U aint shi#

First some house cleaning : Good looking to Sandra Rose and my folk at Dream & Hustle for the recognition. Also to my boy and fellow Morehouse Alum Kevin Ross (3 brothers & a sister) for getting and letting me know that NPR wants to talk to me on the radio. Last to a friend of mine who is an Editor at Rolling out for some new reading material: David Mattingly’s An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire and Gino Segre’s Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the soul of Physics (1932 when Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg,Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Dirac - the greatest names in Physics met in Denmark, yawl should know that too & them).

Now, I apologize about the gushy lovey dovey stuff on the last two post, but as yawl know, folk here write about what ever is on his mind. This means as today, I can post one of the numerous tractates I have penned over the past few weeks in the lulls in which play-off basketball games are not on. I wanted to put this up a few weeks ago, but today is as good a day as any.

If you didn’t know, I’m a trained scientist, a research scientist. And not to be a pedantic about it, in all honesty I am pretty thorough at such. So much that I write about it for my peers and the world. Last year I posted a piece that I wrote in 1992 when Bill Clinton made an apology for the Tuskegee Experiment. I wont go into detail about it, but it is something that we should all know about. At the time it was the main op-ed that ran in this news weekly called Creative Loafing. I posted it last year because it was the 10 year anniversary of Clinton’s apology. My piece was called Apology not accepted.

Although I know folk still look at me and mine as no more than Fisher-499 rats, I did think all the experimenting on us was over. Over the past few years, in Baltimore, some of my associates (I am ashamed to say) were conducting experiments using federal loot via the Housing and Urban Development Department. Now this is not the kicker, they published their research in 2005 in Science of the Total Environment. Yawl know me, I call names and they are: Mark Farfel, Anna Orlova, Rufas Chaney, Peter Lees, Charles Rohde and Peter Ashley.

They were given $446,231 grant for the two-year study to circulate shit, I mean a mixture of human and industrial wastes on yards in poor and all black neighborhoods in Baltimore. No hypothesis really, they just wanted to see if such could be a protective factor against lead poisoning in children (really just African American children).

What really bothers me as a scientist is that I cant find no mention, no evidence that they conducted any type of medical or health evaluation with these folks after the study was completed. My folk at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health considers this all as just “unfavorable publicity". This is one of the main reasons I wanted to be a scientist, so I could define me via research and conduct research for the benefit and protection of folk like myself.

I would tell you the theoretical chemistry behind their experiment but it is a waste of time not to add insensate. Now I’m gonna have to have more of my tax money come out my pocket because the three ring circus we call congress wants to hold hearings. Why, what else can the hear, my fault, its an election year.

To me they saying we aint shit, or worth shit, just lab rats. This si coming from a scientist. This is also why I have never apprectaied or respected Bill Clinton's bitch ass. Yea folk, I recant in your apology, never again would anything like this happen in America. Well it did and still does.

microphone, excuse me studio gangstas

Cooked Jambalaya last night with ground Italian sausage. Can you say yum yum eattum up? My son can ,three bowls worth, and me likewise, same number too. But lil momma, she didn’t want any and instead wanted Pistachio’s and Cereal. So I gave it to her.

But before we got home, had to pick little daddy up from baseball practice. He gets in the car and changes the radio station. I had it on NPR. The first song that cam up was Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.” And two seconds had not passed before little momma started to sing the hook. Before I could tell him, he changed the station to Radio Disney, and she got plain right upset.

I always listen to NPR or RADIO Disney When she was in the car. I mean if I get in and NPR is on she straight, but if Visa Versa, I am at a loss until the next time we get in vehicle. What cut was she knew lollipop (even though she knew hat word well already) and juicy.

Now I know everybody got DIRT BEHIND THEIR EARS, thus the name of my latest book. I also believe in artistic freedom and expression. But I also acknowledge must be acted upon in an accordance with reason and personal responsibility. I got no problem with little Wayne making what he creates, but I do think I have the right to call folk a dumb ass fuck boy if he does not consider the state of urban radio, our schools and violence in the general community or that criminal behavior is not a positive identity to promote. Yea, it is fiction, but considering the aforementioned, a man that doesn’t even attempt to control what he submits or releases to a radio station that kids mainly listen to, and who places money over all else as a rationale for doing such, one has to call it like they see it.

