Knowledge from K. Kookie

Have you ever heard a song, but never really heard the song until something happens and then you understand it on a whole another level? Do you think that's possible with Jazz?

when keeping it real goes . . . right?

I've been telling people in my life to check me. I want people in my life to call me out when I'm not on my work like I should be. I want to be in community with people who want to be checked too. not hostilely or cruelly but from a place of clarity and a genuine desire to offer assistance when you know someone is potentially hurting themselves or others. So i've asked people to sign up and some have and it's been humbling. It can be painful to hear others speak on things you thought you'd concealed quite nicely or things you claim but don't necessarily practice.

it's got me thinking about the work of the world again and that old ass phrase that i've yet to internalize that the revolution begins with self. Been feeling like that girl in t-leg's poem that's out in the street instead of doing the work she needs to do at home.

i'm on the brink of breakthrough, just need a little nudge over the edge.

I'm on my nicole richie

you know it's really bad when you start using words that aren't in your vocabulary.

i digress . . .

i had sooo much fun in the bay. I enjoyed NWSA! All the folks of color I had talked to previously said it was not a place for us. I think it was different this year thanks in large part to Pat and Tricia! I feel so inspired.

Here's a listing of highlights:

1. rebecca took her mom to task, it was weird
2. angel and her friends can cook!
3. the panel went well
4. Fallon danced in a drummer's circle!
5. Met some cool people
6. had great thai food
7. saw some great presentations.

I am the quintessential workaholic but i think i may be even passed my mark, especially since it's the summer time. Something has to give.

God has a twisted sense of humor

I'm not one for prayer but occasionally, I talk to the universe. Sometimes I say what I'm working on or some things I am hopeful for and 9 times out of 10 there's a response. And it's usually exactly what I said I wanted. It reminds me a lot of tv plot lines where someone gets a hold of a magic lamp and they wish for things and they get a very literal translation of what they asked for that isn't quite what they imagined. That happens to me only there's no lamp and I can't undo it once it's been done, not that I necessarily want it undone either. it's funny though in that same way. after a fleeting thought of "why is this happening to me?!" i remember "oh yeah I asked for this" and I find myself laughing too.

i didn't do as well as i should have this semester. i'm pissed because i can't blame anyone but myself. it make me remember all the things that happened to our people who were trying to make it in this country and i go and squander the opportunity.

i got to get on top of things and not just be mediocre in the middle some where, i got to get on it and stay on it. Procrastination is something i need to work on. i need to have that mandela attributed quote they put in akeelah and the bee tattooed on my forehead.

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--Nelson Mandela, 1994 South African Presidential Inaugural Speech, quoting spiritual leader Marianne Williamson of the Church of Today in Detroit.

Bees, braces, and birthdays

we have- had thanks to the fimne work of Dr. Jim Pickett and David Cheeks- a bee colony in the wall of my house. My parents noticed bees coming into our house on saturday but the other day my mom and i spotted the hole they were flying into. My dad went into full protector mode and went and got cans of insecticide. some were killed but not that many. it also forced more of them inside. then he decide to call pest control and they came out and said that they were honey bees and protected and that he couldn't kill them. this morning i suggested we call animal control and so Jim and david came to the rescue! The bees had been there for at least two years and so they had to cut a huge section of the wall of our house to get to them. They estimate that there were more than 40,000 of them!!! They let me taste the honey and it was good. I took a picture of them ( the bees and the dynamic duo). Not only did they extract the bees, they didn't charge us!!! This is what they do for fun! They like the challenge they say. so we are going to donate to their church building fund.

during the bee drama i had to go to get my braces adjusted. he says i should get them off in august. i hope that's true


so i'm two days late and a dollar short for L's Birthday. Happy Birthday L!! Truth be told, I wanted an excuse to use that phrase.

please check with alii about other birthdays and birthday parties on the way. JUNE is a wonderful month!

Back in the A. . . R

so i'm home back at 334 and hanging out with the folks. i got my DL renewed today. it's got yellow on it now which means i'm 21 or older.

I saw this girl that I forgot existed today. she was working at lady footlocker. how appropriate. the plan is to go to tulsa tomorrow.

it's cool to be home and not have anything. some rest and relaxation before a busy summer!

Angry black women

so the media pisses me off so i made a blog where i can vent. where you can vent! check out

F*cked up $hit which features some people very near and dear to me.

back in black

so it's been a while but i've been busy. i'm taking a break so i decided to enter back into the blog world. I'm gonna do lists b/c i can't seem to be coherent for more than a sentence these days. my brain is filled with popcorn thoughts that take me in too many directions.

1. Pam- thanks again for doing my hair for the 125; it was wonderful
2. I went to Rutgers for this conference. it was really dope
3. i want to write children's books
4. i want to buy a green house
5. i want to write and article on black family's
6. i want to have a conversation with Michael Eric Dyson (thanks for the link jah)
7. i want to finish all my papers this weekend
8. i want to get this tcp thing this summer
9. I want to hang out with people!
10. I want to play!
11. I want to work on this website!

a random conversation

so i am supposed to be doing grad school work but i had this vision of restructuring new student orientation at Spelman. I was telling Alii about this and this is what followed.

Alii: well you can come over here for lunch
moya: ha ha i can't i got work to do
Alii: you aint doin work- you planning feminist hazing
moya: ha ha ha ha! that's going on the blog!
Alii: lol
what does feminist hazing look like
?
moya: ha ha ha, you have to name all the women mentioned in "words of fire" in less than a min

a list

1. BGS said she'd be on my committee!!!!!! 1 down 2 to go.
2. I was jammin' yesterday to some Robin S on my way to Spelman. I was bumpin' it hella hard but I turned it down when I got in the west end. I felt self-conscious about my early 90's dance classic. Oh quirky black girl get your life right.
3. TCB is over!!! Word on the street is this is the best one yet! I'm gonna take a bow on that b/c I gave the conference 110%. but that 110% came at a price. I wasn't "there" for the conference. I had checked out emotionally and somewhat mentally too. hopefully I have learned my lesson.
3 1/2. I worked really hard on the conference CD for opening night trying to find music by women that was danceable, and not about some man, or if it was, it had some agency in it. this was surprizingly really difficult! the majority of songs by the women we love are breakup and love songs, and very few are danceable, let alone give the women any kind of agency in the situation. please, let me know if i am wrong on this but i had a hard time.
4. the weather is beautiful and all i want to do now is play.
5. I have SO much work to do.
6. I'm creating a production company called Quirky Black Girl Productions
7. I love ya'll!

California!

So I went to Berkeley this weekend because sisters on the sojourn was screened at the women of color filmfestival. Seeing the bay, eating with friends, and catching up was more fun than the festival!





Us hanging out at christine's sisters house



















Elaine's Doppleganger

This just in . . .

Yay Jennifer!!

More later . . .

Oh Please Please Please submit your Oscar commentary to some news outlet. I love you all and as I didn't see it I think it wouldn't be right to speak on it. You all have said amazing things on your blogs please spread the word on the racism/sexism/ etc. that was present in the nominations, films themselves etc.!!

More on Audre

My mom said that i had to do really well in graduate school so I can be a formative scholar/activist "like Audre Lorde."

I don't think I quite know how to process that coming from my mom. I haven' to like really revel in what that means because it hasn't quite registered yet. That's huge!!

Cuba Goodhair is gone. I miss her already. Who's going to teach me about Islam, without solicitation? Who's gonna tell me about meeting a Panamanian Jew married to a Pakistani suffi? Who's gonna clean my house?!

hmm i think that's all for now.

