Politics Explained.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

goodbyecaptain:

Summer vacation ...

... without the vacation
I don't know why I even bother to get excited that school is closed because I'm not on vacation - I gotta work. I guess there are a few things that are good about it tho:
1) I get home when there's still sunlight
2) Finals are over - no more sweating in anxiety and I got all A's
3) I can do what I want to do, watch tv, read things that excite me

The cons are that all the stuff I neglected while studying for finals are attacking me all at once. It's a bloody massacre - laundry, bills I forgot to pay, email I didn't respond to, phone calls I haven't returned, forms I haven't completed for next school year, occasions I forgot to acknowledge, etc. I didn't forget mother's day this year - I did lift my head to send flowers to my mom (score 1 for the black sheep/ favorite child). But the other stuff ... man, I guess I can't escape it. So this is what my Summer of leisure boils down to -- catching up with my past obligations. It could be worse. I'll be going home too for a few weeks in August - sweet, sweet Jamaican sunshine. So that's something to look forward to.

You know, people always say this to me: "Why not visit Jamaica in the Winter time -- it's more special when you're taking a sunny vacation while it's cold in New York. Why leave heat to go to heat?"

Folks, there is no logic to that at all. It doesn't matter what season it is here. Heat in New York and Heat in Jamaica are two different things. I can't explain it. If I drink a Corona in Jamaica it even tastes different. And I will go to Jamaica when Hell freezes over too - that's Winter, for those of you who didn't know that Hell actually does freeze over annualy, from October to May and it's located North East on the American map.

Happy summer all! I'll be working on my tan!

his side of the story

Hassan the potter - by N.M rashid

Jahanzad, down in the street before your door
Here I am, burnt-out Hassan the Potter
This morning in the bazaar when I saw you
At old Yusuf the perfumer’s shop
In your glance was that brilliance
I’ve longed for, wandering nine years in madness
During that time
I never looked back
At my ailing pots -
Pots formed by my deft hands,
Lifeless creatures of clay, color, oil glaze
They whispered:
“Where is Hassan the Potter now?
He left us, his own creations
He created us, then turned away like the gods!”

Jahanzad, nine years passed for me
As time would pass in a buried city;
Clay in the clay-vats
With its fragrance that used to ravish me
Lay stone-hard
Flagon and flask, jug and cup, candlestick, vase
Props of my trivial life, of my art
Lay broken
I myself, Hassan the Potter, mud-mired, dusty-haired, naked
Beside my wheel, hair disheveled, head on knees
Like some grieving demigod, from fantasized
Clay-and-nothing I molded pliant pots out of dreams.

Jahanzad, nine years ago
You were a child, but you knew
That I, Hassan the Potter
Had seen in your talisman eyes, your sky-warming eyes
Brilliance
Which made my body and soul an open road
For cloud and moon

Janhanzad, the dream-colored Baghdad night
That bank of River Tigris
That boat, the boatman’s closed eyes
For a worn-out, grief-burdened potter
One night was the charged amber
His static being clings to, even now.
His soul, his shape
But that night’s flavor was a river-wave in which
Hassan the Potter sank and has [never] come up.

Jahanzad, in those days, day after day
That ill-starred woman came
When she saw me by the wheel, mud-mired, head on knees
She shook me by the shoulders -
(that wheel which had been, year after year, my life sole prop!)
she shook me by the shoulders:
“Hassan, look at your desolate house
how will the children’s hollow stomachs be filled?
Love-struck Hassan
Love is a rich man’s game
Hassan, look around at your house!”

In my ears this mournful voice was like
A call to a drowning man in whirlpool.
Those heaps of tears were flower-beds, no doubt
But I, Hassan the Potter, lived among ruins
In a fantasy-city where not
A voice, a movement
A flying bird’s shadow
Not a trace of my life existed.

Jahanzad, here now in your street
Here in the cold-colored darkness of night
I stand before your door
Head and hair disordered
From the window those spell-drowned talisman eyes
Glance at me once again
Time, Jahanzad, is the wheel on which like flagon and flask, cup,
candlestick, vase
Humans are made and unmade
I am a human but
Those nine years that passed in the mold of grief!
Hassan the Potter is now a dust-mound without
Even a hint of moisture.

