So how do you celebrate your husband's birthday when you've recently been told,"It's your mother's job to celebrate your birthday, not mine?"
No need to guess. Monday was friend's hubby's birthday. Friend shared the events of the day with me.
Hubby woke up in the morning excited and playful. Friend didn't share his giddyness and was annoyed by his early morning playfulness in bed. Hubby wanted some attention (non-sexual folks) and kept squeezing friend around the waist tightly and until she acknowlegded his birthday. Hubby asked friend if she wanted to go out for dinner that evening. Friend said sure whatever you want to do. Hubby asked friend are you buying? Friend says No.
Friend calls me on the way to work to share the details of the morning. She proceeds to tell me that she's not going out of her way to celebrate hubby's b-day. She also tells me that dinner has to be less than $30 because she has no intentions on paying for his dinner. Hubby's grandparents sent Hubby and friend a b-day card with $30 enclosed to split for their respective b-days (since the dates are so close together.) We hang up after I force friend to agree to call me back the next morning with more details.
Friend calls me back in the early evening as she is walking to the local grocery store. She tells me that Hubby leaves a voice message on her cell while she's at work stating I'm not expecting you to buy me anything but if you bought me that Cosby Show DVD my mom just gave it to me. Friend makes a joke about Hubby's message sounding eager then proceeds to tell me that the dinner plans have been called off. When she arrived home from work Hubby had changed his mind because he had eaten (McDonald's mind you) and wasn't very hungry. Plus friend was snacking on some food so he thought it'd be a waste of time. Hubby ask friend if she'd go buy him a bottle of Barringer White Zinfandel from the store.
We chat on the phone while she shops for the wine and a b-day card to give hubby from their 1 year old daughter. I tell friend this whole thing is bananas and her coochie is going to pay the price later on that night. She bids me farewell with a defiant I don't think so. Ain't no lovin happening tonight. I say we'll see and again make friend promise to call me in the morning with details.
(short conclusion coming later)
Friday, September 16
Wednesday, September 14
Cornel West's Thoughts on Katrina
Exiles from a city and from a nation
Cornel West
Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer
It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years.
What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.
It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.
In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.
Poverty has increased for the last four or five years. A million more Americans became poor last year, even as the super-wealthy became much richer. So where is the trickle-down, the equality of opportunity? Healthcare and education and the social safety net being ripped away - and that flawed structure was nowhere more evident than in a place such as New Orleans, 68 per cent black. The average adult income in some parishes of the city is under $8,000 (£4,350) a year. The average national income is $33,000, though for African-Americans it is about $24,000. It has one of the highest city murder rates in the US. From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey.
New Orleans has always been a city that lived on the edge. The white blues man himself, Tennessee Williams, had it down in A Streetcar Named Desire - with Elysian Fields and cemeteries and the quest for paradise. When you live so close to death, behind the levees, you live more intensely, sexually, gastronomically, psychologically. Louis Armstrong came out of that unbelievable cultural breakthrough unprecedented in the history of American civilisation. The rural blues, the urban jazz. It is the tragi-comic lyricism that gives you the courage to get through the darkest storm.
Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn. The history of black people in America is one of unbelievable resilience in the face of crushing white supremacist powers.
This kind of dignity in your struggle cuts both ways, though, because it does not mobilise a collective uprising against the elites. That was the Black Panther movement. You probably need both. There would have been no Panthers without jazz. If I had been of Martin Luther King's generation I would never have gone to Harvard or Princeton.
They shot brother Martin dead like a dog in 1968 when the mobilisation of the black poor was just getting started. At least one of his surviving legacies was the quadrupling in the size of the black middle class. But Oprah [Winfrey] the billionaire and the black judges and chief executives and movie stars do not mean equality, or even equality of opportunity yet. Black faces in high places does not mean racism is over. Condoleezza Rice has sold her soul.
Now the black bourgeoisie have an even heavier obligation to fight for the 33 per cent of black children living in poverty - and to alleviate the spiritual crisis of hopelessness among young black men.
Bush talks about God, but he has forgotten the point of prophetic Christianity is compassion and justice for those who have least. Hip-hop has the anger that comes out of post-industrial, free-market America, but it lacks the progressiveness that produces organisations that will threaten the status quo. There has not been a giant since King, someone prepared to die and create an insurgency where many are prepared to die to upset the corporate elite. The Democrats are spineless.
There is the danger of nihilism and in the Superdome around the fourth day, there it was - husbands held at gunpoint while their wives were raped, someone stomped to death, people throwing themselves off the mezzanine floor, dozens of bodies.
It was a war of all against all - 'you're on your own' - in the centre of the American empire. But now that the aid is pouring in, vital as it is, do not confuse charity with justice. I'm not asking for a revolution, I am asking for reform. A Marshall Plan for the South could be the first step.
· Dr Cornel West is professor of African American studies and religion at Princeton University. His great grandfather was a slave. He is a rap artist and appeared as Counsellor West in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.
Interview by Joanna Walters, in Princeton, New Jersey
Cornel West
Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer
It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years.
What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.
It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.
In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.