More on Porn and Audre Lorde

this was the title of the question I posed to the class after being assigned to read the Uses of the Erotic by our dearly departed friend Audre. We had discussed porn the week or so before and could not even agree that child porn was off limits. And I was at a loss for rebuttal because I didn't quite like MacKinnon's argument on porn either but today, we can talk about the Erotic and I hope that will help.

We are reading bridge today as well. Isn't it interesting how all the woman of color are lumped into a day in a fem theory class? While that's obvious to me and I'm sure to the other black folks around the table will we speak it?

I have been so spoiled by the diasporic vision of spelman women's studies, I forget that for others it is an after thought, add bridge then stir. Are we less radical now? I am so excited that BGS is coming next week. I think I could cry I am so happy.

it's not easy being in this eurocentric place everyday, where it is so clear that racism is so alive and well, even among those who are supposed to be invested in this bridging.

Separate but equal, does have a wonderful ring L. I long for that space again, which will happen at TCB no doubt.

there's a revolution burning in me and i feel it is on it's way out.

Just to get by . . .

I've been a little off these last couple of days. I am wondering about the world and how I will exist in it. I want to be more purposeful, less self flagellating, more hopeful.

The serial optimist is fading. I miss her, that part of myself that thought I could change the world. Will I just be the nelly girl until people forget?

Here's something i wrote one time. i don't know how true it is any more . . .

I am teetering dangerously on a fulcrum of my own construction. We have “sell out” on the right and “all-out activist” on the left. I have a hard time believing in that thing called balance so I feel I must either forge boldly ahead on the road to revolutionary martyrdom or acquiesce into middle class mediocrity.

As I ponder life after Spelman, I wonder how my politics will work in the real world. Is it not hypocritical to call myself a socialist if I’m actively participating in a capitalist economy? If I’m a vegetarian but I can’t afford to buy my vegetables where I know people were paid fairly for their labor, does it really matter? Can I really be down for “the revolution” if I’ve got a 9-5?

But of course, being down in college is relatively easy. You stage a few protests, conduct activist meetings, talk about how “problematic” US culture is, and scheme up grandiose plans to attack the “hegemonic interlocking systems of oppression” of capitalism, heterosexism, patriarchy, racism, ageism, ableism, etc. In the real world such talk is not common place, like minded individuals fewer still and the realities of those systems oppress more directly. No wonder most movements start with the students for we aren’t really apart of the system yet. We don’t have a job to loose or a mortgage to pay and we still feel invincible to the slings of the world. Or at least it used to be that way.

When I look at my generation now that’s not really what I see. I think for the most part we’ve bought into what you’ve told us. That what’s most important is an upper middle class lifestyle, a six figure salary, a wife or husband (gender appropriate of course), a kid or two, and a dream house in the ‘burbs. The media has played a huge role in constructing this American dream for us and by making leftist activists appear idyllically naive and fanatically unrealistic.

I’ve also noted a disturbing trend in the media, the co-option of words associated with revolutions and movements for more innocuous commercial commodities. Chevy’s new Cobalt car is “an American Revolution.” Maybeline is also offering a “revolution in color” in their new matte-mouse foundation. In a recent blockbuster ad a protest of late fees is squashed to the jubilation of customers by the unveiling of a sign that suggests that the company had already moved in that direction. People continue to talk about a “hip-hop movement” but in light of the difficulty the “leaders” (P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, etc.) have in articulating what that agenda is, there has been little in the way of social change. The watering down of these words belies their former political usefulness and is making it more difficult for those who believe in such things to be taken seriously. Consequently, revolution does not carry the same force it used to and a protest is little more than a joke. So what other forms of action are left for the Left?

It leaves me pondering my role and the seeming inevitability of the machine further crushing the will of those who dare to stand up to it. At this point it almost seems easier to sell out, to let Time Warner have the other 51% of my soul and get in while the gettingÂ’s good.

But the truth is thatÂ’s not who I am. As much as I would like to think I could become a nihilist, out to get mine, itÂ’s just not in me. Change is slow and apparently not always progressing forward. These set backs are par for the course and itÂ’s easy to forget that there is good in the world as well. If history has taught us nothing it is that every empire falls, and the ever declining dollar suggests this oneÂ’s on the way out. So it seems that I may be able to hold onto my idealism a little longer, that the powers that be may soon become the powers no more and an equitable world may be just around the corner.

What?

I've wasted another weekend. Well, not wasted as much as not been on top of the books the way i should have been. I'm so easily distracted these days.

I really like giving myself permission to direct my energy elsewhere. I realize that i am not the kind of person that let's things slip too far away. Saying "it will get done" is not an empty threat, it's a promise.

yeah . . . that's about it.

Random things

i'm feeling chris brown right now

i wasn't too mad at the boondocks mlk episode

i've read some good books lately.

i'm growing

i'm getting comfortable

i'm happy

Relax, relate, release!

This expert advise from Dr. Langhorne to whitley has been on my mind lately. After recieving my my most recent xmas gift, i think that i've got to put this mantra into practice. It's gonna be the theme of '06.

Congratulations!!!

Your film Sisters on the Sojourn has been selected by our programming committee into our upcoming festival in March of 2006. Competition was very tight - we received 15% more submissions this year than the year before and we were only able to program less than 30% of our total entries this year. We are extremely delighted that your film was chosen to be programmed along with other excellent works by women of color from all over the world.


Our festival dates will be March 2-5th at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and we will close on Saturday, March 11th at the Yerba Buena Gardens theater in San Francisco through Cinematheque. Mark your calendars! If you are able to attend the Q&A discussion at the end of your program, along with other local filmmakers, PLEASE LET US KNOW as soon as you know so that we can jump for joy that you might join us at the festival. You will be given a festival pass to attend all screenings. Your film is currently scheduled to screen on Sunday, March 5th at 1:00pm, PFA theater. Please spread the word to your Bay Area friends and family!

New Year's Resolutions

1. get those sit ups right
2. volunteer again
3. read one non school book a month
4. blog at least once a week (oh and please link me again!!)
5. write everyday
6. work on a website

i always feel like somebody's watching me

so i've never read octavia before and i read all of parable of the sower today. couple with that the "server error" message i'm getting when i sign into gmail, the google aol time warner deal, my computer speakers' tendancy to broadcast people talking even when they are off, the three scheduled weekly tests that have interrupted my television watching in the last two days, and the talk of this wiretap business being impeachable, has me more paranoid than rockwell.

this is simply a note to say if anything happens . . . ya'll know who's responsible

Nobody had better . . .

Rain on my parade!!!




I'm done!!!!

Procrastination

I don't know what to do. it's worse than it's ever been. i can't focus and i have an enormous paper to write that needs to be good. i've done the research. i just have to type it. i know what i want to say but the words aren't flowing. I did good for the first page and a half but then i realized i needed to make dinner, change my e-mail address on amazon and numerous other cites i frequent. these books keep staring at me. i only have one light on in my house, the light in my office but i keep finding excuses to go to the bathroom or the kitchen. i can't go through grad school like this i need to go to a study skills seminar, desperately. but i can't do that tonight. Any thoughts on how to push through this?

3 G's

There are a lot, a lot of people in this country with 3 g's to spare. I am one of them. I have 3 g's in savings and she won't take it. There are people, unlike me, who have more than 3 g's to spare and it is really crazy to me that people can't even ask for fear of not being timely with the pay back. but for some 3g's won't be missed, wouldn't need to be paid back. I just refuse to give up but I can't fight when someone's already resigned. I think parents are ridiculous! I think this post is incoherent but that's how i'm feeling.

Random 1

So this is my new show! Add it to your line up. It makes the world seem not so evil! Oh, and ya'll can link me, just not as my name please!

I think the Prof. read the blog. That's the only way I can explain such a chilly reception in class last week. So to preserve my ability to tell as much as I want, I moved!

i said burr . . .

