a little ditty about Carlos Estevez

life's funny, am i right?

just when you're pretty sure you know the rules of the game, of what does and doesn't make a person a piece of shit, here comes a curve ball.

to recap: Chris Brown beats the shit outta Rihanna and we're still talking about it as late as last month.

Charlie Sheen pulls a freakin knife on his wife and is arrested on 2 felonies and...well....let's just say the clamor for the spill of his blood is muted. and this is after allegations of physical abuse against his previous wife and an "accidental" shooting of then fiance Kelly Preston in 1990.

where you at, Oprah?

 

i asked myself why there was this difference in reaction earlier today, but i already know the answer.

and that answer is getting really really really old.

well, i guess i could put it all in perspective. maybe the media isn't talking about Carlos and his switchblade (how stereotypical) because they have other things to talk about?

yeah....i'm giving the media way too much credit.

i said it yesterday and i'll say it again: it pays to be a Sheen, man. you can just keep on being crazy until you finally kill a woman.

Chris Brown is totally changing his same to Critian Estevez in 2010!

Same as it ever was.....

stop me if you've heard this one:

the US government is given warnings and credible information regarding the movements and extremist ideology of an Al Qaeda operative, who is determined to carry out a terrorist attack against this country on a airplane.

and then the government didn't do anything about the information.

and then the Al Qaeda operative attacks a plane in the United States.

now for the punchline: no, i'm not talking about 2001. i'm talking about now.

thanks for proving to me that it doesN't matter which jackass has the job, i'm probably still not that safe.

I'M TALKING TO YOU, NAPOLITANO CIA!

WTF, Yahoo Buzz!

i happen to use Kosmix as my homepage on my home computer. while i'm not that excited about it as a start screen, i usually give it a glance in the 3 second space between opening my browsing and going to Gmail.

at the top of my page, i have about 4 tabs from different news sources. the first tab is news from Yahoo Buzz. and in addition to a quick blurb about a story, i am allowed the chance to read the last comment left by Yahoo readers on the site.

without fail, those comments are ALWAYS offensive. i'm beginning to wonder if perhpas they should change their name to Yahoo Buzz: a Subsidiary of Stormfront. not only are the comments offensive but often they are stupid as hell.

i checked Buzz Heil today and was met with the usual.

it really makes me curious: do they just sit around all day looking for stories online to post outlandish comments to? have they no lives? have they no jobs?

well, i don't need to read this crap. today is officially my last day as a Kosmix user. i'm gonna leave these Yahoo Buzz Bastids to themselves.

i hope they choke on the vitriol.

I wonder if the Jersey Shore kids get it.

meh, probably not....and that's an abobinal-snowman-nation!

Bobby Bottleservice - Jersey Shore Audition Tape - watch more funny videos

Drag Her to Hell.

i'm making a conscious decision.

i am aware that the media has been forcing the Bad Black Mother stories down our throats, per usual, and this is yet another example of a black woman behaving badly.

i am aware that horrible things happen to innocent children every day.

yet, i've decided to tell this story anyway. Why? because this bitch is crazy and somebody needs to lock her away in a tiny room by herself for a very loooooooong, looooooooooong time.

New York (CNN) -- Prosecutors in Brooklyn have charged a 38-year-old woman with tricking a pregnant woman into taking an abortion-inducing drug because the suspect thought her husband had fathered the child with the other woman.

And after the baby was born two months premature, but survived, someone tried unsuccessfully to slip a toxic substance through hospital security to the infant in the guise of milk for the baby, according to prosecutors.

The suspect, Kisha Jones, allegedly went to great lengths to end the pregnancy of 25-year-old Monique Hunter, according to a complaint filed by the Brooklyn district attorney's office in an ongoing investigation that began over a month ago.

Jones is in jail facing multiple charges, including attempted abortion and assault, according to authorities.

my anger with Sheniya Davis' mother is still sitting like a burning rock in my chest, now this heffa over here is trying to murder a baby because she thought her "man" was the father. luckily, despite her best efforts, the child has not been killed.

now, happily, she's going to end up going to prison where there are no damn men.

fitting.

some of us women need to get ourself under control and quit acting like dick-crazed lunatics whose end all be all is some worthless dude who is more interested in his ho-shit than being a good man.