Personally, I have never been, claimed or known thugs or gangsters. A few felons maybe, but none of the previous. See we valued education and such a self-proclamation tells folk that you foul, selfish, and really aint about making money as you say. Personally I have never been to prison and am proud of such. I give the credit, maybe to my brain cells and thought. Nobody I knew wore a lot of jewelry, drove a fancy car, or tossed around and flashes loot (in particular in an attempt to impress some broad or dame, since only broads or dames are impressed with such – women have their own). Folks just realized you can’t make money in jail or prison and that telling you a thug or gangster will get you there. But I guess talent alone aint enough, and that bravado is required. Just ask Akon, who felt that his talent wasn’t enough and needed to say that he was convicted, sent to prison from term 1999 and 2002 and facing 75 years. Truth was he stole a Bimer, got hemmed up, and the prosecutor dropped all charges without serving a day of time.

What makes it so bad is I heard a taped interview with T.I. (should be TOO Ignorant) and he never accepted responsibility for the image he depicts. Instead he blamed TV’s without indicating that he made media for TV’s, which content he can control’s if he KNOWS such. He blamed high school in the ATL for not letting him speak to students (I don’t know why, unless they do not think he is sincere). He didn’t even admit that he may have been part of the problem, I mean aint we all. I like the music of all TI, Wayne and Akon. See I consider my self a scholar and a father first not an idiot, rapper, banker or none of that. I am what I am and proud. However, I cannot tolerate folks not accepting their responsibility to the community as a man. And I shole don’t tolerate microphone, excuse me, studio gangsters to avoid their responsibility. I say leave the gangster to Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, its unbecoming, but at least thee latter dressed well and wore belts. And no, im not hatting even though they kust as bad as the KKK.



My book release party will be held at the M-Bar - April 24, 2008 from 7 to 10pm
257 Peters Street, Atlanta, Ga 30311- phone: 404 523 1555

simple pagan ritual

The history of the world is replete with situations of conquest, adoption and out right thievery. Antiquated times saw Alexander name a library after himself, and Pythagoras take claim for a mathematical theorem that was obviously used thousands of years prior to his birth as evidenced via the construction of pyramids in Egypt. In modern times, the same can be said of jazz and Blues and even Rock music.

Now, it seems nothing is sacred, not even the collective experience of being a descendant of Africa in America - not even in south central LA. If you have not heard by now, "Margaret B. Jones” whom we have come to find out is really Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer recently published a book. Reviewers raved about the book called Love and Consequences, a memoir by Margaret P. Jones. NPR described it as being about “a half-white, half-Native-American foster child growing up in the gangland milieu of Los Angeles.” Unfortunately Seltzer was raised by her birth parents in the suburbs around Orange County, California. This where she grew up and attended the best private schools (Episcopal day school) that loot could purchase. In addition, she has never lived with a foster family as she claimed nor did she ever run drugs for any gang members let alone belong to the Bloodz. She even lied about where she went to college and her graduating at the University of Oregon, which she did not. She was exposed by her older sister days before being profiled in the New York Times.

And when she was busted, what did she say? “For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it’s an ego thing — I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”

I only read what I could online before they took the book excerpt offline. I tried to find her myspace page but it is gone too. But one section talks about, her African-American foster brothers, Terrell and Taye. They supposedly joining the Bloodz when 11 and 13 years old as well as how she got her first gat as a gift when she was 13. The catch is she did all this dirt s she could save to get a cemetery plot – LOL. Oprah couldn't ever tell, which is scary on several accords to me.

Before she was exposed to be a faker, her publisher Penguin Group released an interview on their web site with the author. It was also included in press kits. I just selected this to hope that u laughed as hard as i did.

Q: How did this book originate?
A: During my senior year of college one of my professors told me a friend of hers was working on a book and wanted to interview me. I declined. I wasn’t interested in the whole “South-Central-as-petting-zoo” thing. Then my home girl said the teacher might mess around and fail me for rejecting her friend, so I ended up calling the author and doing the interview. She was real nice and asked me if I had ever written anything. I ended up giving her one of a number of short stories I had written for my brothers’ kids and for the kids of my homies serving life sentences. ...

Q: What makes the difference between someone who is able to move up and on and out of the inner city and someone else who follows the trajectory into crime, juvenile detention, prison, and so on?