It's cold down here! On the one hand, I like it cause I like fall and winter clothes more than summer clothes. On the other hand, it's cold!

I imagine it's going to get much colder this weekend. :(

But I can't be too down cuz the dynamic duo are coming to town! Yeah!

Run's House

it's the best reality tv show i've ever seen!!

Manic depressive

I was on this music induced high as I walked out the door of my apartment to catch the 3:45 shuttle to emory to make my 4 o’ clock class. I had even put on my Michael Jackson button (a picture from when he was still black) and ya’ll know I don’t do accessories. I was feeling really good and I was on time to meet the shuttle. As the driver open the door. there was a man slowly making his way down the steps of the shuttle to the side walk. I was annoyed because I didn’t want to keep the driver waiting and I impatiently looked at the man. He had on flimsy, almost cellophane sun glasses and I realized that he was blind. As he was trying to reach the side walk with his foot, he stepped out, only to barely catch the edge of the curb and he ended up falling flat on his face.

I saw it happen. I saw it happen in slow motion. I saw his foot tentatively search for a landing place and I just stood back and watched it all. I could see it happening and I did not move paralyzed by societal forces that tell us not to touch not to help that we are all fucking autonomous. I tried to help him up. Well, I reached out to him and crouched asking if he was ok. He said he was fine. The driver got off and helped the man to his feet. His “glasses” were askew and I could see thick whitish scar tissue on his eyes. He knew him. The driver asked Clint where he was going. Clint said he was going to mcdonald’s to get something to eat and then he only had to walk a block. The driver said ok but be sure to use the cross walk. And Clint said ok. He walked off and the driver got back on the shuttle. I got on the shuttle and I noticed that everyone on the shuttle was sitting in their seat. they acknowledge me with a weird stare and I’m sure they saw the whole thing transpire. I sat down and I started crying.

I don’t think I can convey correctly how deeply this upset me. I talk about race but damn. Clint, a 40 something working class (I’m assuming based on his attire) black man has to ride the shuttle, has to fucking walk the streets of Atlanta with it’s anti pedestrian sidewalks and fall flat on his face because I was too scared, dumb, insensitive, rude, individualistic, to actually help him. Disability is something we tack on to our interlocking oppression spiel. But falling down because society assumes that everyone should see is no different from any of the other problematic assumptions society makes that we privilege in our discussions of oppression. I cried all the way home on the walk back from class. I cried for Clint and the fact that there is no one to be with him as he moves through this hostile city. I cried because there shouldn’t have to be anyone with him because society should understand that some people can’t see and that it is imperative that provisions be made. I cried because we are so invested in our own little spheres that we forget our fellow citizens. I cried because I’m in a women’s studies program supposedly looking at disability and I wasn’t anymore sensitive that someone else might have been.

I challenge you as I am challenging myself never to be so callous again. I prayed (another thing I don’t do) for forgiveness for not acting in this situation, for Clint, and for the strength and courage to never be a bystander in that sense again. I’m not sharing this to illicit sympathy but to hope that if any of you encounter a similar situation that you won’t make my mistake.

Dem girls got . . . brains!

so i am so crunk on scholarship today. On rap (not hip hop) too. It's absolutely incredible how music can completely alter your mood and your thinking. A disconnected phone call, words of fire, and dem boys in the hood is a rather invigorating combination!

The scholar/activist is back in full effect!

Can you loan me 20 dollars til I get my check next . . . month?

had a conversation with someone i hadn't talked to in a while. it's weird how things can fall right back in synch. I surprised myself by what i was willing to tell, what ended up being said explicitly and not. On a related note, people's recklessness with other people's emotions and lives is so disheartening. More and more i wonder about relationships and why people seem so invested in them.

oh and i'm broke. like i have $40 to last til the end of october cuz emory messed up my check (it's not just the hbcu's!). so yeah i'm on a serious budget now.

But I still want my vacuum!!!!

Thanks Jah . . .

A hit, a very powerful hit . . .

I had my first blow to my ego yesterday. I was in my med anthro class trying (very inarticulately i might add) to question anthropology and it's goals. I don't know the jargon of the field so my comments were simplistic and wholly disappointing. i felt like their was a masked hostility from some of my classmates toward me and it wasn't cool. It just made me mad that certain anthropology students will go to some part of the world that they know nothing about, not speaking the language, do a study and then for the sake of the ethical standards of anthropology, give the studied population a copy of whatever work they produced, in english no doubt, and with no way to decipher it. I think i inadvertently put my professor on the defensive too which i didn't mean to do. i was just trying to understand.

and that was the beginning of a day filled with little reminders of my newness to this kind of academic environment. Spelman was a womb and to an extent so is my dept but I am rapidly being pushed out and it is cold and bright! I am no longer moya campus activist extrodinaire but one of the many inkblots who make people and institutions feel as if they aren't racist. I was naive to think that this was gonna be a non issue because i had a good first week. One day can do a number on an ego though.

but the struggle continues . . .

feelin' good feelin' great . . .

so things are good! after my first week it is apparent that the women's center has prepared me well for women's studies discourse at the graduate level. i feel like i am so on top of my game having had dr. k and bgs mold me these last couple of years. pc and bgs gave me shout outs at meetings i attended at spelman recently. those meant more than they know and sustain me when i'm back across town in the different different world. I swear if spelman had a grad school i would have never left.

but it's not all fun and games. the reading seems almost insurmountable but i'm doing what i can. I'm plugging away and am so geeked by the scholarship that it doesn't seem like a chore. I love it and I'm trying to suppress my feelings of guilt with the knowledge that this is a temporary pit stop on the road to revolution.

Anger

So i'm really pissed off about this news coverage. It is making me angry to see these newsreporters in the field reporting on the situation and seemingly being of little help to the people there. They show these images of black people looting that they have looped, and shoot crying children and elderly people who are obviously in need of immediate attention. And the rest of the country, myself included, is going on with their day, checking in, becoming disturbed and changing the channel again.

I will say that spelman is taking in students from xavier but i don't think dillard will recover from this. This is just crazy! Crazier still because this could have been avoided.

If the US hadn't colonized this country the way it had, maybe followed the living migrational patterns of the indigenous people who lived in the region maybe it could have been avoided. If slaves hadn't been brought in to work the land, maybe the faces on the tv screen would be a little lighter and maybe people would be more inclined to reach into there pockets to help. If we hadn't upset the natural balance of the world so much, maybe a category 5 hurricane wouldn't have come to be.

and yet and still life goes on. I have to read 200 pages for feminist methods and topics and it's all about how women studies is this different field this field of compassion that puts people first and yet, there's this national crisis going on and we are reading textbooks? Not only that but there are social events, even one that am hosting tomorrow while there are people who haven't had clean water to drink for 3 days, and not even in some part of the world we don't think about but one or two states over. When will wake up out of this collective daze that is the status quo and move to do what we know is right?

It's official!

I am enrolled as a grad student @ Emory. I'll be taking the med anthro class! yes! avoiding that possible political land mine in theory. yes!

we had our grad school orientation today. our grad student pres. is "Farmer Ted"/Brian all grown up with a little ferris bueller thrown in. he's adorable and he's teaching charlie and the chocolate factory to some first years so he gave away golden mugs that entitle the bearers to cut to the front of the keg lines at the grad events through out the semester. I'm at Emory now . . .

Tomorrow i have to buy some worms for lil' Agnes and i have an outdoor social gathering. lizzy, the other pop culture fiend in my cohort, is going to see the 40 year old virgin with me this weekend. Grad school is pretty cool so far.

You know it's hard out here for a . . . scholar

so i had my departmental orientation today which was cool. very cool actually. my department is the bomb. According to one of the professors, BGS was bigging me up at some conference in ny. I swear if i was a little older . . .