....in my loudly expressed opinion.

between women selling their kids into sexual slavery, allowing their children to be molested and raped by known perpetrators, taking sides with men over their kids when accusations fly, acting like victims when it comes out that the married men (with children) they've been sleeping with have hoes in different area codes....i'm just over it all right now.

ladies, we have got to do better.

Public Service Announcement

i've had it. i have had it with poeple doing crazy shit trying to be edgy. so today, i'm taking it upon myself to institute a new rule! i hereby decree that as of today, beautiful people are not allowed to get their faces tattooed anymore. if you are Merkin, and it is not part of your majority- or sub-culture to tattoo your face, then back away from the ink!

some classic examples of beauty gone wrong?

Danger....C'mon, Danger! why in the hell did you get a tiger on your face?! You're lucky your VH1 nickname wasn't Olde English.

Devante, this is no okay! aside from the scribble on your temple, your face is a screaming testament to the ills of cheap drugs and fast women. nigro, how OLD are you now? how did you manage to age 7 years to every 1 year in everyone else's life!

you were hotness, Devante. and i was in love with you from 1992 until roughly 1996. i even overlooked Dalvin looking like a malnurished skeevy version of you.

Mike Tyson?
you are GOOD. get as many tattoos on your face as you want. no loss. believe me.

but you DEFINITELY went too far, Little Six Hair Baby. too far...

He deserved a break.

Another sad passing was reported today in the Lexington Herald-Leader....the guy who we can all thank for Ronald McDonald went on to the big golden arches in the sky.

Michael Polakovs, best known as a clown named Coco and developer of Ronald McDonald, died Sunday in Ashland, KY. He was 86. His greatest fame came as the developer of Ronald McDonald, the clown face of McDonald's corporation. He designed the outfit and makeup that is worn by the character to this day.

Thanks to the clowntastic genius of Mr. Polakovs, people in my generation can remember with fondness the locally produced commericals in the 70s of Ronald McDonald's hit song "Friends."

And current generations can alternately gawk and/or shudder at the site of Ronald's daughter and son:





you'll be missed, Mr. Polakovs. but your creation's many, many....many reiterations will stay with us for decades to come.

Sad day in the world of Hokey Pokey

today in the Lexington Herald Leader, there was sad news of the passing of a musical giant:

Robert Degen, who copyrighted the song The Hokey Pokey Dance in 1944, died in Lexington, on Nov. 23, his 104th birthday. In the New York Times report on Degen's death, the authorship of "You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out," and on and on, is in question. The credit usually goes to Larry LaPrise and the musical group the Ram Trio. It is said that the song was created in Sun Valley, Idaho, as a novelty number to entertain vacationing skiers. The group recorded it in the late 1940s. Degen claimed that LaPrise had stolen the song from him.

the very next time this song comes on The Backyardigans, i'm going to grab a sippy cup and pour a little out for the homey.

Like it or not? I pick not.

so i read an irritating little number today on msnbc that informed me that Like it or not, name can impact your career.

it was full of anecdotes about the motel owner who made his Latino employees white-out their names. this is the same guy who states he once made his black employees do the same thing without any complaint, so what's the problem? he's a defense attorney's dream client, am i right?

and just when i thought the article was going to save itself by pointing out that “changing somebody’s name is something that could be viewed as intentionally discriminatory or not but it still could have a disparate impact on a certain group of workers," it throws itself back into the bullshsit bag with this statement:

"If, however, the employer has some legitimate business reason for asking a worker to change his or her name, he said, and is not only singling out one group, then that may be a different story."

i'm really hard pressed to think up any legitimate business reasons which would necessitate an employer asking an employee to white out his or her name. but what do i know, i only investigate discrimination for a living.

and the article presses forth on the Bullshit Express, we get this particular infuriating tidbit of advice from Bruce Lansky, a guy who wrote down a bunch of baby names and got it published. he advises:

“If you’re picking a name for your child, it’s reasonable to select a name that reflects your ethnicity but which will strike most people as ‘familiar’ or ‘mainstream’ rather than ‘foreign’ or ‘off-putting.’”

see what he did there? he set up some nice helpful synonyms for us. Familiar is to Mainstream as Foreign is to Off-putting.

