not, you never see them. They are generally too poor to leave the island. The same is true for Middle Eastern and Indian people. Sure they are viewed as being terrorists wherever they go, but that will pass in time, and Black people still garner more attention and suspicion.
Sometimes I wish I could get people to see things the way I see them, then they would understand a little more why I feel the way I do. I was raised amongst white people for most of my life. I am most always the only Black guy in any given room, so I have a unique vantage point from which to view racial matters. I don’t think I’m racist but I probably am, and just getting more so with time. Yet I still have friends of all races and ethnicity. I’m not quite sure how I manage to reconcile these two subjects, but somehow I do. I hate many, many peoples, but I hang out with many, many peoples. Maybe I’m just a hypocrite. I try and explain some of my viewpoints to my friends, but they don’t get it, and sometimes they quite vocally don’t get it, and that’s OK. Friends don’t have to agree about everything. I let people think what they want to think. I know some people don’t understand what I’m saying and that’s fine. There are situations that I don’t understand, like what it’s like to be a young Indian-American girl who has to fly back to India to find a husband. That I cannot begin to empathize with, but I can try. I think as long as we try to see things from other people’s point of view, that’s enough, even if we don’t get it right.

The Ultimate Truth

2008-02-16T18:29:00.003-05:00

There is no reason that most men have trouble with women. Technically, there are so many women, that it shouldn’t be a problem. But it is, it’s a huge problem. The main component of this problem is that 100% of women are chasing the same 10% of the male population. Which means that if there’s ten women in a room, and 10 men in a room, all of those women will be chasing one guy out of the 10. These are not good odds for us.
Many of us tried to win women, with a fairly logical course of action. If we listen to them, we reasoned, and do everything they say then they will like us. And this tactic worked, to a point. Girls liked us, sure. They liked us so much they never, ever had sex with us. Ever. And then there was the horrible side-effect that we had the unfortunate pleasure of listening to women complain about all the assholes who they where having sex with. These were usually men who treated the women like carp, yet the women repeatedly went back to. If not that specific guy, then the girl would date that type of guy over and over and over, whilst repeatedly leaving you blue-balled and pissed-off.
After 10 or 12 years of this one tends to get a little bitter and pissed off. Well, I have finally figured out how so many seemingly decent guys so often are relegated to the "friends-only" aisle of the supermarket.
Apparently, women find nice guys to be boring.

Now, hear me out. Would you want to date someone who was really nice and fairly all right looking, but utterly boring? Well, OK you would. But most women would not. They like nice guys, but they don’t want to date a guy who doesn’t excite them, and it seems that a guy who does whatever they say and constantly aims to please does not excite them. They want some degree of conflict, some sort of drama to keep them interested. Now this does not mean that you have to give a girl an open-handed smack in the mouth to keep her, but threatening to every now and then wouldn’t hurt, as long as it’s all done in jest. When queried on this subject, women will respond that they date lots of nice guys who have great personalities. This shows an inherent misunderstanding of the question. They answered a different question, about dating nice guys in general. There are nice guys who have good personalities. They may not in fact be nice guys, but jerks who are able to put on a happy face, before they kick an old lady down a flight of stairs. And, secretly, women love that dichotomy.
Women love contradictions. They’re famous for wanting their cake and eating it too. The woman’s perfect man is a Pulitzer Prize winning heavyweight boxing champ with A Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and who can run a 4.2 sec 40. So it’s not surprising that so many of us become so confused by their behavior. Women will claim they want a "nice guy" but often date jerks. Repeatedly. They may not stay with said jerk for long, but they will repeatedly date that jerk, or others just like him, until they eventually figure out that punches are not a way people show affection. It’s not really their fault. I believe that the majority of women under 25 just really do not know what they want, or in other cases they do not know how to recognize what they want. So they date guys who are quite obviously jerks to the rest of us, but who they think are Mr. Right.
As the best friend, we always tell the girl that the guy is a jerk, but therein lies another problem with women. When they ask you for advice they do not actually want advice. They want you to listen to them bitch about their problem, then agree with whatever conclusion they come to on their own anyway. They do not want your input. So no matter how much you tell a woman that something is a bad idea, the chances are great that they’ll do it BECAUSE everyone says its a bad idea. Obviously every woman isn’t like this, but the majority are. I know a lot of girls who are smarter than this, but they still have made their slip-ups. So in essence, what you have to do is watch what a woman does, and not what they say, because what they say is not what they really are after. Watch a woman’s habits and that is the real her. Now you may find out that you cannot approximate what it is said woman is after, but at least you won’t waste a lot of time listening to her stupid problems and not getting the least bit of action from it.