A: I wish I knew. I’ve got my homeboy who’s doing life who wrote me, “You and OG homie are the only ones who made it out.” Well, OG homie is now locked up. And I can’t even judge.

LMAO now

Q: What was the scene that affected both of you so much
A: It was the scene in which my little sisters and I were walking home from the Korean grocery store and Nishia dropped a carton of milk. It burst open and the milk streamed into the gutter. She burst into tears, begging me not to be mad as she stooped down trying to scrape it all back into the broken carton. I told her I wasn’t mad. But I was. That was a half-gallon of milk wasted and two dollars gone. Even now, as an adult, just thinking about that—thinking about the choices you were given as a child that weren’t kid choices—makes me want to cry. ...

Q: You were 16 when you cooked your first batch of rock cocaine. What led you to do that?
A: Our water had been shut off because Big Mom couldn’t pay the bill. If your water is cut off social services is going to come and say it’s bad living conditions and take the kids out of there. Where I was was cool. I was with people who loved me. I didn’t want us to be split up so I was trying to be part of the solution. That meant bringing in money and getting the water turned back on. Once again that’s not a choice kids should have to make. I knew it was not right—cooking up rock. I knew I was contributing negatively to the community. But the water got put back on the same day. The reward was there. To go from wearing third generation hand-me-downs to wearing name brand everything—when you’re a kid that stuff matt

Guess I can’t blame her, well yes I can. Although for a white person to write a book on African American culture, all they need is a few hip hop cd’s, Menace to Society, maybe even the Wire (but I aint never seen that show) and maybe a week of listening to urban radio to have the language down pact. At least they pulled the book. But then again we all make mistakes, i mean who know black folks and how we live better than white folks.

What gets me is that it is easier for a white person, more accurately a Valley Girl that claims living the experiences of being black to get a book deal with a major imprint than an actual person like me – who lives and get “well your writing is unrealistic, no one wants to read about black men who think like philosophers.” True story. Sad thing was that she sold and sold. Guess this is just a simple pagan ritual, not for all but for some, who cant think or create in their own, sure she had creative writing classes, just like Pythagoras may have had a ruler, but neither of the two lived what they created.

Return to sender

I know in my heart that I worry about the sons and daughters and husbands and wives of those engaged in military combat. And I sincerely will never wish for such an experience for my son or daughter for I believe it is like Michelle Obama said, that they are the only ones really making a sacrifice for our country. I just wish that the government and military appreciated and understood such.

My work in prisons and with the homeless shows me too much. That for example, I get tiered and hurt at the same time that at least a third that I have come across were veterans of Dessert Storm and of recent wars. In fact it turns my stomach. But I try not to show it working with them. I wished that, and believed that my government is me, and that it would make all the considerations possible to make the return of these individuals admirable. Unfortunately, it appears, as under the surface this is not the case.

I have just come to find out that the Army Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker doesn’t have firm control of his administration. A few weeks ago, NPR ran a story reporting on a memo that advocated that the Army had told the Veterans Affairs Department not to assist soldiers with completing paper work that would challenge their disability ratings. Such paperwork can decide if a veteran will receive annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged from active duty.

Initially Schoomaker denied the allegations but latter recanted saying that at the time he did not have nor saw the memorandum. It just amazes me how the top dog of all Army medical affairs had no knowledge of the aforementioned. Either he is inept or ha a bum staff or worse, doesn’t read the material that comes cross his desk.

The memo was Dated March 31 and concerned the meeting held the day prior on March 30 at Fort Drum Army base in upstate New York. Last year around this time, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, Army Surgeon General and Commanding General of Army Medical Command, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, was forced to resign over similar concerns regarding providing services to veterans.

Some have suggested that the issue is completely economic, pointing to he notion that the more the Army has to shell out for veteran disability, the less money they have in their budget for other activities - humbug. In fact the current situation in trying to reduce benefits for Veterans started back when Caspar Weinberger served as Secretary of Defense. A March 25, 1985, memo from the DoD office of general counsel, provided the Defense health officials the legal ground to "restrain military disability ratings without a change in law."