BUT THERE'S MORE!!

“A foreign-sounding or highly ethnic-sounding name will have people wondering if they spoke English in the household, or if they’ll be able to get along and mix with Americans.”

soooooo, i guess the job history and educational background which are listed on an applicant's resume or application couldn't answer any of those questions, right? because we're just gonna assume someone with a foreign (off-putting) sounding name can't possibly be American. Right?

He suggested finding names that are part of your culture or ethnicity but are not too overt. For example, he said, “if you’re Irish, you could choose Kevin or Shawn, instead of Dermott or Shamus.”

Or use an Anglo-sounding name as the middle name, he noted, giving a child a choice on what to use when they get older. “It can be Abdullah and his middle name can be Henry,” he said.

the author of the article could have talked about how the certain someones in positions of hiring or authority believe they have a right to tell certain browner someones that their names are wrong, and how this is a monstrously obvious show of the privilege and power that drives Racism and Oppression in the country. but nah, why go through all that when she could let us know that she used white-out on her own name, choosing to be know "professionally" as Eve. rather than Evanthia.

"But you do mind if we call you Sal?"

the bottom line?

stop scaring Americans with your foreign, off-putting names! otherwise, you're gonna force someone to discriminate against you on your job. and why would you want to play the race card like that, Abdullah Henry??

afterall, “most people in America are not bigoted, but they do have comfort zones.”

is it too much to ask?

*taps mic*

Twas wondering:

why is it when Hollywood makes movies about angels, they speak like Princess Diana and look like footballers for Manchester United? would it kill them to make a movie where an angel looks like me?

that being said, i'm probably gonna see this movie. because the angels look like footballers for Manchetser United.

*drops mic*

Happy Hump Day!

Go, reader! Go, reader! shake ya money makah! get busy! it's ya birthday! not really! well maybe! go, go, go, go!

something to shake your bum to.

don't sprain anything. that would be dreadful.

hey Mika? Dr. Laura wants her schtick back.

Mika Brzezinski, the long suffering eye rolling co-host of Morning Joe, wrote a blog today on Huffington Post. in it she revealed some of the tips she shares with "young women about life lessons and TV career choices." for the most part, it read like the script from Up Close and Personal, but things really got good when she got to her coup de grâce: don't "forget" to get married and have some kids, girlfriends! and start in your 20s if you have to!!!



oh, yes she did.

Mika explains that if you think finding a good job is hard, wait until you get a load of how hard it is to find a descent mate to marry and procreate with:

"Bad news, girls. The odds are definitely better on getting the right job than getting a good partner for life...Don't push away that chance if you're one of the lucky ones who find that partner. And remember, you can always change a job. I hear it's much harder to switch out a husband."

and


"But let's talk about the greatest gift a woman can receive: being a mommy. For professional women, there simply is NO good time to have a baby. Putting it off only makes the challenges greater. Having babies after 35 increases medical risk and is, lets face it, exhausting. It is also trying on a marriage and a career."


*headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk!*


here it is, 2009, and some people refuse to grasp this very simple concept: not every woman is foaming at the mouth at the idea of being someone's mother. and the false belief that a woman who isn't worked up about the notion is lying to herself is insulting and boneheaded.

no really: some chicks couldn't possible care any less than they do about having children. so please.

and how antiquated is the advice of "if you find a good man, girls, you better latch on and never let go because there might be plenty of fish in the sea....but most of them are floating by dead"?

another newsflash! not everyone is 1) HETEROSEXUAL and 2) INTERESTED IN GETTING MARRIED!

and also? Mika? having a baby at any age is exhausting, i don't care if you're 15, 25, or 35. you still get your world jerked around when you have to function under extreme sleep deprivation. i didn't burst into tears at the social security office while trying to get a rush job on my kids' cards because i was 35...i did it because i was delirious with exhaustion. don't even go there!

she managed to be insulting, patronizing, ageist, out of touch, and hetero-privileged in one neat little maddening blog post. in a way, isn't that too a victory?