In the end, that is the stupidest thing of all.

Being a Grown Up Sucks Ass

2008-02-16T18:00:00.003-05:00

So I’m about four years out of Graduate School and I’m still just another anonymous blogger. Lucky you. Let me tell you something; the real world sucks ass. The only real nice thing about it is health insurance, health insurance kicks ass. But this is what all of you lucky sons-a-bitches have to look forward to.

After graduating, be prepared to whore yourself out to whoever will have you. You may want to leave your dignity and self-respect on stage after you take your diploma, because you won’t be needing it out there. Chances are you’ll be broke as hell and willing to do anything short of sucking dick for money. Wait, I forgot what population I’m writing to; some of you will be sucking dick for money again. You’ll be talking nice and friendly to people you ordinarily would not piss on if they were on fire. You’ll be smarter than them, sure, but they are in control of whether you get a check or not, so just bend over and take it.

Next once you get the job (which may or may not have something to do with your major) you get to spend every second of your life praying for a death that will never come as your job slowly strangles any hope and creativity from your beleaguered soul. Your supervisors will devalue everything you do, and the good ideas you do have will be stolen by someone, again, less educated and far less talented than you. You will probably be working with people 10 to 20 years older than you who have died inside long before their bodies cease to live. They will be extremely jealous of your youth and vitality, coupled with the fact that you got a position right out of college that it took them 20 years of promotions to attain. These people will hate you and everything you stand for. They will make it their mission in life to sabotage you to make themselves look good. Women are lucky to meet a special brand of this type of person, the male chauvinist. They have all of the traits of the other corporate zombies, but they have the added bonus of devaluing everything you do or say because you are a woman. God help you if you end up supervising one of these miserable types, for they will disrespect you both for your age and your gender, generally misbehaving to make you look bad.
Combine all of this with the fact that you’ll probably be trying to get a higher degree just to get a job that pays enough for you to be able to break even, which no one you work with will care about, and somehow try to have a social life. Your significant other will leave you because your job sucks up all of your free time. You will not be paid what your worth, and any bit of joy in your life will be systematically hunted down and exterminated. But congratulations on graduating! Poor saps…

A Response From The Hetero Male in Question

2008-02-16T17:20:00.002-05:00

This one needs a little set up. I wrote a literal ton of stories about two superheroes called Captain Hetero and Iron Dyke. I printed one of my Iron Dyke stories when I was on the school paper at John Jay College in NYC. I assumed, New York being the liberal place its supposed to be, it would go over well. I have been writing issues of I.D. AND C.H. at Rutgers for 4 years and had nary complaint, mostly because people got the joke. At least one person at John Jay didn't. This was my response to her. It was originally printed 05/12/03

