Comfortable or Cracked Out?

In his novel The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield speculated that mankind sent scientists into the world to explore its mysteries and come to some conclusions about the origins of the universe and our place in it. But, when the scientists went out to gather information, they found more than they were prepared to handle. The questions vastly outnumbered the answers, and after decades of searching mankind either lost interest or forgot why they sent them out in the first place. This “failure” on the part of science to explain the meaning of life was a pivotal point in the evolution of human values, because while mankind waited for answers they tackled an issue of their own: How to make life more comfortable.

When I look at the world around me, it seems that comfort is a top priority for the vast majority of Americans today. Whether it’s reclining in an easy chair watching TV and drinking a beer, or resting their asses on the plush leather seats of a luxury sports car while driving in traffic, comfort is like crack to Americans. We can’t get enough of the stuff. We need it all day everyday, even when we sleep. We want to be comfortable while we do even the most uncomfortable things. It got me to thinking, is being constantly comfortable a realistic expectation? And if so, what are some of the side effects of our obsession with comfort? Is it just making us weaker?

One of the most common definitions of comfort is: A state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety. Notice the word “bodily” in that definition. Somewhere along the line, we began to believe that being physically comfortable was equivalent to being mentally, spiritually, or emotionally comfortable in our own skin. Perhaps we thought, if I could just make my physical environment comfortable enough, everything else would follow suit. Perhaps being physically comfortable allowed us to dull our perception enough that we don’t perceive any discomfort within ourselves, much like taking an aspirin relieves pain but does not eliminate the problem.

And so here we all are, together, confined within the comfort zone we created. The question I can’t stop asking is, are we comfortable or cracked out on the most addictive, invasive drug mankind has ever known – luxury.

Photoshop is the SHIT!

My blog looks amazing, if I do say so myself. And it only took me 3 hours to do it! LOL

Let's watch a video and celebrate. :)

Baby Got Back... And A Rapper Got Jacked

At first glance, this is not a subject I would have chosen to blog about, but I would like to address the situation that occurred this week with “self-proclaimed groupie” Kat Stacks and rapper Soulja Boy. Apparently, Kat took some incriminating video in Soulja Boy’s hotel room while he was in the shower, which showed lines of cocaine. She also had a lot to say about how the coke was affecting his sexual performance, and how he was a huge “cokehead”. This whole situation is obviously dramatic for those involved or directly affected, but many others in the hip-hop community have taken it upon themselves to address the situation and Kat Stacks in particular.

I definitely don’t think what Kat Stacks did was cool, but I find it funny that all these rappers are jumping to Soulja Boy’s defense, and posting anti-Kat-Stacks messages on twitter. In my opinion, you boys are getting exactly what you asked for. All I ever hear on the radio is how some rapper needs a girl with a big ass and a cute face, and how all she has to do is shake it on the dance floor in order for him to like her. This attitude towards women seems to have transcended hip-hop in more recent years, and become the dominant attitude for men in popular culture.

I don’t really want to get into all the details we could analyze as to why this is, I just want to say look at the monsters y’all have created! It is a widely published and accepted scientific fact that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and apparently choosing a mate or sexual partner solely based on the size of their ass has some pretty hefty repercussions.

I also find it extremely entertaining and funny that Fabolous chose to speak out with some of the harshest remarks against Soulja Boy, because Soulja Boy allowed Kat Stacks to be in his room alone. Fab called it “Stupid Boy Swag” after one of Soulja Boy’s recent songs “Pretty Boy Swag”. Well, Fab should know all about it, since I seem to recall an incident back in 2003 on the Roc The Mic Tour (which I did promotions on) where everyone, and I do mean everyone, that was working on the tour was laughing at Fab because he was robbed for $10,000 by a stripper who he let into his room, had sex with, and apparently fell asleep on. Soon as he closed his eyes, girlfriend jacked him for everything he had and bounced. Don’t get me wrong I like Fab, but come on. That is obviously the teapot calling the kettle black.

Be careful what you wish for guys, because there is power in the words you speak, and the subjects you choose to rap about can easily become themes in your life. So, if you want to make these songs glorifying groupies and their behavior in the club, don’t be mad when one of them catches you off guard and puts you on blast or even worse, sets you up. And if what you want is a good woman who has some class to go with her ass, maybe you should make some songs praising women for being intelligent and worthy of respect as well as being sexy. I’m just sayin……….

Sticks and Stones...... and Enriched Uranium?

It’s hard to be an American sometimes… Not because our country is one of the worst socially, economically, or from a development standpoint, but from the perspective of a citizen of planet Earth, watching fellow citizens from other countries go through ridiculous, unfair punishments that do not fit the crimes they have supposedly committed; the Iranian woman sentenced to stoning for adultery, the Australian woman who narrowly escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to 20 years in a Bali prison for smuggling drugs even though it was proven that drug smugglers were present and hiding their illegal wares in the bags of unsuspecting passengers the day the woman was caught… These are the kind of stories that make my skin crawl as an American, because even though our country has its imperfections, at least I will never face the possibility of being stoned to death. At least in America, you have the right to a kind-of fair trial judged by a jury of your sort-of peers.

It is mind boggling that the same Iranian government that accepts stoning as a sentence for the crime of adultery receives support from the international community when it wants to buy enriched uranium (supposedly for medical purposes). Obviously, there are cultural differences at work here, but at some point (hopefully when the words “enriched uranium” come in to play) we have to ask ourselves, can a country that is willing to stone someone to death for adultery in the year 2010 be trusted with the ingredients of a nuclear weapon?