I'm taking a race & feminism class along with a topics and methods class. Verdict's still out on class three but I'm leaning toward this medical anthro class that is dead on in terms of my area of interest and potentially requires less political navigation.

I can walk to school and I kind of feel like I did walking to the library from leverett all the way back in elementary school. It's a nice time to think and it's far enough to feel like exercise.

The vma's were horrible. JB gave a good recap and i'm totally feeling her on her new found simpson hatred. I'll add my two cents:

Diddy can't dance
How are you gonna introduce krumping and not say anyone's name but LaChapelle?
Beyonce and 'em looked so tacky
Rock and Rap, that's it?
how did gideo get a job? How does chuck norris still have one?
and R. Kelly, are you f*cking serious?!

I don't think we should watch this anymore. I'm serious! Celeb worship is out of hand and i am not going to participate anymore (well i'm going to try not too).

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go upstairs and see if alison will let me get in on her indoor bowling tournament.

A new thai place

so today i went to the first social gathering for my dept., a dinner at a thai restaurant in the dec.

I was the last to arrive (i underestimated the drive) and i decided to sit by Danica, the other new black girl in the program. Also a spelman grad, class '01 as well as the recently retired miss georgia. She's cool people as are the rest of the people in the department. conversation was easy and not too awkward. I was pretty quiet though. Not really jumping into the fray as much but i'm sure things will be different tomorrow.

Now off to watch the VMA's so we'll all have something to talk about in the morning.

feelin' so good . . .

Today was a good day, good day indeed! the universe is moving and i'm back in the swing of it back in the mix and it's great. I feel like I'm ready and I'm doing what I need to be. Making peace and forgiving, or trying to.

J lo ain't so bad . . .

grad school on the horizon

so i got this book that is supposed to help me prepare for the next 5 (hey i'm optimistic) years of my life. It's pretty good but a little depressing as well.

I don't want to be anything other than someone completely dedicated to the humanity of the globe and i thought that going to grad school was a way to aid me in that. but from what the book says, academia is as much a hierarchical good ol' boys club as anything else. However, I am in a women's studies program and i'm hoping that that means something, that that will negate a lot of the pitfalls he points to in the book.

So some useful or not so useful tips he offered (summer what do you think?):

Create a calendar mapping the entire length of your program including the dates of publication of articles you should be working on and conferences etc.

make contracts with your professors about when you are supposed to finish things and stick to them

write and work on your thesis for a couple of hours each day as opposed to in large concentrated blocks

set up a filing system etc.

For those of you who know me and have seen my room, or my apt. you know that organization is not something that is high on my list of priorities but i guess i've got to work on that. It's just hard to get into that frame of mind when it's the summer and friends are here and gavin is playing!!!

But i'm going to get it together. Trust! B/c the revolution depends on it!

Misc.

don't really have anything new to say but i wanted to see something else on this page. Maybe another list is in order.

1. I'm really feeling luther (Track 6) right now
2. the salt eaters is speaking to me in a weird way, i've never read a book like this (meaning both the way i'm reading it and the content)
3. anyone heard from sarah?
4. I'm going to see gavin next friday!!
5. This feels a little like 20 questions but a lot less cryptic and mean.
6. I need to work on being angry, or at least be more vocal about it.

That's all folks . . .

the fast runner

I've always felt this connection to inuit people. I really don't know what that's about but i thought I'd share a little bit of their struggle because They are so often overlooked. In the oppression olympics, they are gold medalists.

"The impacts of climate change have very real, negative, harmful impacts on the Inuit's ability to sustain themselves as they have traditionally done, their ability to be healthy, which they have a right to in the Inter-American human-rights system," explains Wagner, of Earthjustice. "Their ability to maintain their unique culture, which is absolutely dependent on ice and snow; their ability to hunt and fish and harvest plant foods; their ability to have shelter and build their homes -- all of those rights are impacted by climate change in the Arctic."


The Inuit had been noticing alterations in ice, land, water, and wildlife for years -- phenomena that fell outside their extensive traditional knowledge. Ice formed later in the year and broke up sooner. Changes in the ice pack altered travel routes over land and sea. Experienced hunters were falling through thinning ice into seawater cold enough to kill in minutes. Once-frozen coastlines were eroding, destroying Inuit homes.

Also potentially devastating, residents were observing changes in the creatures around them, including caribou, polar bears, ringed seals, walrus, beluga whales, and seabirds. The culture has relied on these animals for food, clothing, and other materials for thousands of years. Now, increasingly, they were noticing that polar bears couldn't find seals along the receding ice edge and were forced to scavenge elsewhere for food. A mosquito invasion drove caribou into the hills during the summer, forcing them to forsake rich lowland grazing for scrappier fare. And robins and barn owls -- birds for which the Inuit had no name -- appeared for the first time.

Global warming is not the first industrial threat to reach this land. In the late 1980s, medical research revealed that chemicals and pollutants including chlordane, DDT, and PCBs had been accumulating in the globe's farthest north for decades, carried from thousands of miles away by atmospheric and oceanic currents -- or, as scientists have more recently supposed, by bird droppings. These persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, become more concentrated higher in the food chain, reaching unprecedented levels in predator mammals at the top like polar bears, ringed seals, beluga whales, walrus -- and Inuit, who carry more than 200 toxic pollutants in their bodies.

This poisoning from afar means "we have to think twice about how we deal with going out into the environment," says Watt-Cloutier, "because the environment's our supermarket, it's our way of getting food back to our families and to our communities." Canadian Inuit mothers, for example, who have seven times more PCBs in their breast milk than women in the country's largest cities, are advised either not to nurse their babies, or not to eat meat from the hunt.

The Inuit have also struggled to survive a cultural dissolution common to many indigenous peoples who have experienced rapid modernization. Canadian Inuit struggle with some of the highest rates of alcoholism and drug abuse in the nation. Inuit infant mortality rates are two to three times higher than the Canadian national average, life expectancy is about five to seven years shorter, and the suicide rate is six times higher.

"Everything is connected," she continues. "Connectivity is going to be the key to addressing these issues, like contaminants and climate change. They're not just about contaminants on your plate. They're not just about the ice depleting. They're about the issue of humanity. What we do every day -- whether you live in Mexico, the United States, Russia, China ... can have a very negative impact on an entire way of life for an entire people far away from that source."

This summer, Wagner, Goldberg, and the ICC will continue gathering facts to support their case, including videotaped testimony by Inuit elders. In the meantime, Watt-Cloutier's stature as a global activist is growing: in April, she accepted a U.N. Champions of the Earth award and helped stage a massive, Hollywood-infused "Global Warning" photo shoot on the ice in Nunavut, Canada's Inuit territory; in June, she generated headlines from Norway when she accepted the international Sophie Prize, given annually to a recipient "working toward a sustainable future."

back by request

and this too shall pass . . .

I put a dining room set together!

cuz that's what grown ups with their own apartments do. They also do said assembly instead of writing their premiere academic article. But the night is young, even if I have work tomorrow. I will forge ahead.

incidentally, strawberry sorbet and black water is quite a combo!

Soy un perdedor

I think this is a lesson for my passive aggressive nature. I've got to be more direct more clear, more assertive. And I know this and I say this and yet I don't act. and the truth is, the worst is not bad when you're holding all the cards. Feelings get hurt, well mine were hurt already.

the writing's on the wall . . .

but not in this blank word document i have in front of me.

tryin' to write this D4/4/3 piece and i'm having a little trouble. I have to admit the second album is kinda hot. I can't find the writing credits on any of these albums though. Any suggestions out there?

by the way my tire is fine.

hmmm

so i think i'll do another list because, i don't really have time for much more.

