L.O.V.E
20 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Random Rants
Is this not the cutest lil’ face you’ve EVER seen???
No..it’s not mine. Sad face. Very SAD face.
I’m definitely NOT an “dog person”…actually, I’m not an “animal person” period. I’m afraid of anything that crawls, barks, meows, spins webs, buzz, chirp…you get my drift. HOWEVER, I’ve had the recent sudden urge to have this Maltese pup. I could love him. He would be able to do everything but get in my bed (I draw the line here…dog hair on my sheets is a no-no). I’m sure he costs more than I can afford right now, but damn, he’s sooooo cute! I’d exhaust my bank account for him I think….
Ignorant Funniness
10 Aug 2010 1 Comment
in Uncategorized
Normally, I shy away from silly youtube videos with no purpose. HOWEVER, two videos have been brought to my attention and I feel its my duty to share them with you all. Both are super ignorant, and I wouldn’t recommend you let people actually witness you viewing them…but I’m sure you’ll have a nice chuckle in the privacy of your OWN “special place”.
*Note- I only watch these vids with two people in particular….both are super silly like myself…they don’t judge me. So, if you must watch with a partner, make sure they’re more ignorant than you. Lol (j/k…but not really….bbm serious face)
Enjoy!
Love(s) Of My Life
08 Aug 2010 5 Comments
in Uncategorized
I’m a lucky girl for soooo many different reasons, and my friends are definitely one of the reasons! These girls are there for me through it all…the good, the bad, the drunk, the CRAZY (cuz ya’ll know I’m a nut)…just everything! And where would I be without my daily dose of “real-talk” from the realest women in my life…these are more than my “friends”, these are my sisters.
**There are TWO besties that are not featured because their pictures wouldn’t load correctly!! GRRRRRRR (I tried 1000 times, promise!!). Rowy, you know I love you dearly!! My mentor…my homegirl…my spiritual advisor. Kia, you are my sister for LIFE!! We are the same damn person sometimes..lol..
Hey girlies!! Love You. Smooches.
Qarib’s Corner- Post 2- *New*
08 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized
My Most Favorite Kind of Prisoner
My job brings me into day-to-day contact with ex-offenders who are being released from their correctional plantations. Duties of my job consist of assisting recently-released ex-offenders in the achievement of their financial and residential stability in the community – the implementation of the so-called community-level “reentry” leg of the prison sentence. The provision to these individuals of job-search, apartment-search , family-reintegration, monetary, medical, spiritual, political, environmental, intellectual, parental, relational…you get the point… needs is my role in their lives. Needless to say, I encounter the full-gambit of prisoner identities and personality types- of prisoner philosophies, cosmogonies, and spiritualities in my day to day dealings. Curiously, I have developed a most peculiar habit of studying, of observing and marveling at the vast array of idiosyncratic offender personality-types who enter my care. Sheer boredom has induced me to compile an anthropological review of my research findings in the most scientific way of human study possible of the range of prisoner identities encountered, my favorite FOUR types to be exact.
Homo-institutionalizus is the first species on my list. Here is the species of prisoner who can “do jail” standing on one leg. This mammalian order of being is abnormally receptive to behavioral dictations of the most rudimentary type, such as to “go and have a seat by first bending you knees” or “go outside and smoke one cigarette” or “blow your nose by exhaling vigorously through your nostril.” It has even been necessary on occasion to remind a member of this species to “lift your left leg first and then lift your right so that you may walk forward.” Dictations issued by correctional officers governing the most elementary of human behaviors (e.g., blink, swallow, chew, sneeze, inhale…and now exhale) in concert with the circumstance of total external control over the species’ environment (over conditions of temperature, room-lighting, cell-block entry and exit, meal times, food consumption, entertainment, “yard” time, yard activities etc.) have converged in such a way as to render this muscular automaton functionally handicapped in his behavioral mechanisms. Also note that the mere occurrence of a single encounter of frustration or a denial of opportunity (not getting the very first job applied for after a decade-long prison bid) will cause this species to throw in the towel in and make a request to the powers-that-be to “send me back to prison.”
The second captured species is Homo-fuckupus. This mammal is the most akin to the homo-sapien class. In fact, no evidence exists as yet to suggest any substantive physiological, cognitive, emotive, or behavioral dissimilarity between homo-fuckupus and homo-sapien. The homo-fuckupus follows instructions to a moderate extent, is a realist, and doesn’t want to work but consents to the need to do same. Stable in demeanor, this species may or may not have a girlfriend and tends to father one or two children.
