All Kaught Up

I got a ring
on a sure thing.
I walk with confidence and pride,
but confidence I've tried.
Ace Of Hearts to my sleeve
and a smile on my face
I enter.
The lights and smoke intoxicate
to invincibility.
Without need of thought
I'm all in
on a sucker's bet.
The dealer,
left smiling,
said,"Come again real soon"
I can take the House
"No son, the House will take you"
I got a ring
on another sure thing.

Tails up. Shoulders back.

In flipping channels I came across a show called, The Dog Whisper. Now there was this particular dog, Earl, that had no confidence. He was probably the weakest in his liter, so he was never able to get the confidence that he needed. This almost destroyed him.

This got me thinking about people. People need a healthy dose of ego to live. Without it, a person is rendered in their own personal hell. Think about going along with the rest of your life, never having had a relationship, or never doing what you've always wanted. With a healthy level of confidence, a person can live their life to the best of potential. Confidence allows a person to be crazy enough to live life. If a fireman lacks confidence in himself, how can he trust himself to run into a building when the foundation is ready to collapse. With confidence, that same man can trust himself to do what he must. You should also be strong enough to let a blow to your confidence not slow you down. Instead of resorting to self pity, one must love everything about themselves and change what they don't.

Back to the dog Earl. The Dog Whisper forced the dog's tail up and made him walk into a pack of dogs. This allowed a bit of confidence, however forced, to follow. With this, Earl was proud and filled his "Puppy Potential". So walk into a crowd with your head up and command attention. People want to feel like you are worthy of their time. So show them they are lucky to be in their presence. Life is too short to live it wishing you were in another. If you don't like something about yourself, fix it. Just don't be the one to put limits on yourself. Regrets will occur, but a life without confidence is sure to go unnoticed.

Charity for the Charitable

Everybody goes to her for dish,
but within, is vacant for a wish.
She always has a story to tell,
excluding facts of her own private hell.
She throws her hat up;
she is complete.
As it tumbles down,
she knows defeat.
Hiding marks on her face,
knowing pain cannot erase.
She sits awake in bed,
running through her mind, is what's been said.
It's been a while
since she felt allowed to smile.
Forget her.
She knows what she has done;
traded her life, for four years of fun.

Do not throw baked goods

I was at Universal Studios the other day, and for those who haven't been there, here is the setting: There is this giant escalator. There are four of them in a row, separating each one is a cement walkway. On the side of each escalator there is a walkway lining its way to the top. I was with my friend and he got a cookie, we start to embark on our first escalator going up.

First Escalator

My friend is eating his cookie and we see this one guy trying to prove it to himself that he can walk up the stairs. We came to the conclusion that it would be funny to throw a cookie crumb at this person, I never claimed to be mature. He wouldn't do it, so I take the crumb into my own hands and I throw it. I immediately look away and we have a good chuckle.

Second Escalator

A guy makes his way to the top and confronts me. He asked me if I threw a cookie at his brother. I had to be honest, the jig was up. So I said that I did and, then I apologized for it. Then, expecting it to be over, and being terribly wrong, he says," Well, that's not cool man, you cant do that to my brother". With nothing else to say, I said, "you're right ". Hoping to evade this crazy experience, my friend and I head to the next escalator.

Third Escalator

He catches up to us, obviously looking for a fight. He starts going in to," I'm from Hawaii man, we don't pull that shit there." I so desperately wanted to point out just how stupid this sounded, I have heard to beware of guys from Compton, East LA, and Brooklyn, but never Hawaii. However, I bit my tongue and kept trying to ignore him, and at this point all the whole population of the escalator is staring at me. At this point I already apologized; there wasn't anything left to say. At the top of the escalator he shoves my back, barely causing me to sway, but I knew what this was a prelude to. So I say to him sternly," Do not touch me", and I continue to walk. Approaching the final escalator he full on pushes me from behind and I stumble a couple steps and through my hands up as if to say,"what the hell". Saved by the bell, an employee sees this and gets in front of him, separating us. We take this as our time to head up the last escalator.