Mika and Huffington Post could have completely missed me with this. but there is one idea that has definitely crystalized for me. Between Joe's smarmy frat-boy smirk, Pat Buchanan playing the role of everyone's favorite insane racist uncle, and Mika's Donna Reed outlook on what REALLY matters to working "girls," i need to just keep watching the Today show Blue's Clues (keeping it real).

no, i'm not the police captain from Law & Order!

this story actually rated a double take/eyeroll/sigh from your's truly. how did he NOT know who he was on the panel with?


From Crooks and Liars:


During some of the media's endless coverage of the Fort Hood shootings today, Larry King brought in former POW Shoshana Johnson, Dr. Phil McGraw and former JAG officer Tom Kenniff to speculate about what the mindset of the accused attacker Nidal Malik Hasan may have been. When Kenniff called some of CNN's previous coverage on the topic "psycho-babble", tried to say that a ranking officer could not be suffering from PTSD and asserted that Hasan's motivations looked more like an act of terrorism because he has a Muslim name, Shoshana Johnson and Phil McGraw both rightfully called him out for it.

When Kenniff while attempting to counter McGraw and Johnson asked Johnson if she had ever been to Iraq, she had to remind him that she was a POW:

KENNIF: I spent a year in Iraq, ma'am. Have you ever been to Iraq?
JOHNSON: I'm a POW. I got shot.

Kenniff was obviously unaware that Johnson was in fact the first female African American POW in U.S. history.


Seriously, read the story, transcript and all.

Quick Riddle: The 2002 Remix

Q: what's scarier than a lunatic with two blazing guns on a military base?

A: A Jordanian Muslim lunatic with a funny sounding name in traditional garb going to a convenience store that happens to have a mosque nearby to buy coffee in the morning....apparently.



there are so many what the fuck-inducing moments in this video is makes my head spin.

i thought it was bad enough that last evening when Lou Dobbs kept reassuring his audience that the shooter is in fact American. American BORN, even.....of Jordanian descent.

it seems to me that since his citizenship can't be denounced*, now the man's religion and his clothing are under scrutiny.

but how random is it that the reporter says he drove to the store in a car with a Virginia license? erm...he's from Virginia!

and stating he may have had a conflict, due to his Muslim faith, with shooting and killing other Muslims in war kinda implies that NO ONE ELSE WHO WAS SHOT was Muslim. now is that a fact? i don't know. and i bet the reporter doesn't know either.

there was so much speculating and pointless scrutiny going on, for a second i though perhaps i was watching TMZ!

it goes without saying that i'm not trying to defend this dude's actions. i'm just noting that there surely wasn't this much scrutiny when Tim McVeigh blew up that federal building and killed those people, right? did anyone reassure us he was American-born, of ___________ descent?

oh, right. no one had to tell us HE was American.

and now instead of focusing on the fact that a horrible tragedy has struck the victims, their families and the family of the shooter....all of us, American....we have CNN showing us surveilance footage of the shooter buying coffee at 6:00 am.

listen it's not 2002, you don't have to try to scare us by throwing out hints that the dude is a terrorist sympathizer motivated by anti-American sentiment. 8 years later, i can recognize the buzz words from a mile away.

just tell us the news.

An American soldier coldly murdered 13 people and injured 32 on a military base in TX.

we should be comforting one another, not taking this as yet another chance to throw suspicion on the Muslim faith.

why won't racism let Americans be great?

*at least i don't think it can be denounced but can someone check to see if Orly Taitz has filed a lawsuit demanding to see his birth certificate yet?

tried and tried and tried to tell ya.

this is a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader. in black face. and body. i don't even have to do any research to asSURE you, she didn't mean it in an offensive way, is mortified that anyone would be offended, and sincerely apologizes to all those hypersensitive enough to catch a chip offended by her innocent actions. 

SHE JUST WANTED TO BE LIL' WAYNE, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT!!!!!

i blame you, Kayne

you had to go and scar the girl in the biggest moment of her young life thus far, didn't you? now look!

to her defense, the guy in the shirt said the image started off as an X but was later "perverted" during the evening's festivities.

totally believable. did i ever tell you about the time i decided to wear a large white hat for Easter Sunday? by early afternoon, it had totally been "perverted" into a Klans hood. and i was at a black church.

awwwwkward.