Then there is the Homo-ra-TARD. The unfortunate interplay between genetics, family circumstances, living conditions, and society has nearly ushered this guy into cell-block D. This is the guy who spent most or all of his school career in special education. The doors to his self-contained classes in public school were always kept tightly sealed so as to protect mainstream pupils from unleashing his rage and extraterrestrial strength. The only freshman in the school who could probably hurl the principal a city-block-long distance was he. Limited parental involvement, school pigeon-holing, poverty, genetic defects, cognitive deficiencies, ostracism, and emotional deficits have rendered this guy into a self-serving menace to society whose survival strength and singular hope for independence lies in peddling petty drugs for a living. His difficulty with comprehension, language deficiencies, attentive deficits, and shortened concentration skills makes unfeasible the possibility of higher education, thereby enhancing the attraction of a life of crime for this guy as the only hope for independence and self-preservation.
Finally, and not nearly least of interest, is what I call (and love to observe) the Homo-dumbassdus. This self-educated, philosophizing, ex-offender-turned-moralizer is effortlessly the apparent intelligentsia of the prison community. Homo-dumbassdus’ ghetto mannerisms and frequent uses of “pacific” when “specific” is meant is but a prelude to the richness of his new-fangled insight and prison-inherited education which he is ever-eager to spew upon the world. Homo-dumbassdus is vocal about his devaluation of college education as a mere step in the agenda of the powers-that-be to “misedumcate” the masses and to sustain the status quo. Possessing superior insight into the stock market, economy, race-relations, oppression, repression, the Great Depression, history, psychology, philosophy, and any other academic subject broached, Homo-dumbassdus usually resorts to increased volume of voice to “prove” his point and to propagate his excusive explanations for why he fails to take control of his destiny. Also, there is a tendency for Homo-dumbassdus to concentrate within the Hebrew Isrealite population. Undeniably homo-dumbassdus’ frustration and perspectives on the agenda of the powers-that-be will cause him to re-offend. His hyperintellectualism and megalomania often masks an underlying animosity toward the more successful members of his gender/race/age-bracket, as they are constant reminders of the failures in his theories on oppression to justify his lack of personal empowerment. He could typically be spotted donning his prison-issued bifocals with the one-inch thick frames and will stand up in front of any listening audience of 2-or-more persons to proclaim his treatise and views on whatever is the topic at hand.
Hopefully this blog can serve a dear reader as an orientation guide of sorts into a safer navigation of prisoner personality types so that they may maneuver more fruitfully amidst the species while carousing the streets of inner-city urban America .
Pet Peeves
05 Aug 2010 1 Comment
in Random Rants
There are certain things that I just cannot stand when it comes to cell phone etiquette. I guess these would be considered my technological pet peeves of sorts. This includes phone voice-on-voice action as well as texting and BBMing.
*Note- I don’t mind the obvious things, like shortening the spellings of some words or using “slang”. That’s stuff I do and loooove, for times sake. But there are just a few things that make me want to throw my phone against the wall!!
I Hate It When…
1. People text/ bbm and use homophones incorrectly, e.g..” Their aren’t any batteries in the remote control” or “I love my family, there so funny!”. HUH?! Maybe this is the “teacher” in me, but I need for you to know how to use certain words in the correct context!!
2. People do not use punctuation AT ALL, e.g..” Busy later”. Ok, WTF. Are you asking me if I’m busy later? Are you telling me you’re busy and you’ll talk to me later? What?! What are you saying to me??
3. You put someone on hold for another call and before you can even say “hello” to the new caller, the old caller has already hung up the phone. YOU DIDN’T EVEN WAIT 2 SECONDS DUDE!!! Ugh.
4. That same person that hung up the phone after NOT holding on does NOT pick up the phone when you call them right back.
5. You’re texting/ bbming someone and then you pick up the phone to call them and they don’t answer! Why are you ignoring me? We were just bbming!! On the flip side…isn’t it equally AS annoying when someone is bbming you and YOU don’t feel like talking and then THEY call?? Lol
6. People who you KNOW live on their phone insists that they didn’t get your call/ text! You are lying!! You are alllllways on your phone, so how could you NOT have known I was calling??!
7. You’re sitting next to someone (hopefully of the female persuasion) with long nails and they’re texting and their damn nails are making all sorts of “tip-tap-tapping” noises that are reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard.
Qarib’s Corner- Post 1
04 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Random Rants
The Death of Decorum
Yesterday, I overheard in conversation a testimony so poignant, so shameful, as to confirm in my minds eye beyond the shadow of scientific doubt my lingering suspicion that the world as my guardians had once portrayed it to me and as I had come to know, understand, and expect it, the world where couth and tact and grace in interpersonal relations reigned supreme, the world where pride in the public eye was the order of the day, had long since expired. In the wake of this now-mythical decorous world lies a hollow shell of our so-called civilization where personal standards of ‘pride,’ ‘reputation,’ ‘decency,’ and ‘decorum’ no longer suffice to motivate and to direct human action. It seems we are now in the full throes of an era where beings with primal instincts presently inhabit fully-evolved human bodies. No, I’m NOT talking about a ‘Lord of the Rings’ episode. Young black America is the source of this discourse (hehe…i rhyme 
).