Fourth Escalator

The employee does his best to keep him away from me on the escalator, but he gets past him and starts making his way to me. At this point he had watery eyes caused from sheer anger, and he was trying to tell me off. The employee told this lunatic," if you have a problem, go to the security center and they can settle it." He says the only thing I didn't want him to say," No, I can settle this right here." The escalator reached summit, and I start walking briskly, hoping to avoid a brawl in front of Back to the Future: The Ride. Then I realized that I should hold up for my friend, so I go off to the side, bracing myself for attack. My friend caught up and walking behind him was Hawaii-thug. He approaches me and says that we are cool and he grabs my hand and pulls in for a pat on the back.

First of all, I don't see why we were suddenly cool, but I rolled with it and continued walking. Second of all, I know that I did initiate it with my baked good throwing, but was that response completely necessary? Should I have hit him when he pushed me? Possibly. Would I have ended up being beaten up or kicked out of the park? Yet another possibility. There are honestly these people who just can't wait for a reason to fight. I always was told this, but never believed it. So morale of this Story Of Lunacy: Watch out for people looking for a rumble, they won't last long in life if they piss off the wrong person. And: Do not throw baked goods.

The way they were

Lets say that, god forbid, someone close to you passes away. Then, imagine all of the pain you might feel. Then, what if someone who never even met that person tried to console you by telling you how great that person was. Is this really a positive thing? To me, a person trying to pretend they knew the person you spent a lifetime trying to understand, is just insulting.

So, is it any different when a celebrity dies? When a famous person dies, is their really any reason to think of it as a tragedy? You can be sad that a fellow human has lost his/her life, but in most cases, you never even saw that person. You became enamored with an image on a silver screen. In my opinion, it insults the person because they were more than the image they projected. A person worth mourning is a person who should be above what they showed an audience.

Just because a person is deceased, doesn't mean we have to have the knee-jerk response to say they were saints. It may honor a person more if you love and remember them as they were.

I'm Black, I'm White

I write this blog with the utmost sensitivity and enough political correctness to fill a room. And, to quote from Jerry McGuire, "I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE".

First, let me throw something at you. Look at BET (Black Entertainment Television), if there was WET (White Entertainment Television), there would be riots in the streets for days. Staying on the TV note, there is a channel called Starz InBlack where they show movies with black actors. Now I love all movies, but why do we have to have a whole different channel set aside for African Americans. Right now I am looking at the schedule for Black Starz and the upcoming programs are: "Kinky Boots", "Nora's Hair Salon", "Repos", and (the epitome of intellectual films) Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. To me this is an insult that they would only air C-rated movies that lasted 4 days in theaters, to later be showed as a symbol of a race.

Does this really represent the height of black pride? If we insist on having this channel, then can't we debut brilliant actors like Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, or Denzel Washington? Not one of these award winning actors is on this channel. But of course, watching Marlon Wayans hiding from the law by pretending to be a baby is so much more stimulating.

To quote the wonderful Martin Luther King Jr., "I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law." Then why do we still separate ourselves from other races? It seems that we need to have a stronger middle ground in our media when concerning race, we are sending out the wrong message.

In People We Trust

It is always terrifying to realize that the people you once surrounded yourself with are not what you thought. You may grow accustomed to a certain way of life, so you fossilize the way you remember that person into an idealistic image. People are changing constantly and are influenced by their surroundings, so we can't depend on them to not change. We all do this because it is easier to rely on the past, then to depend on the future. This view of the world may seem pessimistic, but is the sad reality that you just may be the only stable factor in a world speeding by you.

It is naive to believe that a significant person or persons in your life will always remain. The more we try to depend on someone or something the more the universe throws us back in our place. We need to learn to be comfortable in our own skin and not put everything we have into something we've grown accustomed to.

Now this doesn't mean that a you can't love or trust someone, all this means is that we need to always be prepared for change. It just so happens that the last change you expect, is in the people we decide to invest in.It may seem like a tough pill to swallow, but eventually we all come to the same conclusion, one way or another.