I guess I should have expected this, but , honestly, I did not. It is not that I do not understand where Prof. Yukins is coming from, because I do. I even see where she could draw her conclusions from, I really do. The only problem is that , with all due respect, she is completely, utterly wrong about all of it.
I guess I should start from the beginning. My "compilation of bigoted stereotypes and trite heterosexual male fantasies" as she put it, are really things I could not possibly think up myself. Iron Dyke’s views and opinions are an amalgam of things I’ve heard and read from actual lesbians who I am very good friends with and feminist literary theory which I am fairly well versed in. Seeing as how I am going to be a psychologist, I have also read many feminist perspectives on psychology. So I do not sit around and fantasize about man-hating lesbians; any fantasizing I do about lesbians has nothing to do with that.
Oh, and you needn’t remind me of all of the daily violence committed towards gays and women. I am a Black man after all, which makes most criticisms against my writing all the more hilarious. The fact that Yukins compares me to ultra right-wing conservatives "Minus’s writing echoes the rhetoric of social commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson" provided me with a very good laugh (by the way, you missed Bill O’ Reilly in that group). I hate those guys; in fact I guess if she was going to find people I was least like, they would be it. I love it when people who do not know me presume to lecture me about the plight of minorities in America. No one, and I mean no group in America has it worse than Black men, even homosexuals. You can pretend to not be gay, I cannot pretend to not be Black. So don’t give me that I’m justifying oppression garbage, I know all about it.
But I really can’t blame her for being wrong; she does not know me. And that really is the bottom line here. It’s why her whole argument against me is wrong. I can’t blame her for not knowing my opinions on things…wait, yes I can. I’ve wrote more than a few editorials in my first year of going to John Jay, and if she had read any of those, then she would know how Liberal and what a generally pissed-off Black man I am. So, keeping that little fact in mind, it means that the only bit of my writing that Prof. Yukins has read is the one thing that would piss her off. Interesting.
There’s another reason I cannot blame her for feeling the way she does, she has only read the first issue. You see, Iron Dyke is a series of short stories I’ve written; the one in the last issue was the introduction of her character. In later issues, as she is fleshed out more and we see her in interpersonal relationships, we see how her views are challenged by more level-headed thinkers. She does in fact believe very strongly in everything she said in that last issue. She sees herself as The Superhero for all gays everywhere. It is not satire or sarcasm; I’m from New Jersey, I’m very good with sarcasm. My goal with her character is to expose people who have very little sense of humor and take themselves waaay too seriously. Mission accomplished I’d say. Another thing that amuses me about all of this is that in the four years I’ve been writing her story, none of the feminists I know have reacted this way; they love Iron Dyke. And these girls are pretty damn serious about their views. Here in the big city, I’d expect that people would be sophisticated enough to understand the point. But as I said, it was only the first issue. Maybe it exposes some flaws in my writing style that I didn’t expose the entire message of the series in the first issue, but somehow I doubt it.
Prof. Yukins is right about one thing, I would like to reform the activity of feminists. Oftentimes the massage is delivered in such a way that it prevents people from hearing what they are trying to say. Feminist theories and activities often immediately alienate the very people they need to hear their message; mainstream America. I can’t really go into my views on feminism here, that’s a rant for another day. Prof. Yukins, and I think a lot of other people, completely, utterly, and hopelessly missed the point of that story. You have to be pretty open-minded to enjoy Iron Dyke. Calling me a women fearing/hating heterosexual male all you want, but please, continue to read my stuff. Maybe then you will understand me and we won’t have more of these little misunderstandings.