Poverty has increased for the last four or five years. A million more Americans became poor last year, even as the super-wealthy became much richer. So where is the trickle-down, the equality of opportunity? Healthcare and education and the social safety net being ripped away - and that flawed structure was nowhere more evident than in a place such as New Orleans, 68 per cent black. The average adult income in some parishes of the city is under $8,000 (£4,350) a year. The average national income is $33,000, though for African-Americans it is about $24,000. It has one of the highest city murder rates in the US. From slave ships to the Superdome was not that big a journey.
New Orleans has always been a city that lived on the edge. The white blues man himself, Tennessee Williams, had it down in A Streetcar Named Desire - with Elysian Fields and cemeteries and the quest for paradise. When you live so close to death, behind the levees, you live more intensely, sexually, gastronomically, psychologically. Louis Armstrong came out of that unbelievable cultural breakthrough unprecedented in the history of American civilisation. The rural blues, the urban jazz. It is the tragi-comic lyricism that gives you the courage to get through the darkest storm.
Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn. The history of black people in America is one of unbelievable resilience in the face of crushing white supremacist powers.
This kind of dignity in your struggle cuts both ways, though, because it does not mobilise a collective uprising against the elites. That was the Black Panther movement. You probably need both. There would have been no Panthers without jazz. If I had been of Martin Luther King's generation I would never have gone to Harvard or Princeton.
They shot brother Martin dead like a dog in 1968 when the mobilisation of the black poor was just getting started. At least one of his surviving legacies was the quadrupling in the size of the black middle class. But Oprah [Winfrey] the billionaire and the black judges and chief executives and movie stars do not mean equality, or even equality of opportunity yet. Black faces in high places does not mean racism is over. Condoleezza Rice has sold her soul.
Now the black bourgeoisie have an even heavier obligation to fight for the 33 per cent of black children living in poverty - and to alleviate the spiritual crisis of hopelessness among young black men.
Bush talks about God, but he has forgotten the point of prophetic Christianity is compassion and justice for those who have least. Hip-hop has the anger that comes out of post-industrial, free-market America, but it lacks the progressiveness that produces organisations that will threaten the status quo. There has not been a giant since King, someone prepared to die and create an insurgency where many are prepared to die to upset the corporate elite. The Democrats are spineless.
There is the danger of nihilism and in the Superdome around the fourth day, there it was - husbands held at gunpoint while their wives were raped, someone stomped to death, people throwing themselves off the mezzanine floor, dozens of bodies.
It was a war of all against all - 'you're on your own' - in the centre of the American empire. But now that the aid is pouring in, vital as it is, do not confuse charity with justice. I'm not asking for a revolution, I am asking for reform. A Marshall Plan for the South could be the first step.
· Dr Cornel West is professor of African American studies and religion at Princeton University. His great grandfather was a slave. He is a rap artist and appeared as Counsellor West in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.
Interview by Joanna Walters, in Princeton, New Jersey
Tuesday, September 13
CNN blunder
Still playing around with streams. Turn the volume up and listen to what the reporter says.
Playing With Yo' Life
I have no idea where this is from but I wanted to play around with posting vids on my blog and this clip just happened to be emailed to me at the right time. Hopefully, no one is offended or outraged.
Sunday, September 11
The Birthday Gift
I have a friend who has decided that her husband is thoughtless and insensitive to her needs and feelings. For the life of her, she can't figure out why he acts the way he does at times.
Readers: Imagine you are a 29 year old woman, 2 years married with a 1 year old daughter. Your husband is your high school sweetheart from age 16. You are in the habit of buying your husband nice things for his birthday and for christmas. Before you married your husband you co-signed for him to buy 2 cars (cause his mother told him she wouldn't). And finally, you pay a majority of the household bills because your husband is in the military and you make more money than him now that you've pased your licensure exam.
With all of the above in mind, what do you think of the gift your 28 year old, loving husband bought you for your 29th birthday?
The gift: A card, a balloon, and a 3 by 5 picture (a candid shot that you took with your own camera) put in a matte, silver-plated, frame (that cost no more than $10) of you and your husband at your prom.
What's the consensus? Good gift? Bad gift?
If the gift wasn't bad enough, what would say if you asked your husband why his gift was so uninspired and he replied, "It's your mother's job to celebrate your birthday not mine!"
Readers: Imagine you are a 29 year old woman, 2 years married with a 1 year old daughter. Your husband is your high school sweetheart from age 16. You are in the habit of buying your husband nice things for his birthday and for christmas. Before you married your husband you co-signed for him to buy 2 cars (cause his mother told him she wouldn't). And finally, you pay a majority of the household bills because your husband is in the military and you make more money than him now that you've pased your licensure exam.
With all of the above in mind, what do you think of the gift your 28 year old, loving husband bought you for your 29th birthday?
The gift: A card, a balloon, and a 3 by 5 picture (a candid shot that you took with your own camera) put in a matte, silver-plated, frame (that cost no more than $10) of you and your husband at your prom.
What's the consensus? Good gift? Bad gift?
If the gift wasn't bad enough, what would say if you asked your husband why his gift was so uninspired and he replied, "It's your mother's job to celebrate your birthday not mine!"
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