The musings of a madman...

Why is it, that whenever a usually white people start talking to/about a usually black person, whether or not -- but most usually when -- that person is in the room, they've already started trying to figure out what OTHER black person(s) that individual looks like? It might not be so bad if this was a once-in-a-while thing, but it is damn near every couple days and when it is on, everything available is applied to the completion of said task... News stories are scoured, every celeb, every little fucking Thing? WHY?!!? It goes in cycles... I'm 5'8" and wear glasses and have a beard and waist-length dreadlocks, so it is often that I avoid even leaving my house to avoid the inevitable. "Wow, do you know who you look like?" "Look, please don't say T-Pai-..." "T-PAIN!!!" "FUCK!!!" **shudders and walks away** [ Phlip note - I REALLY need to work on my non-verbals] If not that, it is -- again in the presenc

There are some things that EVERY straight male should make a point of doing before they leave this planet. Some friends I pressed for opinions and myself came up with a short list... Not one to care if I am called a homophobe, the fact remains that we can only write this list from the point(s) of view of heterosexual men, while a lot of these will be applicable to more than just that group. These will be in no particular order. #1 - Visit a country in which you do not live... This is not and does not have to be a terribly expensive proposition. Visit another country at least once. Be it Europe or Japan (should your money be big enough), Canada, Mexico, etc... Wherever! Experience that at least one time (or more). You will find that the world outside of your own set of personal experiences presents a multitude of new interests for you to take in. What, with the advent of vacationstogo.com and sites of their ilk, not to mention that any travel agent worth their salt should be able to

Yeah, digging through my RSS feeds this morning, I happened upon a post on a friend's blog about Stacy Dash talking about how each of her 3 failed marriages went down. [ Phlip note - we're talking about Stacy fucking Dash here... I am thinking these dudes are borderline zesty for allowing themselves to fuck that up] AnyStacyDashDaydreamingway, I thought about a question of the day as a result of the otherwise short post. I knew my opinion on the whole thing already. But these conversations, as they were, are a solicitation of opinions to get some discourse in the air about the things that we might all think about, but don't quite know how or where to begin talking about. The question was posted on Friday as... "Question of the day... Does sex on the first date make for a relationship or a jumpoff agreement?" I would then sit back and attempt to get some work done on my shortened day while the people discussed it. First respondent was light-skinnded Brandon's

You know what? I just noticed that I have not cooked for you wonderful folks since a week before the Superbowl. Not that I have forgotten about you, or that I have not cooked at least 3-4 times a week since then -- as is my habit. It's just more or less that it has become second nature and I am usually waiting on The Katie to get home from work so we can eat before I think "damn, I should have posted this." Oops... Well anyway, in route to continuing a more healthy future for My Katie and I, I have not deep fried anything since the week of the last time I cooked and posted anything here. In the course of spring cleaning, we rediscovered the grill and it gets used twice a week or more, adding grilled chicken or turkey to our usual vegetables and/or rice affairs. As many of you know -- or could click here and surmise -- I am a fan of basketball before any other sport. The same would inform you that I am absolutely on the hook for the Los Angeles Lakers. Excitement about t

Disclosure: This is an album from a good friend of mine, I received my signed copy in the mail a couple weeks ago... Busy with changing items in my life to be discussed in a blog this coming week, I am just now getting to finishing the review. Different from my usual fare, this is what one might categorize as Electronic music, though I know full well that Mike is just as capable of hip hop, even raps a bit himself. All songs written, produced and arranged by the big name on the front of the disc. As I live with a seething hatred for iTunes, I had to name and tag all the tracks myself in order to rip them using Windows Media Player, which I have learned to hate less. [ Phlip note - feel free to ask me how it is I am syncing my iPod in private and I will share] Now with the introductions out of the way, let's get down to business. 1 - Heavenly Bodies We start things off here with a very interesting string arrangement. This is followed a couple bars later with the introduction of mor

