I-Dolls

I-Dolls

I was talking to my sister one day while watching television, must have been a basketball game because there was an advertisement for Lebron James and my sister said that she like him, he was a good guy. Always ready to mess with my sister, I told her that I didn’t know she knew him that well. Then she proclaimed that she saw him in another commercial doing charity work, and that he was laughing and having a good time. “Don’t you know that part of his NBA contract says that he ‘Has To…’ do a certain amount of charity work, and maybe he was smiling because the camera was on him, maybe on the inside he was thinking, ‘I Hate This Shit! I wish I was at home with my family!’” “No, no, he’s a really good guy!”
How many of You people feel the same way? Do You think You know a person just because You like a person’s “Public Persona”, and that’s all it is, a perception, the mask they wear for the cameras? When You identify with characters in a movie or on t.v. do You confuse the actual person with a character they may play? Do You get surprised when famous people do something You wouldn’t expect and think to Yourself, “I would have never thought they would do something like that!”? Does watching tmz, or reading tabloid magazines make You feel like You know these people even more? I feel sorry for You!
I hope You understand that the majority of You will never, ever know these people, and that’s all they are, people. No matter how much money, fame, or power they have, they all have to wipe their asses when they shit, and that makes them No Better than You or I. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons most of them gain money, and fame is because of Your attention, and if You stop paying attention, most of them fade, while their art remains. You have got to learn to separate the artist from the art. Think about it…
We all thought we knew O.J. Simpson until he killed his wife! We thought we knew Michael Jackson until we found out he was molesting young boys! Shit, You thought You knew the catholic church until You found out priests had molested kids and the church covered it up! You thought You knew kobe bryant until he date-raped that girl, and I’m sure his wife thought she know him before she found out he was a cheat! Many ignorant laker fans out there thought they knew the girl that accused him! For all You know, You’re favorite personality loves to beat on their spouses and kids, or smokes crack, or likes sex with 12-year-olds, or rape or killed someone!
If You spent as much time and energy trying to get our government to give the people Free Universal Healthcare we would have it already! Think about how many people vote for american idol, or dancing with the stars, what if those people gave their voices to a worthy cause instead of a distraction? And that’s all it is, A Distraction. Like the Wizard said, “Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!” Well who’s the man behind our curtain, and what doesn’t he want us to see? When it comes to grifters, con-artists, they’ll tell You, the bigger the con, the bigger the distraction one needs. Now think about the television, movie, and media machine, and how people are so distracted that the rich (who actually control the media machine) were able to pull off these real-estate and banking scams that have put our pyramid scheme of an economy in turmoil! You, I, We are so distracted trying to mimic rich people’s public persona, that we have no idea what the actual person is doing! What other scam are they devising to con us with next…while we sit back and watch tmz!!!

Concerning Hip-Hop…#1

Concerning Hip-Hop…#1

I Love Hip-Hop! That is the simplest way I can explain it. The first time I heard it, Slick Rick & Dougie Fresh’s “Lodi Dodi” was the first song I ever listened to, was like the first time I took my first hit of weed…I was hooked. Yet while I smoked weed, I didn’t smoke it all day, but Hip-Hop, I wanted it pumped into my ear drums 24/7! Listening to cats like KRS-1 & Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy and The Jungle Brothers talk so passionately about their roots and their culture made me want to go out and learn about my own history and culture! Even though I am 100% completely proud of my history and culture, it didn’t fill me the way Hip-Hop did, so I accepted Hip-Hop as my culture. Which is why I’m completely disappointed with the state of Hip-Hop.
I think the one thing that disappoints me the most, is the “urban” clothing industry. First, I want to say before anything, is that I believe ALL Phat Farm, Rocawear, G-Unit Clothing, B.B.C., Apple Bottoms and ANY clothes made from a Hip-Hop artist should be manufactured in the ghettos of Los Angeles…Detroit…Chicago…Baltimore…New York! EVERY stitch of Sean John Should Read, “Made In Brooklyn!” But they don’t, they all read made in China…or Mexico…or India...or some other country with no real labor laws! Yet they charge you as if it was actually made in the U.S.A. What amazes me is that most, if not all, Hip-Hop artists come from poor areas, projects, or ghettos. A lot claim to have sold and/or used drugs. Then after they used Hip-Hop to get rich, they become the exploiters of poor people in a ghetto on the other side of the map. You got 14- and 15-year-olds in a factory sewing clothes instead of on a corner selling dope! I know one company is called rocafella, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like him. How can you follow the same corporate blueprint designed to keep poor people poor? You’re like the slave who mimics the master because he doesn’t know any better! Got you addicted to money, fame, and the illusion of power like a two-bit crack addict! Hip-Hop can take back the ghettos, here and around the world, whenever it wants to, because the ghettos are listening, but someone convinced these cats to follow along with the rules, instead of creating their own.
I’ve read many stories about, and read interviews with a lot of Hip-Hop artists, and in many, they claim to have looked at the ghetto around them, or at the drugs they were selling, and thought to themselves, “Doesn’t anyone know how fucked up it is around here? Doesn’t anybody care?” Well right now, there is a 15-year-old kid sewing up a pair of ugly ass jeans, and he’s thinking, “Who wants this shit? Doesn’t anyone know what’s going on around here? Doesn’t anybody care?”