1. deLaine's post and subsequent responses made me act
2. one of my wheels is teetering on a blowout (my car is two months old)
3. i still need to write
4. i love blueberries and/or mangoes
5. i have to go


until later

I roze a little today . . .

in spite of my habitually passive aggressive behavior! I welcomed a newbie into the big mama fold and i've got some other things under construction.

until later. . .

What is a friend really?

Like can you really be someone's friend if you aren't disclosing things that you know that could hurt? Or do you say something?

I'm feeling very unsettled now, very disconnected from people because I don't know what is my place. What's ok and what's not.

I still haven't written anything . . . grumble

Quick to back down

I had this moment, this glorious moment today where I could have rizen. I saw it felt the potential but I couldn't quite make it kinetic. The matrix wins again! But I know how it works, so hopefully I won't get got again.

Two posts today!

heard bobby valentino on the radio today. he's funny and offensive. I've decided that I don't really like his songs lyrically but they are on top of beautiful music. You use a crouching tiger/yo-yo ma -esque sounding loop in the back I might be inclined to sing:

Oh ma tell me
How did you get that in those jeans
The way you poppin it is killing me
Look over here come follow me

That's Peace

had one of those deep late night "you think you know but you have no idea" convo's with the roommate last night. The road to hell was paved with good intentions - is so real!

So it's after my lunch break and I feel recharged. Maybe this 9-5 thing isn't the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I'm going to work on posting more, get back to my mad at the world self.

Motivation

I finally saw Alysia & Co yesterday! So good to be back in the mix.

The roommate, tiona and I rolled to IKEA. I've never been and I must say that place is overwhelming. I almost couldn't handle it. But it did encourage us to get on our jobs . . . as did jah's post.

My writing is stagnant. I haven't written anything in so long. Not even in my journal. Writer's block, or something. I have things I need to say, critiques i want to make but i'm in a real place of self doubt now. grad school is two months away and I'm wondering . . .wondering about these next 5 years i signed up for, that I "worked" for.

Mike gave some words of encouragement but i dunno if that's enough.

I miss my messy dorm room.

". . .face painted like a warrior. . ."

Alii got me the RIZE soundtrack for my b'day!! The CD is also a DVD and Lil'C (and some other krumper) teach the basics!! Subsequently, I tried to get krump in the shower which was not the best idea.

So here's a list of stuff, because it hurts a little to type ;)

1. I secretly like Luther Vandross's music, don't tell my mama . . . oh wait she reads this
2. I have two very important playlists to make in the next couple of weeks
3. I need to write something for this feminist hip-hop anthology
4. Bettina's Blog is the Bomb! So eloquent and concise . . .
5. I miss the 'ville
4. I miss the 'ville crew
5. I think bobbi christina uses food to fill the void in her life created by two marginally functional parents
6. Even when I try to rize, i sugarcoat things.
7. I need to be a more aggressive driver
8. I didn't love crash
9. I want to write a book and a screenplay
10. I am opening up

New York New York!

So I've spent a fun filled week in the city, meeting up with friends, making new ones.

I saw stacey ann chin perform and i was really moved by her, where she lives and how she moves through the world. Side Note: Stacey ann had one of the original blogs. I was enamored with her words when she was on Def Poetry and was even more so when she came to Spelman to speak, ruffling more than a couple of feathers talking about masturbation and being a jamaican afro/chinese lesbian.

But seeing her again, and goin to her apartment with the crew was further evidence of her not only talking the talk but walking the walk as well.

And I don't know if I am going to go there. Am I forever going to be mired in the words of the revolution, with out the action? And if that's the case what impact will that have on anything?

And why am I so keen on revolution anyway? Why am I so desperate to make the world a better place by the peaceful overthrowing of the capitalist system and the genuine adoption of human rights ideology?

I am so stifled by a muzzle of my own design and i'm looking to others to help me dismantle it but only I have the ability to remove it.

Fear is the mind killer, as Paul says in Dune, and I will not allow myself to die!

(I'm so terribly dramatic)

Today was a good day . . .

well week rather! being in the company of good friends, over good food, and with good music has been amazing!I'm growing. I'm rizing and it's great!

I know I keep shouting out this film. I'm gonna stop b/c the hype always seems to lead to disappointment.

Love!

Breathe in, Breathe out

So I am trying to rize, trying to express and be all of me all the time. It's interesting. I'm still in my head so much which tends to short circuit the progress I'm supposedly making. I definitely stopped mid expansion last night. Felt the breath in my lungs and choked it back. Why is truth so hard? Especially when it doesn't have to be.

on a complete unrelated note, let's talk e-mail etiquette. shouldn't you respond within a 48 hour period? I'm just sayin . . .

RIZE

This doc is THE Truth!!!!

I have never been so inspired to be all of me before. I can't even begin to explain how this film touched me and has got me on some serious self reflection. Talking to Lil' C was so revealing. I guess I could see in the dance this ability to go all the way there to give all of you to the world and how powerful that is. You can't get krump if you hold back. And I can see how that's true of everything.

So this is a testament to me actively not holding things back from the world. This is the beginning of me giving all of myself all of the time.

F*ck guilt
F*ck privilege
F*ck haters

I will RIZE!!

Ain't no love in the heart of the city. . .

biting from summer

so i tried to post this earlier at work (bad idea). This is going to be along summer . . .

total number of albums/cds i own: it's in the hundreds. i also have a 20 gb mp3 player that's full (not an ipod though b/c those are "of the devil!")

the last album/cd i bought: be

last album/cd i listened to: bootleg of the bootleg on the way to the work this morning. the hater's anthem is so necessary

currently listening to: by your side - cocorosie (thanks t)

lyrics or beats: lyrics

first album you fell in love with: Control for me too!! Janet was killing it, so much so that my older cousin made up a dance routine to pleasure principle for me that i wasn't quite big enough to execute. I must say that bobby brown's don't be cruel was quite excellent as well. i still listen to that album

album with the largest impact: the burdens of being upright- tracy bonham, this was during a time when i was all angsty and daria/angela chase -ish. This cd was on some quirky sarcastic, existentialist, woman warrior tip which i appreciated so very much during that time in my life.

favorite album: mamma's gun!!! hands down! Erykah bared her soul, heart, tears, neck, ego, everything! put it all out there for us. Green Eyes is my favorite song of all time because it's like an auditory time machine. that and she poured her soul out to dre, sigh! she's better off though

most listened to album: jackson 5 greatest hits, the ville mix tape, sade greatest hits

sexiest album : i know this is the ultimate cliche but the velvet rope

biggest disappointment: talib, MIA Arular (i love the mixtape though)

five albums that mean the most to you: off the wall- MJ, you've come along way baby- fatboy slim, New Jack City soundtrack, swv- it's about time, Iron Butterfly Inagaddadivida

got to do some songs too:

My theme song: got to give it up - marvin gaye

The ville crew songs: aaron's party - aaron carter, faded - soul decision

ville crew party jams: red alert -basement jaxx, upside down - diana ross

favorite rap to rap: regulators, and the "damn" cover by jean grae

favorite song to sing: Ben- MJ, Got to be there- J5, try a little tenderness- otis redding, and this christmas - donny hathaway

most embarrassing album you own: the mofatts

most embarrassing song you like: jimmy's got a girlfriend


tag you're it!

Great article! thanks joseph!

Karl's New Manifesto
by David Brooks
New York Times

I was in the library reading room when suddenly a strange specter of a man appeared above me. He was a ragged fellow with a bushy beard, dressed in the clothes of another century. He clutched news clippings on class in America, and atop the pile was a manifesto in his own hand. He was gone in an instant, but Karl's manifesto on modern America remained. This is what it said:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Freeman and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and proletariat, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stand in opposition to each other and carry on a constant fight. In the information age, in which knowledge is power and money, the class struggle is fought between the educated elite and the undereducated masses.