I Guess We Can't All Get Along

2008-02-16T17:09:00.003-05:00

I think it’s about time we gave up on the idea of racial unity. It has become pretty obvious to me that people just are not going to be able to get along. People are always going to be the way they always have been. I’ll give you an example. This Sunday I was at a Caribbean day celebration at my old school in NJ, Rutgers. There were lots of West Indian types of food, gifts, and of course, lots of music. About 6 hours of reggae music to be exact. Now one would expect that if there was a lot of reggae music, there would be a lot of white people there too right? No? Well, look at it this way. A lot of people are into the music genre of Ska. If you aren’t familiar with Ska, just think of it as a musical ,mix of punk music and reggae. It sounds a lot more like reggae than anything else, accept that it’s mostly performed by white bands with the occasional black member. Ska’s fans are also mostly white, with occasional black fans as well. The point is that you would think that if these people liked Ska, they would like reggae too right? Well, that just is not the case. It seems like people only like music if people that look like them are singing it. There’s a band called 311 that sings a lot of songs that have reggae beats to them, but oddly enough, none of their fans were in attendance either. Rock and Roll only became popular among white people after a white man sung it, and it seems like the trend hasn’t changed since.
It may seem a little pessimistic, but I don’t think that people are in fact getting any closer. I mean, look at this whole war thing. Most people were all for the bombing of those brown people because , well, it wasn’t them who were being bombed. It was not them or anyone they knew. I’m sure if Europe were being bombed a lot fewer people would have supported the war. The expression out of sight, out of mind really applies here. It is easy to accept the deaths of people you know nothing about and will never have anything to do with. One of the most disturbing parts of this war is the absence of PTSD among the vets. Vietnam vets came back all messed up because of what they saw, and what they did. It seems like today soldiers have no conscious, that the fact that they’re bombs were killing innocent women and children in the name of freeing them did not phase them at all. They were OK with taking away other people’s children as long as they are able to go home and see their own.
It’s not that I have anything against the soldiers, I hope they come home safely. It’s the fact that the government has demonized the Arab people so much that Americans believe that they are all bad, and that we should bomb all of them. I wonder where it will stop. Arab people are being rounded up and forced to register. I wonder what would happen if Irish people had to do the same, just to make sure that they were not terrorists? Is there any evidence that America is not waging war on the Arab world? Is there any reason for them to believe that we care about what happens to them? Of course not. America’s intentions are not as important as what our perceived intentions are. America’s actions have only shown aggression, threats, force and intimidation. What have we done accept for provide unconditional support for Israel?
The news is not all bad. People are starting to like music of other cultures regardless of who sings it. People are starting to have friends of other races, but it is not enough. Most people do not know or care the difference between an Indian and a Pakistani, and most don’t even know that those two countries are almost constantly at war. The average American thinks we should bomb both countries. Our ignorance is our downfall, and President Bush’s black and white view of the world doesn’t help. We as Americans are very ready to hate any country which disagrees with us, just as we are ready to blacklist anyone who disagrees with the president. It’s like we are back in the 1950’s again, instead of Communists we are afraid of Terrorists. But McCarthyism seems to be back in effect, and no one cares, or else they are too afraid to say they are. No one will speak up for the Arabs whose rights are abused, no one will say that Israel has committed acts as atrocious as the Terrorists attacks against them are. No one will say what’s on their mind because God knows what will happen if you do. That’s America as it is now, but not as it should be. This isn’t where we are supposed to be. Am I bitter and cynical? Yeah, a lot actually, but that changes nothing of what I said. But as long as gas prices go down,. Who cares who gets bombed and who dies?

addendum 02/16/07 I've met some Iraq veterans, and talked to a lot more, and they do have PTSD just like anyone who has been in a war. War I think now that I'm older, has a way of humanizing people in the end, even when the enemy is trying to kill you, you understand a little better why they want to kill you. And, war or not, gas prices have gone up no matter what since I wrote this back in April of 2003. Still though, I don't think race relations have gotten any better; it's just something we are going to have to accept.

The Spoils of War (originally written 04/14/03)