However, before I unleash the actual transcript of the conversation that confirmed my worst fears, before I unveil the conversation the sheer volume of which the speaker’s voice rendered a public spectacle for all to eavesdrop and bemoan, a word on the context and setting is in order to sufficiently facilitate the reader’s intimate embrace of my grief over this decadence of civility as I have come to appreciate it… so that the reader may grasp the full ENORMITY of the speaker’s conversational disclosures (misery does adore company after all, eh…). Now on to actual factuals.
A crowded, quiet Newark-bound NJ Transit Train car at 3:32p EST was the setting of this tale. The actor: a 23-27 year-old relatively cute, shapely, apparently-normal (read: sane) black female on a boost mobile chirp handheld (you may already have begun to prep yourself for the worst at the mention of a ‘boost’ phone…who uses boost in the age of nextel/sprint *smh). A sixty- or so –person random assortment of black, Asian, white, and Latin male and female passengers of varying ages and socioeconomic statuses (from what my once-over of the crowd could discern) and I was the audience. The atrocity: the contents of the boisterous conversation our actor was having with her baby “favva” (*bbm dead-ass serious face*) relaying the cause of their break-up and the reoccurrence of these same issues in her current relationship with a newer nameless ruffian.
Actor: *CHIRDIRP (my rendition of the chirp sound) “Yo, I don’t understand what dis nigga problem is? Like, how he s’posed to be my boyfriend but he don’t wanna do shit for me or for my child. Like, What da fuck? He just sit in dafuckin house all day and I’m getting fed up wit dis nigga homie.”
BF: “Word?? I’m sayin, you don’t talk to him about it like?” (the new code of the hood is punctuating all sentences with “like” …for the exurbanites among us)
Actor: “I tried dat. I mean like, I understand bein lazy n shit. I’m a lazy ass bitch but dis nigga is SUPER lazy. Like he don’t even wanna FUCK me no more. Where da fuck dey do dat at?” Keep in mind: the train car is SILENT, and ol’ girl is VERY LOUD .
BF: “Wow.”
Actor: “Even YOU ..I mean, even you aint withhold da dick… AND I STOPPED WASHIN MY ASS I used to be so god damn lazy t!! Yu feel me? ”
BF: “Hell Yea”
BF and Actor: “Ahhhhhhahahahahaha”
PAUSE.
Hold the fuck up…WHAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT???!!!! Now, a few years back, the “dick” reference made so stridently in public conversation might have been ample cause for a spike in my systolic blood pressure. But owing in part or in full to the steady decline throughout the years of censorship in American broadcast media (e.g., newspaper, television, radio, etc.), THAT reference was (for me) not even the most disheartening part of the conversation. However, what immediately arrested my respiration and fucked up my focus was the part of the convo where shorty admitted “I STOPPED WASHING MY ASS”. I mean, REALLY dear? Has our decency, has our public decorum, sank THAT low as a race and as a species to where private confessions of‘ TMI ’ (too much info) statements are made so boisterously and matter-of-factly in public conversation? I mean, have we devolved morally into such an abymal state to where the delineation is now invisible between things personal and things private? Is TRIFE the new COOL ? I mean….WTFUCK. Somebody PLEASE tell me my conclusions aint so! But until that time comes, I will begin my preparations early on locating a burial plot for my old friend Decorum.
If We Do The Unthinkable…Would It Make Us Look Crazy??
03 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
All my single ladies (all my single ladies)…now put cha hands up!
Ok ladies, let’s indulge in a crash course of Flirting 101. My homeboy, affectionately known as “T Money Bags” to me (he’s gonna kill me), says that the BEST way for a woman to attract a man is to do the unthinkable…
Smile. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. The sexiest thing a woman can do is simply smile, whether it’s from across the room or if you’re standing side by side. A lot of times, we ladies stand around in a group with our girls and we’re smiling and laughing and having a great time. Then we catch the eye of a cutie and we immediately put on our “sexy” face, which 9 times out of 10, translates as “mean” to guys. Refer back to “The Golden Rule” blog…men and women work on two TOTALLY different systems. They don’t understand us and we don’t understand them. But the one thing that is universal is the ever-so-polite-but-very-sexy smile. The best way to start off is with a nice little smirk that turns into a very coy-like toothy type smile. Nothing cheesy and eerily freakish…remember, we’re trying to score.
