The musings of a madman...

     Angel on my left shoulder, telling me “Phlip, don’t get on that plane.”      Devil on my right shoulder, telling me “Phlip, get that money and get the fuck out.” Internal tug-of-war, provide for my family in a manner that I had to learn to contribute to as a child, in a manner that I might have never imagined so easily attainable or stay here in the United States and drive this bag around and watch these companies shovel out all of the magical coal they might so need.  Pick your poison, Phillip.  Slow burn and hard work or hit this international lick and be straight one at a time.      Why am I even second-guessing myself?  I KNEW I shouldn’t be on this fucking plane.  As opportunistic as I have been about trapping this cash over the past six months – I am at a million and a half now with my under-the-table museum contracts – I am still quite liberal as far as environmental issues go.  At le...

     My city has a minor league baseball team… Wait, hold that whole thought. Y’all know I fucking hate baseball, right? Nevermind, I have spent enough time on my relationship with America’s former pastime.      Anyway, my city has a AA (or maybe AAA, IDK) baseball team.   As much as I dislike baseball as a sport – as in the television entertainment value is lacking HARD – my daughter enjoys going to the games, even though she needs me to explain the goings-on in the games.   She enjoys the atmosphere, the fact that there is a playground and that my employer comps me tickets to games and I invariably pick the Fireworks Fridays games.   Toss a couple of beers into the mix and I can make my way through nine innings.      One time last summer, though, this shit got SUPER lit. Another thing my city has a lot of is young “gang” members ( Phlip note : quotations for ridicule, not for emphasis...

“The Elements” Back on September 1 , I explained – err, shared Will Smith’s explanation of – the relationship of talent and skill. Those are not the elements I intend to speak on this month. February 5 th was my, unbeknownst to either of you, official end to my holiday malaise.  I had been thinking and brainstorming on shit I would write when I sat down and put myself to it, but had not typed a damn thing in weeks.  The last place I had left off in the moment was my ongoing beef with Santa Claus . That morning, I sat down at work after dropping the princess off at school, and I started typing.  Pt II was born in less than an hour.  A little later, III was real.  As of when you read this, I am done through at LEAST part VI and have plans for the series. Focusing still on that same week, I wrote my Hotep Wednesday post THE morning it was to be posted.  I wrote The Bakery later on that afternoon at the end of my lunch break.  Friday morni...

      My boredom will kill me one day… So I am sitting in the living room with the big TV, minding my own business one d--… Wait! Y’all know those commercials where the MOST vanilla and racially unambiguous American is talking to the camera about doing their ancestry.com profile to dig deeper into their own personal beginnings and at the end of the commercial they’re in full-on cultural appropriation mode? So back to me and the big Vizio… One time Mimi is at work and I am home with computers and no adult supervision.   I go onto one of those DNA testing sites and order up one of those kits through my job’s discount program.   I send the information in on the form and leave the DNA results open for matches to perhaps meet up with some unknown and undiscovered family members.   I mean, my aunt on dad’s side has done extensive research in an era where family bibles were the only way to learn things and mom’s side all knows each ot...