2008-02-16T17:07:00.001-05:00

It’s a beautiful day outside. It really is. In fact, the whole last weekend has been nothing but beautiful days. Spring has sprung, as they say, and it’s very apparent that our snow days have been put of for at least another 6 months. I have been trying to enjoy this new spring, this new beginning, but just as the season started, so did the war. That tends to put a damper on any celebrations of new life, especially when so much life is being taken halfway across the world.
I’ve spent the last few weeks telling anyone who will lesson why this is an idiotic war. Not because there needs to be a less psychotic political system in Iraq, because there does need to be. The real reason why this war is pointless is because it will not solve anything, in the long or short run. Many, many Americans are for the war, and I’ve talked to many people who are. The reasons they give for the war are as vague as the ones they have heard on television and from the President. In fact, most people I’ve talked to have only regurgitated the broad reasons that the president has stated. However, if you really think about any of the reasons that have been given, none of them make any sense. At first, the government stated that they wanted to create a democracy in Iraq, but when you look at history, bombing a country has never, EVER created a stable working democracy. In fact since the end of WW II we’ve bombed 22 countries, and a real democracy has not come out of any of these instances. So, there goes that. The question I ask is, who the hell is going to replace Saddam as the leader of Iraq, one of his equally psychotic sons? Who is going to control Iraq when Saddam is gone? (Note I say "when"; this war is the most expensive, expansive assassination attempt ever).
One of the few (very few) humorous moments in all of this tragedy is when American troops raised an American flag over a port that they had taken, and then were told to take it down. I’m assuming there were some British troops with them who filled them in on the idea that they weren’t supposed to look like they were taking Iraq over for America. It is bad enough that that is what the world thinks, without our troops reinforcing the fact. Here is the real reason that this war is going to mess America up far more than it will help us. Bush has burned so many bridges in his push for war, that after this American is going to have to fight every battle, militarily or otherwise, by ourselves. A lot of people I’ve talked to say that Britain will always be on our side, but guess what? Come next British elections, Tony Blair is not going to be there any more. He is known amongst his people as Bush’s Poodle. Brits have no respect for him, and widely, widely disagree with his blind support of President Bush. In fact, the leaders of many countries that support us do so against their people’s wishes. The leaders of these countries (Pakistan, India, Turkey, Britain, Italy, Australia, Spain) will probably not see another term because of their support of the US. Many of these countries, such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Jordan are being basically paid off to support us.
Bush has made it clear that countries are only important as long as they are of use to us. President Musharraf of Pakistan has been made to feel like a fool for supporting the US, as we continue to economically repress that country’s exports for our own gain, while he risked his leadership role to support America’s war against the Taliban. If you want to read about the reasons why this war is a terrible idea, as is the entire Bush administration, read the Newsweek article from a few weeks ago entitled "The Arrogant Empire". The world is afraid of Americans because they know what is happening to Iraq could happen to each and every one of them if they should anger us. What people fail to realize is that we took military action around the world three times under the Clinton Presidency, and he never asked anybody for permission. The difference is that the world community trusted and liked Clinton and they hate Bush. You know why the world hates Bush and America? They hate Bush because their leaders have prostrated themselves before America, and the people of those countries do not know who runs their own home. Are foreign countries such as Britain and Italy lead by their elected leaders, or by Bush? World leaders and ambassadors feel like the American government treats them like wayward children. That is no way to rule the most powerful country in the word, and We The People, not Dubya the Idiot, are the ones who are going to have to pay for his arrogance and violence.

My $.02 on the War (originally written 03/03/03)