Jahanzad, this morning in the bazaar
At Yusuf the Perfumer’s shop, your eyes
Spoke once again
Their brilliant mischief
Calls forth again in the dust-mound a quiver of wetness
Perhaps to turn the dust to clay
Who knows the scope of longing, Jahanzad, but
If you want, I'll go back to being
That potter whose pots
Were the pride of every house and street, city and town
Whose pots shone in the homes of rich and poor
Who knows the scope of longing, Jahanzad, but
If you want, I will go back to my forsaken pots
To the dried-out vats of clay-and-nothing
To the props of my life, my art
So from this clay-and-nothing, color and oil glaze,
I can again strike sparks
That light up the ruins of hearts.

[A Translation]

Janet's tit in court again

Yes - once again, good old tax-payer's money is going to the Supreme Court to defend the titigate scandal of 2004. Intriguing. The country is ass broke, so in order to stimulate the economy of the lawyers and judges, they gonna take rich ass Janet Jackson to court with our money because her tit fucked up on prime time tv. The horror. What they are aiming to prove is that the tit didn't inadvertently escape but was deliberately released in a contrived scheme to make white people go blind.

I can't believe that one black tit could spark so much controversy. The media is so obnoxious and hypocritical. Janet's tit is like a bomb that went off in a crowded marketplace. Yet a few years ago I remember eating my damn dinner at 8pm when a Sex in the City's episode aired, where Samantha was eating out a woman and they showed when she lifted her head from between the woman's legs and the cum shot landed on her mouth. I almost puked in my curry chicken. So what's the big deal that Janet's tit got some "air time"(mind you, the nipple was covered). Oh yes, it was wholesome white American family event and viewership was global.

So hell damn what? Now we have to see just white old ass country western and rock bands from the caveman days. But being that the sport is dominated by Black athletes and it would come off as racially biased to totally deny Black artists from performing, the only black performers who will ever be able to perform at the Superbowl will be the ones who don't rap hip hop - like the crispy cream Prince, and people not in the mainstream yet, and people who don't dance. Oh, and Jennifer Hudson got to sing the Star Spangled Banner. Not like I want to see hip hop but I'm just saying the obvious, because it needs to be said.

I'm beginning to suspect that I may need anger management sessions. I blew up on my mother lastnight, and this morning, I blew another fuse on the man today -- for no good reason... well - here's what happened....he told me he was taking my jeep to check the tires and I asked him to take my tennis shoes off the top, where I rested them to get some sun after they were washed. I should have put them in the back yard on top of the patio table, but noooo, I had to be eccentric and put them on top of the jeep.

So anyway, as he is walking out the back door, I told him to take them off. I'm standing in the kitchen, seasoning dinner and looking out the window at the sunshine -- ok - I was looking at his ass - he has the sexiest walk too, ANYWAY - what do you think he did? He went straight into the car and drove away with my shoes on top. I ran out the door screaming his name as he drove away and he just kept driving and I just kept yelling, before I realized the windows were still up. I felt the distinct feeling that all my neighbors were looking out their windows thinking we had a fight and he was leaving and I was trying to call him back but he just dissed me. That's probably what got me even angrier.

So when he got back, and miraculously, my sneakers were still on top, I was still so mad,I kept yelling at him, telling him how stupid that was. He was sick of hearing it. I don't know why I wouldn't stop. I got louder and louder. He's such a gentle person, he wouldn't even respond, except to tell me softly to calm down. I still kept going. He jumped on his motorcycle and rode out. I'm going to eat a lot of ice cream tonight. I don't know what else to do. My mom isn't speaking to me either. My dad told me this morning that I need to apologize, even tho she's the one who pissed me off all the way from London on an overseas call. Oh lord. I don't know what to say. Is "Sorry" ever enough. Can I just say "Sorry" - or am I going to have to genuflect for like a month. I'm not in the mood to apologize. I think I should just lay low for a few weeks. Whatever.