Let’s examine this critically. In Iran, a woman can be stoned to death for allegedly committing adultery, but not only that, a woman can also be sentenced to death for fending off the attacks of a rapist. So obviously, according to this school of thought, a woman is not the equal of a man. If it can become a widely accepted cultural norm to think of a woman as a lesser grade of human being, it could be just as easy to think of an African, Latino, or Asian person as a person of lesser value as well.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if your country wants to be trusted with a do-it-yourself WMD kit, please at least do the bare minimum and prove that you have the morality to treat your own countrymen and women with the level of respect that all human beings deserve regardless of gender, religion, or race.

The walls are crumbling around me.......

When the walls around you are crumbling and, though you have no clue how they got there, you’ve got a brick in each hand and a pile at your feet it’s almost too easy to let yourself slip away from everyone and everything… Those are the moments of true despair, when you know that there is only one thing causing the problems in your life, and that cause is YOU.

You want to let everything go. You don’t want to talk to or see the people you love, because to see yourself reflected in their eyes is unbearable. You want nothing more than to be worthy of their love and respect, but in your heart you know that you are not doing everything that is required to achieve that.

And so, you retreat into the deepest darkest part of yourself you can find. You hope and pray that by the time you get yourself together, people will still be there with those same shining eyes, filled with unconditional love… but you know there is a possibility they will not. You know that you can’t expect people to put their own feelings and needs on the backburner while you figure out what your problem is, but that doesn’t stop you from asking anyway.

Deep down, you know that this is a risky thing--this hiding, this MIA routine, this invisible person costume you’re wearing… but what else can you do when evil and ugliness have attached themselves to you like a parasite and you have allowed yourself to become a host, establishing some kind of symbiotic relationship with the darkness?

All you can do is search your soul for the answers, and pray for favorable conditions during the inevitable journey back to the source of who you really are.

Static/Major.... 2 Years Later

Yesterday, I celebrated the life of one of my biggest inspirations, writer/artists/producer/husband/son/father Static/Major. He was an incredible artist and a loving family man who stayed humble despite his huge success in the music industry. I have written about him here before, as a mater of fact I think this was the first place I wrote about it the day he died... But the reason I want to write about it now is because of the manner in which he died.

Hospital Malpractice. Plain and simple. Please, please, each and every one of you, take your health very seriously. If any doctor ever tells you that you require any kind of severe or invasive treatment, get a second opinion. If Static had done that, he might have still been with us today, mesmerizing us all with his amazing harmonies.... *sigh*

I'm just sayin guys, it may be hard. You may be in pain or discomfort, and just want to be treated and get it over with... But that decision may cost you your life. We live in a world where even the health care profession is a business, and just like any other business they want to make a profit. The huge corporations often look at people as nothing more than statistics that are expendable. Don't let yourself or your family fall victim a tragedy like this. Always, always, get a 2nd and maybe even 3rd opinion.

By all accounts, Stephen Ellis Garrett aka Static/Major should have walked out of that hospital on February 26th 2008... But he did not.

Curt Flood

There are no obvious monetary or physical perks to being the grand-daughter of Curt Flood. Most people, even baseball fans, don't know who he is. My family doesn't get to ride in parades, or have their names mentioned when people talk about great moments in sports history. I'm no trust fund baby, my grandfather was never paid the kind of monumental yearly salary that pro-athletes enjoy today, despite being one of the greats. All I truly have left of him is his legacy... which is what?

The truth.

The truth is, many of the greatest people in the world, the movers and shakers, the innovators, the ground-breakers, have their names banished from the annals of history and/or popular culture... There are probably a million people out there who's life's work we enjoy the use of today, and yet we have no idea who they are. What does this say about us? Have we truly become that disconnected from the processes that create all this luxury we enjoy? Do we forget when we, as African Americans, sit at the front of the bus that people died to get us there? Do we remember the Native Americans whose blood is spilled all over this stolen land when we build on top of it? Do we celebrate the scientists and inventors who create the Hybrid's and iPods and even the very Internet I'm typing on right now? The answer is, quite simply, no. We do, however, celebrate the celebrities who advertise them. What's wrong with this picture?

It wasn't always like this.

There was a time when America was the land of the process. The assembly-line state of mind that reminded us all that hard work and team work were equal partners. Now, machines do all the work, and we get fatter and lazier, and less reverant about the hardships we've endured in pursuit of the end result. Suddenly the couch-potato world from Disney's WALL-E seems less like an animated story, and more like a viable vision of the future. The characters in that story seemed perfectly happy and content sucking on their giant sugary soda-pops, weighing 300 pounds, flying around in an easy chair while robots do all the work for them. Does that sound like progress to you? It sounds like the only progress we will make without the use of the tried and tested "blood, sweat and tears" recipe for success. How can we move forward if we don't treasure and support the risk takers, who put everything they hold dear on the line to blaze a better trail for all of us? The answer is, we can not.

It is up to us to shape the future.

No one can do it for us, we have to take the initiative to do for ourselves and our children what our parents didn't know how to do for us. We must redefine not only ourselves, but our world. Each of us must stand up and say I want to live in a world where a healthy woman with curves is on the cover of every magazine, hip-hop is not a cliche, defined by how much money you have or how many skanky women you can fit in one video, Barack Obama is not the first Black president, but the first President to successfully challenge the status quo... a world where health care and education are not privileges, they are human rights, where color, or sex, or gender are not classifications, but expressions of the diversity and unique beauty that IS our earth... a world where love is the only acceptable spiritual practice... a world where my Grandfather would be remembered, not for the court case he lost, but for the principles he represents... Integrity, courage, and a willingness to sacrifice, even the thing you love the most, to make the world a better place.