2008-02-16T17:05:00.001-05:00

I, like a lot of other people I suspect, am really at odds as to whether or not we should go to war. There are many reasons why we should not. The first and foremost among them is that all of this seems to be the end result of the Bush family’s personal dislike for Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and their love of oil. I am fairly certain that this is why many other countries refuse to support our war effort. They probably cannot help but think this is another attempt by an arrogant and boastful nation full of arrogant and boastful people to impose their will on another country, regardless of whether they pose a threat or not. Other countries, most likely believe that we will take anything as a sign of terrorism in order to attack those who don’t fall in line behind our lead, and for the far less complicated reason of revenge for the 9/11 attack. Looking at our president, I can understand where this line of thinking comes from, I actually happen to share it. The rest of the world is finally starting to stand up to America, which is good because we are not always right…especially not with Bush’s fool ass in office. There has been a lot of public discord about the fact that France is not supporting us when "We saved their asses in WW 2!" First of all we were dragged kicking and screaming into World War II, and if we hadn’t been attacked there’s no telling if and when we would have joined in to "save their asses".
Does this mean that France and England and really all of Western Europe should eternally subjugate themselves to America? No. They should be grateful, and be our allies, but a country must always vote their conscience. If it seems to them that America is pushing for war because it is the only way Bushes know how to stimulate the economy and divert people’s attention form the fact that they have no jobs and no money, then Europe must do what they feel they need to do to avert war. Now if they could only get America to not be so one-sided in it’s support for Israel, we’d really be getting somewhere in the war on terror. There is only one problem with all of this anti-war sentiment: what if they’re wrong?
What if we are right? What if Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction, and war is the only way to safeguard ourselves? What if he is pulling the wool over the eyes of the international community? In a way that would be nice, because it would prove that America was the only country in the world really up to speed on what people are doing. But it could also be terrible because the USA is one of the top targets of terrorism. If the rest of the world is wrong, they are not the ones who will pay for their mistake, we are. If Iraq successfully hides weapons, those weapons will not be unleashed on France, or Germany, or China or Russia. They will be headed straight here to where we live. We have the most at stake in this argument, which is why we should have the most say. But if we are perceived as unjustly attacking Iraq, that could go just as badly as moving the US up the list past Israel as the #1 enemy of the Arab world. So it seems we may be damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. But I still have this nagging feeling that we may be worse off if we do than if we don’t.
A friend of mine said that she is sure that if we do not attack Iraq, terrorism will drop off considerably. But if we do, terrorism will rise a lot. Many of the people of the countries who claim to support us do not. The best example of this is Turkey, whose Prime Minister pledged their support, but whose Parliament voted down allowing US troops to fight from Turkey. In northern Iraq there is the threat of there being a four front war between the Iraqis, the Kurds, Turks, and the Americans. That is a disaster waiting to happen. The war is not exactly popular in Britain either. Last week 122 members of Tony Blair’s own party called the case for war unproved, 199 British lawmakers in total revolted against Blair. The problem is that Bush is blindly pushing for the advancement and safety of the USA at the expense of the rest of the world. The US is sucking up the resources of the planet more than any other single country, (and more than most other regions in fact), while giving nothing back. That is why people expect so much from us, because we have so much. The American president should put our interests first and foremost, but not at the expense of the rest of the world. We cannot screw over the rest of the world and expect to stay safe here at home. We do not live in a snowglobe. I would really like to be able to travel abroad some day, but at this rate there won’t be anywhere safe in the world to go, except for Canada, and that barely counts as being a foreign country. Bush does not know how to play well with others, and his attitude and policy has made him and consequently America intensely hated in the Arab world, far more than ever before. American reporters who have talked to Iraqis on the street have said that they don’t hate America, they hate Bush. And we end up getting hit by another terrorist attack because of Dubya pissing the world off, I’m going to hate him as well.