The information age elite exercises artful dominion of the means of production, the education system. The median family income of a Harvard student is $150,000. According to the Educational Testing Service, only 3 percent of freshmen at the top 146 colleges come from the poorest quarter of the population. The educated class ostentatiously offers financial aid to poor students who attend these colleges and then rigs the admission criteria to ensure that only a small, co-optable portion of them can get in.

The educated class reaps the benefits of the modern economy - seizing for itself most of the income gains of the past decades - and then ruthlessly exploits its position to ensure the continued dominance of its class.

The educated class has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and reduced it to a mere factory for the production of little meritocrats. Members of the educated elites are more and more likely to marry each other, which the experts call assortative mating, but which is really a ceaseless effort to refortify class solidarity and magnify social isolation. Children are turned into workaholic knowledge workers - trained, tutored, tested and prepped to strengthen class dominance.

The educated elites are the first elites in all of history to work longer hours per year than the exploited masses, so voracious is their greed for second homes. They congregate in exclusive communities walled in by the invisible fence of real estate prices, then congratulate themselves for sending their children to public schools. They parade their enlightened racial attitudes by supporting immigration policies that guarantee inexpensive lawn care. They send their children off to Penn, Wisconsin and Berkeley, bastions of privilege for the children of the professional class, where they are given the social and other skills to extend class hegemony.

The information society is the only society in which false consciousness is at the top. For it is an iron rule of any university that the higher the tuition and more exclusive the admissions, the more loudly the denizens profess their solidarity with the oppressed. The more they objectively serve the right, the more they articulate the views of the left.

Periodically members of this oppressor class hold mock elections. The Yale-educated scion of the Bush family may face the Yale-educated scion of the Winthrop family. They divide into Republicans and Democrats and argue over everything except the source of their power: the intellectual stratification of society achieved through the means of education.

More than the Roman emperors, more than the industrial robber barons, the malefactors of the educated class seek not only to dominate the working class, but to decimate it. For 30 years they have presided over failing schools without fundamentally transforming them. They have imposed a public morality that affords maximum sexual opportunity for themselves and guarantees maximum domestic chaos for those lower down.

In 1960 there were not big structural differences between rich and poor families. In 1960, three-quarters of poor families were headed by married couples. Now only a third are. While the rates of single parenting have barely changed for the educated elite, family structures have disintegrated for the oppressed masses.

Poor children are less likely to live with both biological parents, hence, less likely to graduate from high school, get a job and be in a position to challenge the hegemony of the privileged class. Family inequality produces income inequality from generation to generation.

Undereducated workers of the world, unite! Let the ruling educated class tremble! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win!

I'm 22!

I don't feel any different.

Amy and the foreign exchange student staying at her house saw the longest yard. Suzan, the exchange student, remarked "Why do black people talk about themselves like that?"

why do we?

references to "slave feet", the DL, and a problematic reference to brother Malcolm are just a few of the questionable jokes in the film. I'd expect more from Chris.

But do we really think this does nothing to the psyche? nothing to how black children feel about themselves or what they aspire to be? I bet I sound like I'm on some C. DeLores with this but i'm so sincerr.

why do we and is it really ok?

Don't sit, if you ain't go spit . . .

and don't make a blog @ moyabailey.blogspot.com if you don't expect your family to find it.

I don't want to give up on the blogging, but self censorship is not cool either . . .

Anyhoo, on a happier note, I wore the spike issued pink cameo air force 1's yesterday! I really like them! Went to sevananda and bought fresh, organic, co-op, produce. Being healthy and political about food is hella expensive! We went to Wild Curry and Teresa & Bettina came to the apt. and put the futton together for me!

So yeah, life is . . .

I'm mad again!

yes! it feels so good to have a pop culture something or another to be upset about.

for those of you who don't know, Nick Cannon and Anthony Hamilton teamed up for the "pro-life"/anti-choice anthem of the year "Can I Live?" It even has a choir of angelic children singing the hook with hamilton.

Being the conspiracy theorist i am, i wonder if this is the brain child of some right wing ceo. I mean I'm sure it is nick's heartfelt thanks to his mamma for letting him live, but it seems like an excellent opportunity for the right, whether they schemed it up or not.

I think i'm also mad cause in between "feelin' freaky" and being a "gigolo spendin' lots of dough" he feels like delivering a message about how his mom did the "right thing" and not the "knife thing". And in the spirit of Jah's dis of 106, everyone in the studio was giving him the thumbs up, no questions asked.

Is it just me or are the voices of the left a little muffled these days? I believe in blogging but can't someone on the left get a bullhorn or something?

This is for them stay crunk . . .

so i'm chillin' in the 'ville, wishin' I had something to do. Amy and I saw Star Wars last night. it was better than the other two.

sigh. . . i just want to relive the last semester, losing the doc and all. I think I really grew in that time. To think I'm a Spelman grad now. So crazy.

But I will be back in the A soon. Q Mali and I are gonna be roommates this summer! And DeLaine, Alii, and Amy say they want to spend some time at my posh pad too, so the party don't stop!

I hope I read like I'm supposed to over the summer. I want to get back into nerdy moya mode in my first year. But i have a feeling this summer is gonna be filled with distractions, one of them being this thing in New York at the end of the month. Not that I'm complaining. Hanging out in the city with J Beezy is always on my to do list :)

It's been a long time!

Things I've done since my last entry (in no particular order):

repaired the documentary!!
returned to the finally renovated sister's chapel!!!
graduated!
Moved into my first apartment!
gotten a job!
got a bike (thanks amy)!
ate at Wild Curry!
washed dishes with my dish washer!

Things are good, how's the rest of the world? Ya'll miss me?

I loved and I lost . . .

As curtis said.

The doc is gone. gone like red kool-aid at the family bbq. we've been up all night trying to recover it but macs don't really do the whole go back and retrieve thing well.

the screening is tonight and we have nothing.

I've decide it's a lesson in my own illusions of grandeur. Did i honestly think I could pass off my doc as a thesis to the honors dept. 5 days before it was due?

So it looks like no thesis, no doc, no graduating with honors.

in the big picture, our lose of 27:05 minutes of pure poetry in motion isn't quite on level with world hunger or the HIV/AIDS crisis.

I'll live . . .

I miss blogging . . .

I haven't been able to blog about the state of the world in a min. I haven't even watched any tv so I can't even be upset about some crazy show or commercial. Why do I have so much to do?!


i did:

party w/ a professor
finish my documentary!!!!!!!!!!!


the other stuff still hangs in the balance.

Anyone with wheels in the A, want to take me apartment shopping, tomorrow or Friday?

I'm a Hustler . . .

So I figured out how to get out of writing a full thesis . . . I think

I also figured out how to fix our titles in iMovie!

By the end of this week I will:
finish my documentary
finish my "thesis"
find an Apt.
find a job
party w/ a professor
write a paper

and last but not least, get some much needed sleep.

steady on the grind . . .

bourgie broads

My ethernet is still down. I feel like I can't do any work b/c of it. I'm slacking on the blogging b/c of it too.

Yesterday I played hooky from the documentary with Takkara and went to cheesecake factory in the middle of the afternoon for drinks, pizza, and salad. We were doing the most. I felt extra grown, a good feeling after getting into it with my mom about not being so adult. Isn't it interesting how not being responsible made me feel more grown up?

I have two weeks to write a 50 page thesis and all I want to do is go outside and play. Do you understand what the weather is like in the atl right now?

I let Alii borrow one of my books, a book I forgot I wrote notes in. I felt so exposed! Luckily she was cool about it and my cryptic left-handed scrawl prevented all of me from being revealed.