Hello Goodbye

Now that we’ve met – I can’t wait to hate you,
to wish you had never been born, to want to hurt you but not really,
to hang up the phone on you, and cry whenever I hear your name,
to hate this song that’s playing right now at this very moment
we’re looking across the room deep into each others' eyes for the first time, and I can’t wait to get over you.
It will mean you have loved me until the love was done.
I want it anyway.

sometimes a girl's gotta get outta the house

its always summer in the clubs

forgiveness is the new sin

Its so disgusting to see the same pictures of Chris Brown and Rihanna on the news and watch the way they continue to attack him. And now they're attacking them both, because Rihanna has apparently forgiven him. Isn't that very human of her? So, now forgiveness is a sin? In a way, he deserves it because let's face it, it was extremely stupid for him to do what he did - regardless ... and the thing that really got me was the bite -- like, who is he, Mike Tyson? But anyway, leave these kids alone - they're both young and landed into lives that their systems are barely prepared for.

But one thing these young black superstars need to realize is how quickly the world is willing to rip you back down from the pedestal. Examples: Michael Vick, Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson (the Mikes), Kobe, Plaxico, Janet Jackson, - you name them. The public is not trying to protect celebrities... especially black ones.

They're so outraged by Chris Brown - meanwhile I see no outrage when these sick white kids are going buck wild and shooting up their families and shooting up schools. It's always that they sympathize with the families for their loss and they try to find out why the young man was so depressed and what led to his depression...poor soul.

Why don't you all get enraged about the following and play them over and over again. People who shot up their family members over the last few weeks -- Here are the real cases of domestic abuse:

1. The gunman who committed the worst mass shooting in Alabama history. The 28-year-old gunman would kill three more people, including his 74-year-old grandmother, before heading to Geneva, where he would ultimately take his own life in a standoff with police. Eleven people died in the rampage, which lasted less than an hour and started with the killing of his mother in neighboring Coffee County. Oh they said he was depressed... oh my.

2. MIAMI -Police say a man who fatally shot his estranged wife and three other people at a weekend party also tried to blow up his neighborhood by placing gas cans and propane tanks around his apartment before setting it afire.

3. WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio -The funeral for five family members gunned down in their Cleveland home last week included 2-year-old twin boys, who shared a casket. The shooter, Crawford, who later killed himself, was the husband of one of the victims.

Ban on Daggering = Death to Jamaican Radio Stations

In an interview Ed Lover on Power 105 radio, Beenie Man, King of Jamaican Dancehall, was asked to speak on the Jamaican government’s recent ban on all dancehall songs with lyrics that need to be censored. The ban stipulates that all dancehall songs that have lyrics which need to be bleeped, will be completely banned from air play. Basically, that’s every single dancehall song! Even Sean Paul’s upper-crust style of dancehall like,” Just Gimme the Light” makes reference to “dro”. Dro is short for Hydro which is slang for weed. Even if he said “pass the Draw” Draw and Dro are both slang for weed. It is sometimes bleeped although it is passable. Will they stop playing King Sean Paul’s songs too – even though he attracted so many new tourists to the island when he busted out on MTV a few years ago. Or will the Jamaica government become as usual hypocritical – bowing to the fair-skinned and dissing the darkies of dancehall. Beenie Man’s response is [and I paraphrase] “the Jamaican government don’t do nothing for we (the dancehall artists),we make the music, we aid the Jamaican economy without any input from them, and we will sing what we want because what we sing is reality. They cannot stop us.”

Ed Lover went on to ask him what the dancehall artists will do. To this Beenie responded that they will form a cooperative and start their own radio station and will release all their music to the pirate radio stations … basically, they will go underground. Jamaican dancehall is suffering the same fate as hip hop in the 80s, and their response will be the same –they will go underground. There is a huge difference to the underground of the 80s. With the proliferation of the internet, and youtube, and free music websites willing to freely promote artists, and the artists own ability to self-promote, Dancehall music will fare far better than hip hop did in the 1980s.

I’m sort of proud of the response to fight against censorship. It’s an intelligent, artistic revolt. I understand the government’s need to clamp down on the dirty lyrics on radio because the whole country has become so degenerate, but I don’t believe that answer is to make the artists suffer the consequences of irresponsible radio disc jockeys. The radio stations should be fined heavily, and there should be certain late hour rules where that type of music can be played after a certain hour… and still with the bleeps. There should not just be this blanket policy. What will happen is the radio stations will lose listenership and in turn, they will lose sponsors. The pirate radio stations will become legit, with the sponsors moving to them. This is so mafia.