Kickin it Old School

2008-02-16T16:57:00.003-05:00

So I was going through my pile of freshly bought comics recently, and I read three in a row. It was not until I was done that I realized the common theme that all of these comics. They were all based off of TV shows I watched in the 80’s, namely, ThunderCats, G.I. Joe, and Transformers. So now, for all of you who know exactly what I am talking about, let us take a walk down memory lane with some old faces on fresh pages.
First we will start with ThunderCats #2 from Wildstorm. Now I was always somewhat ambivalent about the ThunderCats. You see I liked the concept fine, and the opening and closing credits were really cool. These are important things when you are a kid. The show had two major, major flaws however. The animation was sketchy as hell. One show it would be decent, the next show…well…let’s just say that the Korean animators probably went on strike. The animation was often terrible. The second, and less forgivable sin, was that the stories always had cop-out endings. It would seem like Mumra had all but won, and some fluke, deus-ex-machina plot device would intervene and save the day. Now if, I don’t know, Lion-O did a ThunderCats Ho, and all of the rest of them went straight into ass-kicking mode, that was cool. But too often the plots just had really lame resolutions. I was 10 years old but I could still tell when the writers had run out of ideas. I wasn’t stupid. So the major task of the new comic would be to solve those plot problems, right? Well, they try. Seems Mumra is tired of Slithe’s shit, so he puts Vultureman in charge of the Mutants. Yeah, that’s what the team needed, a change in leadership. So, with Vultureman at the helm, the Mutants get their asses easily kicked once again by Lion-O, Tigra, and some random Samurai named Hachiman. Same shit, different decade. The best thing about this comic is the Jim Lee comic. Lion-O wished he were as cool as he looks here.
Moving on to G.I. Joe #8 from Image, we find a nice little family reunion…that family being the Dreadnoks. The Gangs all there…literally; Ripper, Thrasher, Monkey Wrench, Zarana, and the leader, Zartan. I always liked these guys, just because their major motive in life seemed to be to break things and get paid for it, two ideals very close to my heart. Zarana is transporting a sensitive piece of computer equipment to Dr. Mindbender, looking Fabulous in his Purple Full-length Cobra Blouse. Hilarity ensues. Seriously, the G.I. Joe is worth it. It has all of the plot and characterization the show lacked, but without the ridiculously high turnover rate of the original comic book run. That was realistic, true, but did they have to kill off EVERY Joe I liked? Geeze.
Lastly, we have Transformers: The War Within preview issue from DreamWave Productions. Now DW is also responsible for the wildly popular, and very good Transformers Generation 1 series that’s on its 5th issue now. Since those comics are so damn good, and faithful to Transformers, I knew this series would not disappoint. And it does look promising; this series will tell the story of the original civil war on Cybertron, sometime after they kicked the Quintessons into space, and before they arrived on Earth. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you are reading the wrong article. Anyway, the Transformers you know are there, but they look different because they are still in their Cybertronian bodies. All this adds up to some really fucking cool new versions of Grimlock (who’s a tank now), Starscream, Bumblebee, and Devastator (whoa). Long story short, buy these comics. Actually, no don’t because I don’t want them to be sold out before I get one. So for the ratings. I give ThunderCats #2 2 Energon Cubes out of Five, G.I. Joe #8 3 Energon Cubes, and Transformers; The War Within preview 4 Cubes. Enjoy your flashbacks kids. BTW, DreamWave folded, and someone else picked up the Transformers label, I think it's IDW publishing.

Maybe We Aren’t Number One…

2008-02-16T16:44:00.002-05:00

You know, I think I finally understand why the rest of the world dislikes Americans. The rest of the world dislikes Americans the same way Black people dislike White people. OK, now hear me out on this. White people can go years without ever seeing anyone who does not look like them. White people do not have to learn anything about anyone else’s culture besides their own. I mean really, who do you think diversity training curriculum is for? If you are Brown or Black, you have already had to learn about a culture other than your own. We do not really need diversity training. It is White people who more often than not know nothing about the other races and ethnic groups that inhabit the country.
The same is basically true of Americans. On the average we do not really have to know anything about any other country in the world. We are ignorant of other countries basically because we can afford to be. American culture is everywhere. English is spoken in many, many countries in the world. It is fast becoming the most international of languages. American movies play everywhere. In most international sports, (accept for rugby and soccer) Americans reign. The Olympics, Golf, Tennis, Baseball, Football, Hockey (Canadians may be really good at Hockey, but where do they come to play?), and even Basketball are all international sports ruled by America, although that has changed in recent years. Everybody knows about America, you cannot escape American culture. Basically we don’t have to know about them, but they have to know about us. That kind of situation breeds resentment, which could lead to hatred. Sometimes, and I know this is something everyone can relate to, you really hate someone in your life for no other reason than that you see them too damn much.
And that, I think, is the basis for a lot of Anti-American sentiment, even among our European allies. It does not help that Americans have this…attitude, that we have. We almost cannot help it. A lot of countries believe that they are the best in the world, but Americans know it as an undeniable fact, like gravity and the sun rising in the morning.. I have to admit to being guilty of this way of thinking myself. Americans honestly do not understand why other countries would not want to be like us. The odd part is that we are all acutely aware of the many faults with our country, yet we still encourage other peoples to be like us. It is this attitude that many White people possessed throughout the history of this country, and it is an attitude that many Americans possess today. People resent us because we are so sure of ourselves, so sure that we are right and that we are the good guys and that we will save the world, even though it is Americans who are doing the most to ruin the world. That is why people hate us, and I can understand that. But that view is wrong. We know we often end up screwing things up more than we help, and we know that our leaders are idiots, but we are trying to do the best we can, I think. On this planet it is kind of like we are driving, but we have all had one drink too many.
So what do we do about it? Try to be a little more humble? Humility is the rarest thing in America, and I do not know if you’ll find it at all. This country lives and dies by being number 1, with all of the responsibilities that entails. I guess the rest of the world will have to learn to deal with us insufferable Americans. We can help however, by reading the international section of the newspaper every now and then, and trying to not be assholes when we travel abroad. Hey, its the least we can do for the uncivilized countries of the world, i.e. everyone but us.