Another shout out to JBeezy who has made her mark in the hip hop discourse as a result of her stellar presentation at EMP. The lady got a pound from the MAN! How hot is that?

oh yeah and Sisterfire is on Thursday if your in the A, come to Spelman Thursday night @ 7:30pm in the women's center for an open mic! It's the last one of my college career!

Cheers to the Roc!

My ethernet doesn't work in my room so I haven't wanted to post but i gotta talk about the conference.

So here were the highlights:

Joan, Tricia and Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall holding it down on a panel- I don't really even have words to describe how phenomenal this panel was. I really need a tape of it because it was the hotness! Only BGS can say "whorish white women" and make a salient point about racism in the media. They held it down!

Jalylah- Not only is Jalylah one of my closest friends, she's brilliant!! She made the case for a "hip hop script" one that has "conscious" and misogynist artist alike convinced that hip hop is inherently male. I don't think some people in the audience were quite ready for her, but the high schoolers got it! Jalylah also got Invincible on the mic!! How hot was that?!

Fred Hampton Jr. - He ran up on stage at the end of the last panel, which I was on. I was a little shook

Rocafella is my hero- She's the one person in the conference who really got to the everyday feminism that the academics were speaking about. Roc rocks the fellas, demystify breaking for women and girls, and generally makes her knowledge accessible for anyone who wants it. She's living the communalistic ideals we speak about in feminism and I'm not sure she even calls herself a feminist.

Countless shoutouts from conference panelists made me hella nervous to speak and so i was a lot more reserved than normal. I was feeling the pressure and didn't speak as eloquently as i wanted, but that was minor when compared to the overall conference.

Shout out to summer, aja, liza, gwendolyn, sapphire, Camille, and Brittany. Nice to meet you all!

I'm not lovin' it

So I was more than heated when I heard (courtesy of Best Week Ever) that McDonald's is going to pay a rapper (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4389751.stm) to rap about mickey D's in a song! That's art and capitalism coming a little too close to one another and not in a warhol-esque way either. I hope no rapper agrees to do it. I feel like rapping about a big mac, b/c Ronald told you to is the lowest that the artform can go. I don't even have words for how ludacris this is to me. Who knew that the plot of Pootie Tang was a prophecy yet to be fulfilled?

Sarah Won!!

It was a coup of monumental proportions! She got 71% of the vote!!! I am so happy for her, for Spelman. A new day was ushered in and that is so exciting. The victory party is tonight at Javaology so be there or be square! In other news I got an e-mail in the wee hours of the morning that made me really happy. Friends are the bomb! And if that wasn't cheesy enough, although the sun is not shining outside today, it's shining in my heart!!

The party

I went to this party Saturday night and it was pretty fun. I think it's a little queer (pun intended) that I felt so comfortable at this LBT house party, as opposed to some AUC club party. I think it's because there wasn't a sexual component there for me. I was just having a good time dancing with my friends and being silly. The way the club is set up and the way guys just feel they can grab you and just dance on you is kinda aggravating. And then do you ignore an inappropriate grope and let him walk off validated in his objectification of you, or do you voice your outrage and risk a verbal or even physical altercation? And there's that masochistic insecurity of what if guys don't objectify you, what does that mean? But that was totally not my line of thinking as we danced the night away to PYT, Let Me Love You, and the electric slide classic old school jam Before I Let Go on Saturday. On a semi-related note, I think I need to be a dj.

It's just emotions . . .

So the new delta line premiered during the Toni Cade Conference luncheon. I was already a little perturbed by the way the conference was going and the sight of some of my favorite people on line pushed my emotions further. People told me to be optimistic, to think that this was an effort by the delta's to be more diverse and to change the greek politics on Spelman's campus. I think that's crap.

I wore my "vote for sarah" sticker on my face as the new hopefuls came out, a desperate attempt to disrupt the energy of this ridiculous spectacle of which my very presence made me culpable too. I don't think it made the kind of statement I hoped it would.

And speaking of Sarah and her campaign, they (the administration? The delta's? is there a difference?) are trying to disqualify her. This is attempt two in what look like malicious actions to block her from changing this campus for the better.

And there is trouble in the friend sanctum, trouble that I can't fix, help, or heal. I think one of my friend is having some serious financial troubles. I have money, more rightly my parents have money, that I could lend or give, not that she'd take it. I forget my own class privilege and do and say things as ignorant as white people who touch our hair without asking. I think with her it's more than just money but that's all I've managed to gather. I have another friend who after months of not speaking is back in my life again with ridiculously scary emotional and mental baggage that she is only beginning to recognize as such yet she is still locked into the problematic cycle that gave her these wounds in the first place.

There's something else too, something that I feel is settling over the people, a deep malaise that's keeping our noses to the grindstone in a working limbo and in a state of treading the water of life. I feel like we are stuck in the monotony of the day and the vision of tomorrow is gone. We, even the activists, are trying to make it from moment to moment instead of being fully aware of where we are and where we want to be ultimately. I wonder if this entry will make sense as i'm writing at almost 5 in the morning after only a few hours of rest from the week before and i have little to show for the sleep deprivation I feel.

I hope that this uneasy running in place that's going on is purposeful in the sense that things are going to pick up sooner or later. I hope this is the proverbial calm before the storm and the storm will bring the lightening and thunder to startle us all back into conscious meaningful motion and the rain to wash away the funk and grow the seeds of struggle once again in our hearts.

What's my motha f*ckin' name?

I got a semi-frantic e-mail from one of the Deans at Spelman. Apparently Snoop has his own search engine called gizoogle and a search for Spelman brings up some pretty problematic descriptions of rather innocuous sites associated with the school. She alerted me because in a search for Spelman my name comes up as "Mizzy Bailey" and it says I'm a "comparative bitchez studies" major. Upon my own investigation, gizoogle seems to just translate websites into Snoop's signature pimp influenced vernacular, and it does not appear to be directly attacking Spelman or our rather public efforts to discuss misogyny in hip-hop. Additionally, it's not connected to google so blogging about this is fortunately not as ironic as it initially seemed. At any rate, happy gizoogling!!

I'm about to get raw!

Dear Diary,

I am now officially a mad black woman! I've been so invested in rejecting this title b/c it had been assigned to me I never thought it might be applicable. Now it is and I'm claiming it, not reclaiming it but using it of my own volition to serve my own agenda. I'm about to be on a Michele Wallace type "rant" so read on with caution! I can not for the life of me understand why black male comedians dress up like black women for a laugh. That's not funny! It's ludicrous (which I can't even spell now b/c of luda)! We won't support Don Cheadle in a movie about the continuing pain of our people in the supposed "motherland," but we will go out in droves to make diary of a mad black woman the number one movie in America?! Do you understand how f*cked up that is? tyler perry has caricatures of us on screen and we are supporting it; you can't convince me that white people were going to see madea on opening weekend.

As a film version of the oh so popular black church plays, it tries to offer up a message of morality and Christian values as well as entertain. Preachers took entire congregations to see this movie! In my cynical conspiracy theory believing head this is just another example of how the black church is being co-opted by the right. The prosperity gospel and increasing attacks on homosexuality are new to the sermons of late but they do nothing to speak to the real issues of the congregation. As Dr. Stanley put it, the church has become a corporation as opposed to a hospital for those in need. But the hospital has been a corporation in this country for a minute, so I guess that move in the religious sector was inevitable as well.
I'm not mad at my girl Elise, she can act and apparently these black church movies are the only movies with majority black casts getting made right now, despite halle and denzel breaking through the glass ceiling three long years ago. But seriously, can black people get some decent roles in Hollywood? Can we grow up thinking that being a filmmaker is an option? Can we be techies? Can we get someone i.e. spike or who ever to financially support black people tryin' to go into film/tech school? Can we want to write screenplays?I didn't see the oscars, but I heard enough of the fall out to know that chris's comedy may have been misinterpreted by whites and blacks alike. What was supposed to be a satirical poke at the oscars detachment from regular folk, came off to many, including myself, as a jab at black people's inevitable unculturedness. He didn't comment on the fact that the films nominated are usually not wide released, that they don't normal have black people in them either. I know as a black person I'm supposed to be crunk about jamie winning for ray, but I'm not. You can't tell me that jamie was better than don chedle, you can't tell me if jamie wasn't the token black friend that Hollywood wants to have he still would have one. I couldn't believe that he took tom cruise to Harlem to kind of show him around the neighborhood. What is that?! Like the ghetto's a safari or something.