I'm as mad as hell

I'm as mad as hell at:

People who spend their time to waste others. Example, people who send out useless chain mail. What do they exactly hope to accomplish with this act of annoyance? Fame. Glory. Everybody knowing your name. Write something meaningful that people will remember.

Anyone who puts themselves in a group. Bros, hoes, bro-hoes, etc. They are a sad substitute to actually having to find who you are.

People who don't know what they are talking about, yet insist on joining in on a political debate. Either open up a newspaper, or close your mouth. To answer your question, NO, "Bush is gay" is not a valid argument.

(Yes, I will divide my audience) People who do drugs to escape their life. If your life sucks, then fix it. And if you are doing it for any other reason, refer back to paragraph 2. People need to work hard to find out what makes them "high". Call it corny, but I honestly believe that finding what makes you happy is a better pursuit. Drugs don't work.

(And, sadly, the most common) People who never live their life. People who go through the motions as if they have a second chance. Just wake up and realize that every person, even the ones on this list, all deserve to be happy. At the end of each day, what did you really do?

A long way to go

Women's rights in Iran have fluctuated over the last century.

Currently, women in Iran make up 12% of the Iranian parliament. There also has been many victories in the courtroom for women who are looking for divorce. Crimes against women are taken very seriously, and enforced with harsh punishment. Just recently a man got a lashing sentence for sexually harassing a women. Also many women hold positions such as a taxi driver and law enforcement positions. One Iranian women was quoted as,"When there is equal opportunity, we have proven the women can in fact be superior to men, unfortunately this is not something our men readily accept".

But women are still being denied into popular soccer stadiums. Just recently, at a film awards ceremony, an actress kissed the forehead of a male director. She caused serious controversy and her career will never be the same.

A women has never served as a president or a judge in Iran. After a divorce, a women can never gain full guardianship of her children, under any circumstance.

President George W. Bush singled out several countries that still suppress women's rights, among them was: Iran, North Korea and Burma.

Iran has covered some ground when it comes to women's rights, but we remain to have inequality for women there. We still have a long way to go.

Beyond the Veil

Beyond the veil,
the newly formed earth is shaped around me.
I enter nothing,
to become something.
Without remembering an instant,
I cannot forget a moment.
Born with total knowledge,
waiting for the world to claim it.

Beyond the veil,
her eyes show nothing but promise.
I pledge mine,
as she hers.
With hesitance,
but without regret; I do.
Tonight and the rest of our lives,
we are complete.

Beyond the veil,
the departure from life.
Easiest for you,
and hardest for them.
My time,
to remind someone of life.
Apparition to the celestial skys,
beyond the veil.

The 10 Things I Learned from Pulp Fiction

1) Don't run into a pawn shop unprepared.

2) Always know how to give an adrenaline shot.

3) If you hit Marcellus Wallace with your car, keep driving.

4) In the fifth, your ass goes down, and it should stay down.

5) If Mia asks you to dance, you better dance.

6) If you are not romantically involved with a girl, don't give her a foot massage.

7) If you are ever in a sticky situation, call Winston Wolfe.

8) If you are pointing a gun at someone you do not intend to shoot, put the safety on, trust me.

9) Always keep a valued watch in a safe place, at all costs.

10) If the Gimp is sleeping, don't wake him up.

* Also, don't tell Jimmy how good his coffee is... he knows.

Going to the mattresses

Going to the mattresses

" Going to the mattresses", is a phrase used in the Godfather to depict going to war. In the Godfather, it never turned out how they hoped. Corleones made a hit on a family, then that family kills the Don's son. They try and get even and it goes round and round until they are left with nothing...unless someone calls a truce.

Unfortunately, this applys to real life too. As important it is to always be right, you can't always go to the mattresses when you face a challenge. The hardest thing to do is walk away knowing you made the right choice. Recently I faced a similar experience when I felt the compelled need to go to the mattresses, but I resisted. It is hard to fight back your overwhelming pride; but often times you can come out the other end unharmed by doing that.
So, if you feel the stakes are getting to high, you need to know when to fold. Because you never know when you'll pick up a flush.