Today's Moment in Deliciousness

*sigh*

Turns out to be true!

i hate you.

Dear Motorola Q:

if you had guts, i would hate them with the fires of 1000 hells.

if you had a soul, i would put a curse on it, damning it for all eternity.

if you had friends, i'd tell them all you stole all their money and gave their moms clamydia.

if you had bones, i'd pay someone to break the ones in your legs with a lead pipe.

i'm leaving you and i'm not coming back.

my ex was so much better than you that i honestly can't even remember why i chose you!!!

drop dead, you battery life sucking, non-qwerty working, bluetooth dropping piece of antiquated crap!

and take that bitch ass charger with you!!!

Halloween man...effin Halloween. Part II

what a predicament! some of my favorite retailers are making it very difficult to give them my hard earned money because they have decided to sell a costume that i find amazingly offensive. well, that's what i call it. Fox News calls it "fantastic."

it's the Illegal Alien costume sold by Target, Walgreens, Toys R Us, Meijer, and Amazon.com. it's product description is:

"He didn’t just cross a border, he crossed a galaxy! He’s got his green card, but it’s from another planet! Sure to get some laughs, the Illegal Alien Adult Costume includes an orange prison-style jumpsuit with 'Illegal Alien' printed on the front, an alien mask and a 'green card.'"


not to be outdone, Halloweenexpress.com has it's own version, complete with big black mustache and baseball hat:

"Mask Includes: Almond eyed, latex, UFO look alien with large black mustache and baseball cap attached."

Halloween used to be fun, right? i mean, i think so....although i recall as a little kid going trick or treating with a classmate who's costume was a "hobo." at the time, we all loved her costume. but there's no way in hell i'd dress my kids up today as a homeless person.

what's so funny about being homeless?

it's turning into one giant exercise in affirming Kyriarchy, where different groups (angrily at times) assert their right to power and privilege over other groups. a clear example of this is the response i received from the woman who wanted her daughter and herself to dress up as Geisha for halloween. She stated she was african american and believed it was totally different for a non-black person to dress up like a black person than it is for a non-asian to dress up like "O-Ren Ishii".....

wait.

i have to take a moment and address this because everytime i think about it i feel like i have a chicken bone in my chest:

O-Ren Ishii....

WASN'T GEISHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

don't go trying to play 3 card monty with one of my all time favorite movie characters of all time!!!! you said Geisha, not O-Ren Ishii! and if you think they are one in the same, that further illustrates the problem!! (ahem).....where was i?

oh right. Kyriarchy.

Halloween is a tough one....can't we all just dress up like ThunderCats?

HALLOWEEN....HOOOOOOOOOO!!

Think Progress

My Ecdysis

Racialicious

Bacon, once again, is the answer

in case you haven't heard, a Florida couple is in police custody for making the lady-moron's 8 year-old daughter suck on a bar of soap for 10 minutes. the child apparently said a "naughty word" and was made to suck the soap by the gentleman-moron (lady-moron's boyfriend*), which caused an allergic reaction that these morons didn't get treated for several hours.

if people aren't going to get over the fact that now, in 2009, we can't do the things that were done to children in the 50s and get away with it, then i would hope they would do some research in the matter and come to an agreeable solution:

it's a win/win! the parent feels like they have delivered a tried and true punishment...that's basically an unthinking and useless exercise in brute force...and the kid gets a delicious bacony snack.

if they'd used this soap, she wouldn't have needed police intervention! she woulda needed some biscuits and jelly!!

* for the life of me, i cannot understand how a woman lets her boyfriend do some foul shit like this to her child. something like that happen to one of my kids, it's going down.

well, i'm glad somebody finally said it!

no no, not the "rock bottom" part. the "damn she looks old as hell" part!

Halloween man...effin Halloween.

(click to enlarge)
it took everything in me to say it that nicely.

BREAKING NEWS

the "white bitch" buying drugs from Redman in one of his videos is Brett Ratner's mother. So says Brett Ratner. Also, black people say the darndest thangs! and PS: the plural of "my man" is "my mans."

in a related story, a unsuspecting black woman in Charlotte, NC felt the top of her head explode while trying to watch the VH-1 Def Jam Hip Hop Honors....