History or His Story?

History or His Story?
So I was talking to my 17-year-old niece and I was asking her about her studies at school and what she planned to do when she finished high school. She said the usual things that she thinks she’s supposed to say, and then she proclaimed that she wanted to learn Spanish when she got to college. I inquired why she was now interested in learning the language when she hadn’t been before. She sadly told me that she was tired of how people who do speak Spanish treat her when they find out that she doesn’t speak Spanish, they make her feel ashamed. Hearing this, I was taken back to bitter memories of my youth, and I instantly felt sympathy for the young one, and anger flashed red in my mind. I recalled all the instances I had been asked, “What kind of Mexican are you?”, or “how can you call yourself Mexican when you don’t even speak the language?” Older people, upon finding out I didn’t speak Spanish, would always look at me like I took a shit in my hand and offered them a taste. Then I would have to hear about how sorry they felt for me. Even as a 10-year-old child I wanted to hurt these people, leave scars so they would remember my anger, for they all tried to imply that my mother was a bad mom for not teaching me Spanish, and that pissed me off more than anything!
So I asked my niece, “Do you know what language we spoke before we spoke Spanish? What language was spoken in Mexico before the Spanish arrived?” She of course did not know. I told her that her great-grandfather used to speak the language when he was drunk, and only when he was drunk because he was taught to be ashamed of it, taught to be ashamed of who he truly was! She just stared at me wide-eyed. I then asked her, “Do you know how they taught us the language?” Again she didn’t know. I told her that the Spanish soldiers would ask the Aztec children questions, and if they answered in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, the soldiers would start cutting things off, a finger or a hand. If the child was unable to speak the Spanish language, the tongue was usually cut out after the head was chopped off! Our ancestors were raped and tortured into speaking the language these people are so proud of.
Once I learned the history of my culture, the true history, nobody ever made me feel ashamed ever again. Any time anyone would try, I would simply ask them the same questions I asked my niece. 99% of the people I talked to were ignorant of their own culture, and I would always ask, “What kind of Mexican doesn’t know his own history?” Spanish is not our original language; our original language is almost gone and the people who do speak the language are treated like dirt in their own land! If you believe in hell, than the Spanish conquistadors are burning there and they are laughing their asses off, because not only did they conquer the Aztec nation, but they have completely erased our original culture and replaced it with their own. A “Matrix”, in some form, really does exist! It’s like one of those hologram pictures in the mall, the ones you have to stare at for a while before you can actually see the real picture. If you look long enough, hard enough, at the world around you, you will see it! But then again, I know people who can stare for hours and never see what’s right in front of their faces!

How True Was My Freedom To Choose?