The response of the government to shut everything down mostly because of the few recent examples of gross abuse of artistic freedom (aka – daggering as in Rampin Shop, Vybz Kartel’s over the top triple X rated song, on Neyo’s Miss Independence beat). Equally harmful, (although admirable in the artist movement/ rebellion sense) the artists’ response to completely disrespect the government, is a poor example to the younger generation. It can only lead to further anarchy in a country of people who have little regard or respect for authority and human life.

wasn't it the other way around ...

When the same thick lips were on black people, they were called nigger lips. They were ridiculed and used to describe blacks. now it's chic? Even though Kerry Washington has prettier thick lips, they don't refer to her as an example of beautiful lips.


amazing. It's the same thing that they did with the Jennifer Lopez big butt business. When it's on black people, it's not cool. What a warped society we live in. Anyway, on my lunch break I have to pick up some lip plumper and some ass cheeks.

the anal stimulus package

Imagine these hardcore, cold-hearted bastards have some nerve to be begging for a bailout and are still calling my phone, telling me I'm late with my credit card payment. Always stretching their hands out, while the other hand is raising interest rates and adding finance charges as they have a mind.

Now I'm forced to talk politics once again, something I try very hard to avoid here, but it's hard to avoid it when my phone is ringing as early as 8:20 on a Saturday morning, and as late as 9pm at night. These credit card banks are relentless with their computerized collection system. Which number do I press to tell them to go fuck themselves. That is also an option! Right now, my phone is ringing, and they get slicker and slicker every time, because I took the $7. a month voicemail off my home phone, so they can't leave a message, and they don't have my cell number... they try to call "unavailable". A friend of mine who knows somebody, who knows somebody, who knows something 'bout it, told him that they even have a system to capture a number from your caller ID (like your mom's number or your office) and call you with that number so you might answer it if you think it's someone else calling... as if I answer calls from any of those numbers on a Saturday morning either. Bastards!

So anyway, first, let's look at how slick the whole proposal of the bailout/stimulus package is, and why it means the banks get it all anyway. Giving each taxpayer a stimulus check for a few hundred dollars, only means we will in turn give these same stimulus checks right back to the same banks, in the form of partial payment on our credit card debts, loans, and mortgages, etc., or even as a savings deposit.

This means the banks will be receiving, not only the bailout package made for them from our tax dollars, but also every single dollar of the stimulus package made for us ordinary main street fools. Anyone who ever did economics or finance in college, knows that the lending system allows banks to re-lend the majority of ALL deposits, and only reserve a small percentage as required by the Federal Bank. This means that every dollar of all these packages, regardless of what it is earmarked for - every dime will still make its way back to the banks, so they can turn around and lend it back to us at a ridiculous interest rate (no batteries included). Do I need to repeat the fact that that the bailout and stimulus packages, are coming from our taxes which supplied the budget in the first place.

So, in a nutshell, for those of you who want it in plain English:

first they fuck us (1 = fuck x you and me)
then they fuck us again, (2 = fuck you and me x 2)
then and after that, they just sodomize us, without Vaseline (3 = ass rape you and me x 3)

Then,they smoke a cigarette in their wife-beaters, and tell us not to cry, because it's not for their benefit, but for ours; because they're not really enjoying it. How very Chris Brown of them - (sorry Chris, you know I love you).

Anyway, here's my answer to the stimulus package bullshit ... it's a simple equation that doesn't require a calculator or any cash out of pocket or a dildo ... the only way for us to be the toppers (gay speak) and not the receivers, is if President Obama would tell these bank jerks to bend over for one to two months, and not let anyone earning below $200,000 per household, make any car loan, mortgage, rent, students loans, and especially car insurance payments(since insurance is the most fraudulent industry of them all - because if I drive until I'm 100 years old and never have an accident, I will never get a cent back).

So strap that on for size -- just two months of no bills, even one month, will mean we can all catch our breaths and save weeks of salaries so we can get back on top of our game, because I don't like people calling me at night, and I don't like taking it up the ass from strangers.

President Obama - that includes you. I voted for you, but please don't let me eat my vote.

...one love

That phrase - "the less fortunate" - both conceals and exposes the real truth: that life in a world ruled by finance capital is a lottery, a matter of chance, fortune, of luck rather than ability or work. - John Maxwell (Professor and Environmentalist at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Jamaica.