And it didn't help that Cam'ron was his neighbor

this is why old folks move to retirement communities in Miami.

Because he's six.

the bad news just keep on rolling out over Falcon Heene and his crazy-ass lying dirt-dog parents the apparent hoax perpetrated upon us all by his parents. as we all know by now, it all started falling to pieces when, during a family interview with Wolf Blitzer, Falcon responded to the question of why he didn't answer when he heard his parents calling his name: "you guys said we were doing this for a show."

when he said that, it seemed like everyone in the family was frozen. even The Crickets, who usually live for these moments of sudden silence, were too shocked to rub their little dry-ass legs together.

and the reason Falcon told the truth is because Falcon is a little kid and he hadn't been told what to say in response to that question.

the next day, in an attempt at damage control, those Wacky Heene's took their Calvacade of Crazy on early morning shows, trying to convince everyone that Falcon answered that question the way he did because he didn't really understand the question. Meanwhile, Falcon noisily vomited into a Tuppeware dish throughout.

on live TV.

so now the predominant news story of the day is The Balloon Boy Story Was a Hoax. everyone is talking about what kind of man Richard Heene is, that he'd use his child to try to get publicity and notoriety, noting that the first phone call he made was not to the police or fire department: it was to the local media.

the family's attorney even went on the Today this morning and stated that arresting the parents in front of the children and media would be "child abuse." But, when asked if perhaps using a child in a hoax and dragging him around for interviews with anyone with a microphone might also be considered child abuse, the lawyer decided that would be a call he'd be more comfortable letting child protective services make.

but that's the story we all really need to be talking about: how this all has affected Falcon. the kid who was too little to keep the lie going and was under so much stress afterwards became physically ill during yet another round of television interviews in which he parents used him to LIE TO EVERYONE AGAIN.

the dad jumps out as completely narcissistic. and not in the "ooohWEE he sure is vain" kinda way.

no, i mean in the really crazy kinda way.

we know what Richard Heene has been saying to the cameras. what is he saying to his children when the camera's aren't rolling?

The Kid's Alright...right?

one of my favorite bloggers has a post about little Zahara and her near constant state of hair-craziness* on her site that reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend.

we both know of a white couple who has adopted two african american children. oh, they take very good care of them, keep them clean, well-fed, and active in their schools and community. however....the hair situation is alarming.

up until about a year ago, the little girl's hair always looked dry, tangled, and close to matting if it got hit with  the briefest breeze. and the boy....the boy's hair stands up in these uncombed, uneven little spikes of curls and kinks....kinda like

it is irritating.

speaking for myself, when i see black adopted children who have been adopted by non-black parents with badly kept hair, my first thought is to judge the parents as unwilling to educate themselves on black haircare. as if black hair is this massively mysterious entity that suck you in and ruin your hopes and dreams.

it's not Event Horizon, it's a child's hair.

and the really unfair thing about the situation is, when i see a child who is well cared for in every other way but her hair is neglected, i read that as a type of neglect.  yay, hooray, bully for you, she's got clean clothes, she ate 8 times today, and goes to a exclusive private pre-school and is currently fluent in French.

why does her hair look like this?...especially when you always take the time and care to present yourself in a well-kept (and stunning) manner when YOU leave the house?

so, i'd like to share just a few tips with caucasion parents of african or african american adopted children. together, we can get this right!

1) there are 70 kabillion hair salons specializing in black haircare. go to one. if you don't have any black friends, ask a black coworker with children what salon they'd recommend. the point is this: if your kid had crooked teeth would you let them walk around with picket fences in their head or take them to an orthodontist? exactly. there's no shame in admitting some knowledge is outside your paygrade: take.your.child.to.a.salon.or.barbershop!

2) have you heard of this newfangled invention called the internets! the internets hold an amazing amount of information concerning proper haircare, healthy haircare products, cute hairstyles, and just tips in general about black hair. POINT.CLICK.THE.MOUSE!