Chat Transcript From God to Woman

2008-02-16T16:39:00.002-05:00

GOD32: Ok, is this working?
LrdNSvyr01: Yes Father
GOD32: OK Jesus, I have a message for my children again. Let me just run it by you.
LrdNSvyr01: Go ahead Father, you being God, this has to be good.
GOD32: You know Jesus, I can never tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. Anyway here it goes. It’s an open letter to Woman.
LrdNSvyr01: Oh you mean the first one you made?
GOD32: Yes, her, and by extension all women. OK, here goes. Woman, I know you may still be a little miffed about the whole Eden thing, and the menstruation unpleasantness, but it had to be done. Trust me, I’m God.
LrdNSvyr01: Nice God, start off mending some bridges.
GOD32: Thanks. I think…anyway Woman, we have to talk. It’s about Man. What have you been doing? They are completely out of control! You Chicks have got to get your act together.
LrdNSvyr01: Uh Dad, they don’t like to be called chicks. They find it demeaning.
GOD32: Why? I always used to call Woman my little chick, the way she would scamper around the office, just like a little bird chick. It’s a term of endearment. But whatever, Woman, I made you smarter than Man for a reason. You have got to control him. You have let Man run amok, now look what is happening. I’ve got the Angels working two or three shifts straight trying to clean up all of the messes Man is making. Yes he is stronger, bigger faster, and more enduring than you, but why do you think I did that? They are there to protect you, to do all of the manual labor. Do you know that I used the same basic system to build ox as I did Man? They are there to be your servants. Why do you think I gave you all of those controls over him?
LrdNSvyr01: What do you mean Dad?
GOD32: Why do you think I made them so irresistible. I think that I did too good of a job, even Woman is love with Woman now. I used stars for their eyes, solar wind for their breathe…do you know how expensive that stuff is? I made their bodies all round and curvy because that is the most irresistible shape there is…round. Why do you think that all things in the universe are round? Why do you think sex is so good? Why do you think Man calls my name when Woman touches him? Why do you think that vagina is addictive?
LrdNSvyr01: Dad, do you have to talk about that?
GOD32: C’mon Jesus, don’t be such a prude. I made sex so good in order for Woman to enslave Man. He will do anything for Woman, and think that it is all of his own free will. Woman, you are smarter than man, wittier. Man’s body may be better physically, but your mind is perfect. You have to get off of your butt and take control of the planet before it’s too late. You’re mind is stronger, more resilient…I tried to balance out the cramps thing by making you more resistant to pain.
LrdNSvyr01: OK Dad, I think by now you should have her on your side, it’s time to drive home your point.
GOD32: Woman, you are as close to perfection as you can get without being Me. All of you should know that. However you look is how I meant for you too look. And I don’t make mistakes; it’s one of the perks of being God. So start kicking Man’s butt Now! The Angels are going to go on strike if I don’t give them a break. I want you and Man to live together in peace, but you have to be dominant over them or none of us will have any peace.
LrdNSvyr01: Well said Dad, I love you.
GOD32: OK, ok, Jesus Christ you’re mushy, you know that?
LrdNSvyr01: Dad, don’t take my name in vain.
GOD32: Jissy Chrissy!
LrdNSvyr01: Don’t call me that either.