Goals!

I don’t update this often enough in the last while, nor have I worked regularly on my fiction or my poetry as I should. So I gave myself an official writing goal: One page (at least) a week. I’m off to a good start I think, this being the third blog entry of the day. I also have a goal to try something new, which is easier than it sounds. I’m thinking as simply as creating a new Wow character, trying a new food, cooking a new recipe, reading a new book, a movie or a show, or a new album you got to listen to.

This week I have already started reading a new book, a present I got for my girlfriend which I also really wanted to read: Little Bee by Chris Cleave, a touching story about a refugee from Nigeria and the family she comes to live with. Another new thing for me: I am acquainting myself with the amazing sounds and rhymes of GZA/Genius. Count me a fan. Currently listening to the album “Liquid Swords,” from 1995.

Societal Flaw

Malcolm X, before and after his rift with Elijah Muhammad, and before and after his pilgrimage to Mecca and his journey to the greater Muslim world was always critical of so-called Northern Liberals, who travelled South to help “integrate,” while forgetting about the Black people in the North, many of whom were just as bad off as some of those in the South.  But he was also critical of so-called Northern Liberals, who thought it was enough to align themselves with some group or other and not actually work on the problems, and live comfortably. Forty eight years after Malcolm’s death, these people are at large and the problem while better in many ways, is just as bad on the ideological level.  I had an argument with someone once who thought they were justified with calling black people they didn’t know the n word.  And the more I argued, the more the other person had nothing to say other than, “I’m not racist.”  So another thing that Malcolm X said still rings true, “The racism is ingrained deeply into the society.”  Malcolm X, who in the end could not have been seen as anything but a brother to all of us, newly understanding of true Islam, and his discovery of so many people of so many different colors who considered themselves his equal.  Having grown up in the North, I have seen first-hand the kinds of “Northern Liberals” that Malcolm X was so critical of, who are all so much about image and little else.  I have seen first hand people that are so adamant about celebrating diversity and respecting different groups, when around company that is only limited to other white people they spout off slurs and other derogatory manner of language about all kinds of people, but pass it off as being okay as long as it is not said in front of those other groups.  It’s like putting gas on the fire.  Let us find the people like us who demand progress, and call for change, and actually mean it.  I know it’s a hard platform to stand on, but at the end of the day, would you rather be a hypocrite, or a human being?

this sounds terrific. 🙂

food to glow

If you don’t know what a shawarma is, this recipe will not particularly surprise. But, if you know shawarma, you could be forgiven for uttering a popular acronymed Anglo-Saxon epithet beginning with W and ending with F. If you are from the Levant, you will no doubt be thinking an equivalent in Arabic or Turkish. Just perhaps not as rude.

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http://booktalking42.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x/

Malcolm X Review

In my other blog I talk about The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as a fitting read for Black History Month, which seems even more fitting, since, on this same day in 1965, Malcolm X lost his life in The Audubon Ballroom.  Everyday fearing for his life, he knew the end was coming.  We must never forget the sacrifice Malcolm made in the name of Brotherhood.

Valentine’s Day

It was nice to have a Valentine’s Day come around where I had a love to share it with.  I know it’s such a tawdry and commercial day, just to give Hallmark more money, but when you love someone, it’s nice to have even more excuses to give them things, or to spend time with them.  Homemade cards are the way to go.  Have you seen how Hallmark has raised the card prices?   Also don’t go for those chocolate samplers, for as Forrest Gump says, “You never know what you’re gonna get.”  And I always pick the one I don’t like.  I’m sure we all have this issue.  And if you aren’t sure what they like, really don’t go that root, I’m begging you.  Go the chocolate bar way, or bring your love out for cocoa, maybe of the Mayan variety, oh so good.  Nothing says I love you quite like it.  

Indie isn’t dead!

I’ve been trying for most of my young life to get more appreciation for some very deserving bands.  But apparently to be Indie was to be hipster or some shit like that.  But I never understood that simply because the current age of the past decade or more has proven that Indie is merely a blanket term for something we refuse to categorize.  Many of these so-called Indie bands are now on major labels, or even their indie label is a subsidiary of a major.  Indie has come to symbolize now, artists who never fail to follow their own vision no matter what the labels say, or are allowed now by their labels to do whatever it is they want to do.  That’s the heart and soul of music right there.

The recent sweep at the grammys by The Black Keys, for best rock song, Gotye for record of the year (Somebody I used To Know of course),  Fun for best new artist(even though they’ve been around for a while) and Mumford and Sons for album of the year shows that not only is Indie not dead, it is more diverse than ever, and if we really want to categorize things, lets make new descriptors. We exhausted the words punk, and alternative to the same ends.  If you ask me, the terms get in the way.  And look back, the very history of recorded music was begun by Indie labels.  All the major were once there.  So going major isn’t always selling out.  But you gotta eat right?

Dollhouse

I just got around to watching Season One of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse.” It’s been sitting in my room for a few months now, and I keep forgetting it’s there to watch. This short lived show, (cancelled in Season 2) details the goings on at an underground installation( which is underground literally and figuratively), which caters to the rich and powerful, giving them whatever they want, whatever they need. It is easy to see what they do as evil, but as the season progresses and you get to know the people involved it becomes a lot more gray. The function of the dollhouse is to create “programable people.” A new technology is used to imprint them with any given set of memories, to literally become someone else. Many of those which are referred to as actives have volunteered of their own accord for various personal reasons. When done with a job their memories are wiped clean and they live within the installation in a basic child-like stage, for the most part almost a slave state. An FBI agent intends to tear down the dollhouse, but even proving its existence is harder than it seems. The secrecy of the dollhouse is a very important point to the plot of the entire show. The government doesn’t know it exists, and if they do, the place will either be shut down, or used in even worse ways. Though unforeseen enemies, and adaptable actives, make this one job that could just go down in flames. Will it?

The implications of this show, from moral, ethical, and especially scientific standpoints are quite fascinating and terrifying to think of. What denotes personhood? Are we all in control of ourselves? Can getting everything we need truly make us happy? Do we always know what we need? Can such a place actually already exist?