3) black hair might look really strong but it's very very fragile. don't try to comb it dry, don't comb it with a rattail comb, and for the love of all the good in Narnia, do NOT use vaseline on it. no one is interested seeing your kid walking around looking like a greasy cotton ball.

all that being said (and all joking really, truly, aside) i wonder why.......

why is all the scorn heaped upon angelina jolie for the "state" of Zahara's hair when Heidi's kids wear their hair in much the same way? is there some kinda Coochie Pass** in effect?

ah, well. there will always be critics of Zahara's hair not matter what. and i would imagine that for quite a few of her critics, there will be a sigh of "well it's about damn time" when or if she decided to straighten her hair when she's older.

i'm sure many white adoptive parents of children of color believe they are being unfairly scrutinized by people of color when it comes to how they care for their children's hair. and i can admit to a serious degree, it is unfair.

but we didn't start the fire.

* i happen to think Zahara's hair looks cute. or maybe it's the face. i'm a sucker for a pretty little girl with natural hair.

** what i mean to say is some type of hierarchy of parenting where a birth parent of a child with black hair is given a pass on the hair situation while an adoptive parent of a child with black hair isn't?

BREAKING NEWS

Barbara Walters said she is believes black women relax their hair to look more like white women.

meanwhile, Barbara keeps getting plastic surgery to look like Madame.

Something I Can't Get My Head Around...or...a decidely unfunny post

thanks to the generosity of a friend, i was able to read the book Push, the story of Claireece Precious Jones and her struggle to learn how to read.

well....that paragraph is like trying to describe a christmas tree by only talking about the 3rd ornament 2 rows from the bottom.

actually, Push is about a young girl who struggles with the horror of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and the hands of her mother and her father. A father who ends of dying of AIDS...but not before infecting Precious with the virus.

and not before causing two pregnancies, one resulting in a child with Down's Syndrome.

and i'm not even going to go into Precious' knowledge of and reverence for Louis Farrakhan and Harriet Tubman, her disdain for dark-skinned blacks, and her lack of awareness of the hypocrisy of these thoughts...

this is by and far the most devastating read i've tackled in quite a while. i thought Back Roads was a toughie, Push threatened to completely crush my mood as i fought my way through the stream of consciousness style of story-telling and it's graphic, horrifying accounts of abuse.

reading this book opened my eyes in a lot of ways. it reminded me that survivors of this type of abuse are walking around, some functioning, some still struggling, but among us. when i debriefed the book with the friend who loaned it, she said she didn't think she knew anyone who had gone through the things in the book.

but probably we do. we probably all do. the story is right there under the surface.

i thought about Tiffany Wright, Keara Hess, and Mackenzie Phillips, all victimized, the crimes committed against them making the news within weeks of each other.

i thought about the case in Alabama in which the husband, father, Preacher killed his wife and hid her body in a freezer for several years after she caught him sexually abusing their daughter.

Roman Polanski's distasteful attempt to get everyone to forget that he orally, anally, and vaginally raped a 13 year old girl after giving her alcohol and Quaalude. (really, Whoopi? are you serious?)

and then today, this comes out.

i don't know what the answer is. can parent education fix a person so broken they'd damage a child in this way? can court-mandated therapy? why are there so many men and women who see children as sexual objects and prey upon them??? and why are there so many apologists lining up to go to bat for the adults mistreating children.

Precious often asks why those terrible things had to happen to her. Why the schools didn't teach her, why her mother abused her, why she had to have two kids by her father, why one had Down's Syndrome, why she had to have HIV.

i don't know how to tackle this issue but i do know just thinking about it isn't going to solve the problem. it's not going to affect a change. but maybe if more people keep the physical and sexual abuse of children on their radar, maybe if more people start speaking out against it instead of acting like it's either not happening or the child victim's fault...

well, then maybe we can finally make a difference.

National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children

BREAKING NEWS

Beyonce made this expression one too many times....

and her face stuck like that.

Postsecret strikes again! or...my sunday morning headdesk moment.

i saw down with my coffee and pulled up Postsecret, hoping to get some chuckles before starting my day.

instead of secrets that gave me shits and giggles, i read this:

a couple of questions immediately came to mind:

1) why do racists continually blame their racism on the other person?

and more worrisome:

2) what does it mean that the writer chose a stock photo of 2 small male children to illustrate how working in law enforcement "makes" him or her racist? they aren't doing anything sinister or anything needing police intervention....why THAT photo?