Of course one of the first things I chose to question was my freedom of religion. I was taught that the reason the first people came over from england was for freedom of religion. Now when I think of freedom of religion, true freedom of religion, I imagine someone actually educating me on religion first. Someone teaches me about all the different forms of Christianity, someone teaching me about Judaism, someone educating me about the Muslim faith, teaching me Buddhism, and Hinduism, and atheism and every other religion. Then letting me go about to choose the religion that I felt was right for me. That is True Freedom of Religion. But that is not what really goes on in this country! It seems that some form of Christianity is pushed on us from the beginning. For me it started with Christmas!
As a child first becoming aware of the world, of course I wanted to know everything about the magical day when I was given gift after gift from Santa Claus for being on the nice list. As I inquired more and more about Christmas, it eventually led to the stories of Jesus, yet it seemed that his true words were downplayed, and his “miracles” were gloriously overstated. The next thing you know, I’m sitting in church and it’s being drilled into my head that it’s a mortal sin, a breaking of one of the holy commandments, to believe in another god or religion, for god is a jealous god. By the time I went out and learned that there are other religions, they didn’t stand a chance, because to show interest in one or all of them is a sin! My choice was chosen for me before I had a chance to view my options. If a child growing up in the hills of China is raised as a Buddhist all his life and never hears of Christianity (Yes It’s Possible, the world does not revolve around Christianity), is this child condemned to hell through no fault of his own? What kind of religion would consider this child a sinner? I thought the basis for all religion was Love!
Now ask yourself, did you really have True Freedom of Religion, or did you just follow along with what your parents taught you? If you have children, are you offering them True Freedom of Religion, or are you making the same mistakes passed down from generation to generation? If you think I’m attacking your religion, I’m not, I’m attacking mine! If you have strong confidence in your faith, no attack will ever make you waver from it, and no education or enlightenment can make you falter. Only those who feel insecure with religion, those who have reasonable doubts with what they have been taught, who have had faith pushed on them instead of finding it naturally; these people are easily offended because there is no backbone to their belief, so differing beliefs and opinions seem to challenge them.
I feel that the religion I was taught did me more harm than good, so I let it go! I let go of organized religion completely, and it wasn’t until I did that I felt completely free! I’m able to educate myself about religion and see where they are alike and where they are different. I’m able to take enlightenment and not feel threatened by a different way. I can choose to leave the bad and take only what applies to me, in my life. I’m a little bit Christian, a little bit Buddhist, a little bit Muslim, a little bit of a heathen, and a whole lot human! Regardless of what religion you practice, it’s that last thing, being human, which connects us all. Before we’re Christian, before we’re Buddhist, before we’re Muslim, before we’re Hindu, before we learn anything, We Are Human Beings First, and we are all as one!

It's All About Choice!

I first started thinking that a lot of the things I had learned in my life could be wrong the day my sister brought home a black boyfriend. Until that day, I had No Idea that my Mom was a racist. I remember in kindergarten, the librarian at my school was a black lady named Mrs. Williams, and she was a friend of my Moms. I remember going shopping and having lunch with this lady and my Mom on many occasions. I remember loving every book Mrs. Williams ever gave me to read. So the day my sister brought home a black boyfriend, the words that came out of my Moms mouth was a complete and utter shock to me. One thing that I cannot stand is racism, to me it is nothing but pure ignorance, and here I am finding out that my own Mom is one of the “ignorant”. It almost changed the way I thought about my Mom, not the way I felt, nothing I learned could make me love my Mom less, but it definitely almost changed the way I thought about her…until she explained. She told us that she would never apologize for being a racist, that she had learned it from her mother. There was nobody in this world that my Mom respected more than her Mother, my Grandmother, who died when I was five. My Mom held on to every memory and lesson that she learned from her Mom tightly, like holding on to roller coaster handle-bars. Some of these lessons happened to be racist. What my Mom told me next has stuck in my head, and I would never pry it out. She went on to explain that although she would never be remorseful for her racist feelings, something inside her told her it would be wrong if she passed these thoughts on to her children, so she made a conscious decision Not To! This is one of the biggest decisions ever made for me in my life, for I am so far from being a racist that I no longer believe in race, but that’s another discussion. My Mom realized that something that had been taught to her as a child, by the person she most respected, was wrong, and although she chooses not to change her feelings, she chose to end it by not passing it on to her children! My Mom explains to me that she is the way she is because she learned it from her Mom, and I always got the feeling that it was a way in which she could still connect with her. One day I pressed my Mom by telling her that her Mom had passed away some time ago, and that if she was racist, it was now her choice to be so. She one day made a choice not to pass racism on to her children, and she also chooses to keep those thoughts in her head. It’s all a choice. She chose to follow her Moms ways, she chose to accept the realization that it was wrong, and she then chose not to pass it on. What could I have learned that may be wrong and what are the other possibilities? The possibilities open up as soon as we choose to see them. That’s why it is imperative for us to Question All That Is Questionable! It’s All About Choice!

aSsOUL Is Here!

Before reading this, one must first be able to admit to themselves the possibility that everything that they have learned could possibly be wrong! I’m not asking you to admit that what you have learned is wrong, only admit in the possibility. The only thing we should be committed to is possibilities. Often times the things we learn early on become locked into our beliefs. Once you believe, truly believe, you give that belief power over you. You lock yourself in a cell and you give the belief the key. Once you are willing to admit that everything that you believe in may be wrong, then, and only then will infinite possibilities open up to you. One thing I know for sure, and it frustrates the hell out of me, is that I could never know everything. No one can ever truly know everything. Realizing that every man is limited to finite amounts of knowledge, one also realizes that no man is ever truly smarter than another. So even the most respected teachers should always be kept at eye level, there is no need for pedestals. Everybody hungers for knowledge. I realize that I am not smarter than anyone, and I am not trying to be better than any man, except for the man that I was yesterday.