This is one I been thinking about and talking over for a while now. As I do, I presented the question to the vast Book of Faces on Sunday at 7:34pm. "Question of the day... Would you rather be WANTED or NEEDED? Do not answer this unless you can provide an explanation of WHY with it." And I would then sit back and wait on responses from those who I have befriended. Remember that, as ever, responses are 99% unedited, with the ONLY exception being that I MUST make quotation marks right. First respondent, as a thanked participant of MOST of these conversations, was former coworker, Tiffany, with... "I have answered this somewhere before.....wanted. I prefer someone is CHOOSING to be with me, as opposed to them thinking they need me for some reason or another. I hope they made a choice in the matter, not stayed with me out of some kind of necessity. Anyway, needs can easily be met anywhere, and sadly enough....very willingly. " Next was high school classmate, M

(well, not quite, but we'll get back to that shortly) Some of the two of you, those aged 28 and older for sure, should remember late 80s/early 90s sitcom Full House . If not, click that link and come back to read from here. In a nutshell, this show --along with America's Funniest Home Videos -- is the reason that people see Bob Saget as "corny and wholesome," and predates when we were ALL fucking done with the Olson Twins 20+ years ago. Anyway, for something new we're gonna do here on the blog, we're going to take something that is abjectly white and, well... Paint it black. What that means, if you don't get it, is that we will remove the stereotypically white America stereotypes and add some black ones in their place. So let's do this. From the above-linked Wikipedia article: Set in San Francisco, California , it chronicles widowed father Danny Tanner ( Bob Saget ), who, after the death of his wife following the birth of their youngest daughter Mic

What one side calls a "tax deduction," the other sees as a "revenue stream," it seems... Between the circuses that is the whole Nas/Kelis dilemma, where he is being raked over the coals for more in a month than I make in a year for child and spousal support. And for what?!!? Does she not have a career of her own? Are there not some established norms for what it costs to raise a child for 2 people, then a FAIR comparison to what BOTH parents make a year for FAIR adjustment, "custodial parent" be damned... Another example is the semi-recent exploits of a certain Siohvaughn Wade , where it seems that she is now seeing that she will not just be GIFTED an exorbitant chunk of that windfall that D-Wade is about to take in about 7 weeks and is now acting out. First she tries to play to the sympathies of the female judge by suing his alleged "mistress." Now she can just lay back out of court and there is no way a judge would even need her there, not with

[ Phlip note - this is a "slightly inebriated lunchtime with Murph" post I have been sitting on since I got home from Atlanta 2 weeks ago] ... is a gym sock and an orange. The gym sock MUST be a knee-high, Tiny Archibald status. Think of the endless possibilities... Non-Lethal Crowd Control When pressed by an unarmed crowd, you will swing your (preferably dirty) gym sock at the onslaught, probably catching the lead right on the jaw. A quick reload on the recoil gets you into the next. Not only are you controlling the crowd by way of making examples out of people, you're also giving them a full day's supply of Vitamin C. Homeless Suppression "Hey, brotha, can you spare some change for a--..." Say no more, once you have unleashed your fruit-juicy effectiveness, you will have not only circumvented the need to donate that money by providing nourishment in the form of antioxidants-laden citrus, you will also kept him at a safe distance. Self Defense Come on, loo

Why does it feel like we've been here before? Wait, it is more than likely because we have . My last posts on basketball (2 links, that) were rife with concern that Cleveland SHOULD be a problem for anyone they meet. In so many words, I had conceded to the inevitability of this being their championship season. Man, am I EVER glad I was wrong. Look, I know it seems like I am hating on the boy, and to that I will admit, fuck it. What bothers me not is the amount of times he gives, through his actions, REASONS to be hated on. No one remembers how he reacted to being blown off the court in his first finals, as no one expected them to be there, even themselves so their sweep was not even a small surprise. We ALL remember his walking off of the court without even congratulating his "friend" Dwight Howard, then offering the excuse... “It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that...If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them,” James said. “It doesn’t