Now I know that with the multiple battlefronts we have opened around the globe, that it is hard to deal with the number of soldiers wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, as a health professional, I know that the people under the big brass are competent, and only have in their heart to provide the best service possible for them and are working assiduously to do such. I just think it is ridiculous that the administration cannot meet the level of their zeal at servicing. Not having enough wheel chairs for example is not their fault, but that of those in command, for they should also know that such in itself for example is a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

I know my voice is limited, but I would like to say for the record, that treating anyone who serves in our military like an envelope without a stamp is foul. As if they (the DOD) just use up folks, and return them to sender as if their address is unknown. I figure if we have the resources to fight several wars, the we should, up front, have the resources avaliable to take care of veterans when they return, without question. Moreover, the resources in leadership to make sure this happens.

If this could be implemented, the we wouldnt have folks coming back not getting the help they require; folks like Louis Bressler, Kenneth Eastridge, and Bruce Bastien, who are charged with the murder of a fellow soldier, Army Spc. Kevin Shields - who had served two tours of duty in Iraq. Bressler, the trigger man, was reported to have been discharged for medical reasons with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. But that's another story. All i am saying is that it don't (im country) make no sense to live in a country where inmates get better medical treatment than our service personnel. This is America, no matter what your status is, we should get the best medical care, especially veterans.


THANKS 4 ALL THE LOVE FOLK, I HAVEN'T SLEPT AT ALL, BUT I HAD TO WRITE. 4 GIVE ME PLS. YAWL ARE GREAT.

I can’t fight so I talk shit

This will be a first. I will attempt to present subject matter without conjecture or invective. So here goes. Talk radio is a regular and if not, daily experience for me. Although being down here in Atlanta, my preference is limited to Sports Talk 790 the zone, Neal Boortz and NPR on WABE, I do read transcripts and occasionally listen to the broadcast I can receive without registering online.

I have noticed outside of NPR, and inclusive or Sports Talk, most of these folks just be talking shit (a mile a minute to quote George Clinton) out the sides of their necks. Take said example of Syndicated Talk Radio host Michael Savage. I have read that it is heard across approximately 350 or more stations and is preceded in listeners only By Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

After the I’m smarter than a fifth grader speech, I mean state of the union address by President George W. Bush, one of the topics covered was the Presidents proposal for 30 billion US $ in emergency AIDS relief for Africa. During the discussion, he engaged a caller.

From the transcript, the shows airdate was January 29, 2008. During his rant, Savage also stated, "See, we don't live in Africa where people settle arguments with machetes. We live in a country where we settle it with arguments. Something you apparently don't know anything about. What's the matter, cat got your tongue, my friend, Kojo?" After the call ended, Savage added:

"See, there you go. Couldn't use the machete so his mind went blank. There, that's what we got. There's multiculturalism for you. There's immigration for you. There's the new America for you. Bring them in by the millions. Bring in 10 million more from Africa. Bring them in with AIDS. Show how multicultural you are. They can't reason, but bring them in with a machete in their head. Go ahead. Bring them in with machetes in their mind.”

Michael Savage in my understanding is part of what is wrong with America. This is why other countries around the globe consider us arrogant and self-righteous. This is why we are perceived as being a bully as opposed to being humble. Mr. Savage doesn’t represent the Americans I know. His work isn’t hard, and for all I know, he may be a recovering drug addict as one of his talk radio colleagues.

I wish someone would give me a talk radio show, because I can talk shit as well as the next person, but I can also fight - meaning I would respect all callers as if they could fight as well. Too bad Kojo wasn't waitin for him a his car - but he probably has body guards.


NOTE: Wanted to thank COMMENTS FROM LEFTFIELD 4 the strong Shout out. CHK this blog when can.

The next generation

…and I am not speaking of star trek, I am talking about our own, and if we are to SAVE the aforementioned:

1] Stop smoking weed in front of your kids

2] Don’t curse around your kids or even worse curse at them.

3] Take that money from the clubs and bars and spend it on some piano or tap lessons or basketball

4] Turn them videos off and the radio on the morning and listen to NPR, sports talk, or suffer with the Disney radio (they good for teaching sentence structure and vocabulary).

5] If you are not working, do not put your children off with the baby sitter. Spend as much time with them as you can.

6] Stop fighting or beating on your woman (or man) in front of your children. They will suffer the most in the end. Violence is not the answer – least always.

7] Read to them all the time, and let the see you reading, especially newspapers each day.

8] When you can, sit at the table together and eat and talk

9] let them see honor, integrity and character by letting them see you live your life as such and by standing for what you believe and what is right.

i know im missing some, so all additional info is welcome, and thanks for the love folk. good lookn.