...

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" - Mohandas K. Gandhi.

Chris Brown vs Rihanna -- ding! ding! ding!

I don't usually weigh in on these types of issues -domestic abuse is not my area of expertise -- I only know that whenever the term is used it refers to a male being the perpetrator of some ass-kicking and a female being the victim of said ass-kicks.

It's times like these that I'm happy I don't have to see the comments at the end of my rants - because what I'm about to say right now may make me seem anti-feminist, or worse, completely misogynistic. One thing is true; although I'm a woman, and I don't have much love for the female specie, I think I can manage being objective and fair and I'll be able to use this Chris Brown vs Rihanna story to illustrate a picture of the inequities that persist in this "equal opportunity" world of ours.

Ok- without further ado, let me just say that what always grieves me is a damn double standard, wherever it exists. That's like my biggest peeve, because the thing is, (and I'm not defending Chris Brown - i don't know what he actually did - none of us were there, so for now, this stays in my unsolved mysteries / hearsay file) ... women get away with so much shit. Look at the following scenarios with me, if you will:

1. Had Chris Brown beat some guy to the same degree as those pics of Rihanna claim to represent, the guy would have pressed charges and the whole thing would have amounted to celebrity fodder and Chris would have gone to court, been sued for assault, and rise from it "Tha Man!" (example rapper, T.I. vs Lil Flip and T.I. vs Ludakris' manager, and T.I. vs that guy in the audience who threw a cup on stage at T.I. while he was performing) - T.I. incidentally performed his latest new hit "Live Your Life" with Rihanna at the 2008 MTV Music Award show - see.

Chris Brown definitely would not have lost his endorsements if he had walked in T.I.'s shoes and beat up a guy, actually, he might have picked up a Wheaties endorsement or Vitamin Water. The other guy would have been called a bully who should be glad Chris went so easy on him -"Chris must have been defending himself" . Gals and gays everywhere would flock to see his shows because like "that was sooooo SEXY", he's a legitimate "BAD BOY", "that's like waaaaay hot" and the victim would have been considered a "sissy boy" who messed with Chris Brown. People would send the guy hate mail and death threats (unless the guy was another hot celebrity). OK, and whereas the bruises on Rhianna were called "Contusions" (they had to use a big, legit medical term an' shit) on the guy in my example, they would have said "oh, please, it's not like he died, he's lucky all he got was a few knots on the head - some minor scratches." That's American Media 101.

2. Had Chris Brown been a low level celebrity and Rihanna a pseudo celebrity herself, we would have heard about it only briefly, and only if the media was starved for news-worthy material -- only to spear them from showing that story again, you know, the one with the monkey breastfeeding the tiger cub (or was that Salma Hayek? i forget). Then the story would have blown away on the next wind that came along. For sure, it wouldn't have made the news more than say 1 to 2 days.

3. And this is my BIGGEST BEEF -- (drum-roll please) -- Had Rihanna beat up Chris Brown, she would not have lost any of her endorsements, she would have been able to go back on stage and women everywhere would make her concerts sell out and her celebrity would have increased 10 fold because it would have been seen as woman power.

Besides, Rihanna is a Caribbean woman -- she doesn't have to lift a finger to kick a man's ass; all she has to do is open her mouth and lash him with that Afro-Caribbean tongue(speaking from knowledge).

I don't have any examples to point to right now -ok, what about Liza Minelli allegedly beating up her husband David Gest -bet you don't remember that one - so there's some proof. I don't have to research it to prove what I'm saying - I know I'm right, and most of you out there know what I'm talking about too.

If Rihanna does not become the poster child for Abused Women everywhere - and sell out all her upcoming shows (especially the first one she does after this) then I don't know what I'm talking about.

As Jamaicans will tell you "donkey seh, di world nuh level".

it’s so hard just seeing you
now that we can’t even touch
and I wish I could explain to you
but words are not worth much
‘cause this truth is not for telling
nouns and verbs all strung together
no, it’s not the kind for spelling
not the kind to put in letters
it’s a rhythm in my tongue
and the dance of fingertips
and the language of my eyes
when your kiss is on my lips
when you feel it then you’ll know
in the language of the soul
when I write upon your body
then our love can break the code