3) if someone in law enforcement is expressing racism and using a photo of children to illustrate the point...well, now how is that supposed to help foster confidence in the police?

keeping it real: if someone wrote a secret with a picture of two young girls and said "working in the sex crimes unit of my police department has made me hate women"....as a woman, i'm gonna be alarmed on many, many levels.

in my local town, whenever there are local stories of crime in which the perpetrator is black, you can find many many MANY comments linking the crime of that person to his (and my) race. yet, when you have instances in which the perpetrator is white (coughDAVIDCRESPIcough!), you don't see the same linking of the action of the man to the white race.

i don't feel like anyone should give the writer of the card props for being brave enough to be honest. it's like i told a friend a few years ago, "you don't get a pat on the back for being honest when what you're saying is some ol' bullshit!"

Today's Moment in Deliciousness with a side of Why So Many Patterns???

Derek Luke you remind me of one of those commericials where the people looked like plates of food.

I call it Chocolate Raspberry Kidney Pie.

Give her what she wants, God.

and i love you too.

this is a screenshot of some of my cousins on Facebook. thanks to technology, we can now all shit talk each other virtually!

Thank you for creating the internets, Al Gore!!!

is it really all you need?

VH-1 has been showing The Beatles Anthology over the last week or so and i finally watched it with the Mister. watching the show, i was really struck by how much the Beatles' music has become a everyday part of our lives. i mean, we know songs we may not have even realized were by the Beatles. we've heard songs in commercials, in movies, covered by other artists...these guys are everywhere.

and if you owned that catalog of music (coughMichaelJackoncough!) well then....you'd be doing quite nicely financially, now wouldn't you?

the episode we watched discussed the Beatles later music, focusing on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band. imagine my shock to find out the Mister had NEVER heard All the Lonely People!...which is interesting because that should be his theme song.



and then imagine my shock at just how moved i was listening to All You Need is Love...



Mick Jagger is in this video a little after the 2:30 mark.

do you remember a time when music actually used instruments? when you needed much more than auto-tune and a rich boyfriend to be considered a singer?

from now on when i'm looking at video footage of town hall meeting attendees going batshit crazy over the prospect of getting health insurance, i'm going to here this song in my head.

if people got sick with all the coverage MJ received when he passed away, JUST WAIT and see what happens when all the Beatles are gone.

"i don't see how a handicapped woman has more rights than me!"

I think the part that shocked me the most about this video is the reporter's surprise that these town hall meetings really HAVE been ugly and unfair.

any questions?

i haven't had too much to say about chris brown felonious assualt on Rihanna since it all went down because 1) i don't really care like that and 2) lots of girls get beaten like Rihanna every hour on the hour: unfortunately, her victimization does not make her unique.

however, this boy over here has finally lured me out into the fray with all this stupid talking he plans on doing tonight during his ill-advised chitty chat with Larry King. The leaked quotes have definitely gotten my attention because they show a person who clearly has no real understanding of the gravity of the situation, who honestly feels like he's been a victim in this process as well, and has yet to develop a really clear sense of what  domestic/dating violence is.

some of the teaser quotes released from the upcoming interview include brown's explanation that the difference between himself and his stepfather, who brutally battered his mom, is that his stepfather "enjoyed" beating his mom, and that there was a continuous pattern of abuse.

and... this point is supposed to illustrate the difference between the two? oh, for real?

chris brown also thinks that the show Oprah Winfrey did on domestic and dating violence right after he beat up Rihanna was "a slap in the face."

oh yes, he did.

he also said he wished she had been more helpful TO HIM while he was going through being the most hated american negro since OJ.

look, man. you seem to have lost perspective.

THIS is what a slap (and punch) to the face looks like:

Oprah doing a show about weakass woman beaters where she specifically tells the woman you've battered to stay away because "if he does it once, he'll do it again" is a PUBLIC SERVICE.

if he thought he felt a great deal of hatred when he first beat her, just wait until tomorrow when he is ravaged for his statements during his sit-down with Larry King.