Further still this war on images of black people is unending and we aren't even critiquing it anymore. We have reached bamboozled proportions and people are laughing!! As jalylah says, if you set it up as a supposed satire, then people feel free not to question it which is absolutely ridiculous! The more I think about race-o-rama, recent SNL skits, etc. The angrier I get. Just b/c you have black people involved doesn't mean it isn't racist.

Ali called to tell me 20/20 was doing a segment on colorism. We tuned in and were outraged. John Stossle began by saying, "Did you know that some blacks discriminate against other blacks?" what?! This comment assumes both an all white audience and that white people didn't event colorism in the first place. If there wasn't differential treatment based on skin color, there wouldn't be colorism. He talked to students and black actors who spoke about how that plays out in Hollywood, light skinned blacks get professional type roles while dark skinned actors play crackheads and gang members. But this is of course another indication of how white people can be implicated in colorism too, b/c clearly black people certainly aren't casting agents if we make it into the industry at all. Where is the NAACP on this? Doesn't anyone else see the ways in which our image is being constructed in the national media? And these aren't videos, this is supposed to be journalism!!

I saw a commercial for Zulu ringtones that had an old school caricature of an African with a bone in his hair and big lips and eyes. Where is the aclu on this? Am I the only one seeing this?

I can't comment on halle in "Their eyes were watching God" just yet b/c I had to tape it. But I'm going to hazard that my blogging sister fecundmellow is on the right track.

I feel like I'm really about to be on some turn the TV off b/c really this is just too much for me. I feel like I'm screaming and no ones listening. Maybe I will write some letters, and sign them "from an actual mad black woman." Maybe . . .

I'm heated!

This is the first article that I've seen about our event and it's on the AP wire! It doesn't even mention that Kevin Powell was there and it grossly misrepresents what went down. I'm still too close to the event to do a play by play but know that this is not an accurate representation. The media can't even get the story right, when we are telling them how it's something they never seem to be able to do. I mean does this even appear balanced?

Delta steals, VH1's racist,and CNN sucks!

The BF's (my friends from my first year days plus Cate) participated in Delta's Campus MovieFest by creating a short, a no more than 5 min. movie about how good goes around. Being the fabulous creative people that they are, their movie "the gooooooood squad" was chosen to be a finalist in the citywide competition (which is mysteriously missing from the website, now). Though the city competition hasn't happened, I imagine they will place pretty high b/c delta ripped off their movie for their new commercial! It's quite an ingenous way not to pay an advertising agency and get some fresh ideas. To the BF's congrats once again, sorry your work has been consumed by the corporate machine and repackaged as their own.

Race o rama continues to teeter b/w an effort to prove racial stereotypes true and insightful provocative commentary on race relations in this country. I was especially upset during the Blackaphobia episode where they said people should be scared of black women b/c they have attitude. "A black woman will tell you what your doing wrong. " If your doing wrong someone needs to tell you! We're just supposed to be silent? Are white women silent? I hate that!! Plus I think that's faulty anyway. If black women are so outspoken, so assertive and agressive, why are we still getting beaten by the men our lives, stayin' with men who cheat on us, can't get the men we are with to use condoms so we don't get HIV and die?

The one thing that I did think was interesting during In Race We Lust, was the the idea of black women and asian men, the most undesirable people to bed and wed, getting together and having some blasian children. Maybe Mr. Will Yun Lee and I can make that fashionable : )

This reporter from cnn calls yesterday on my cell phone and says "So tell me about the Nelly protest." If she had done her research, i.e. read the article I wrote that Spelman sent her, she would have had the answer to every question she asked. She clearly had an agenda and wanted me to answer these questions in a certain way. She wanted to imply that "tip drill" was the spark that ignited my activism, that this was the first action of women taking a stand against misogynistic music. I was uncompromising and I think she just kind of gave up. Then she says they want to come early, do some shots of me getting ready to do the panel "You know doing your hair, getting ready in your room, chilling with your friends . . ." What?! First of all I don't "do" my hair, secondly if I don't clean my room for my friends, I'm certainly not cleaning it for CNN, and who says "chilling?" I told her I didn't feel comfortable with doing something in my dorm room."Why?"

I explained that it was a group effort and that my being singled out doesn't reflect all the women who were involved in making this happen. She tried to argue that "people need to see you washing your hair and getting ready so they can relate to you." She seemed to be semi-obsessed with my hair; I supposed she assumed that b/c I'm black it must be relaxed so it's gonna take me some time to do it? I once again said that I didn't feel confortable. She snapped at me then "Well we don't have to talk to you if your going to be uncomfortable," like I should be apologetic for missing this opportunity to have an interview with CNN. I told her she should get in touch with Asha then b/c I was sure she'd have no problems being followed.

Dude, Where's My Ghetto Pass?

Race-o-Rama was pretty ignorant. I mean they sucked me in with Black in the '80's so my guard was down. So here are my top 10 reasons for hating Dude where's my ghetto pass

1. the tips for being ghetto, i.e. find the nearest x-walk, and do chin ups on the light post
2. the very premise that the ghetto is once again touted as authentic blackness
3. they were giving passes to people, like giving them the black people's approval with a ghetto pass?! Do black people even say ghetto pass?
4. They took away people's ghetto passes (poor JT), because cultural co-option and physically going to the slums are the same thing?
5. the stupid debate over who would win in a show down between the hamburger helper hand and the black power fist (I don't know why people even entertained that question)
6. they had four women commenting out of like 25 people
7. the only discussion of women was in terms of black women having bigger butts than white women, which has nothing to do with the ghetto!
8. Michael Eric Dyson over bell? really VH1?
9. They actually asked if the trailor park was the new ghetto!
10. that the once mighty Mos is letting them put his music in a Denali Commercial?!

Things I liked . . .
1. Aaron McGrudder was killin' it with the commentary

These shows are dangerous b/c they become the voices of authority for people. If there are only certain people at the table, the show is edited for consensus and time, and those asking the questions have an agenda, it presents a faulty construction of the state of the world. There were some interesting points made but I'm so leary of mainstream media supposedly critiquing itself.

All things being said, I'm still going to watch it again tonight : )

Class Act and Oppression Olympics

Bettina called around noon today to tell me about something she'd seen on the 11 alive news. Apparently they highlight a local teacher who's a "Class Act," you know special interest piece for the community and what not. So today it was Ms. Carla Russo's time to shine and they showed the Garden Hills Elementary engaged with her students. So towards the end of the segment, they interview the black girl in the class who enthusiastically says, "I love Ms. Russo! She gave us all nick names and mine is 'Jemima.'"

What?! Jemima?! Of course the news team is all smiles and completely oblivious to the problematic nature of such a comment. Needless to say they and Ms. Russo are getting a letter. As someone who has been misinterpreted by the press, I'm reserving judgment until I get a response. I mean maybe the girl's name sounds like Jemima or maybe giving black children archaic stereotypical nick names is some form of transgressive political action I am not yet hip to. Whatever.

I've been in deep contemplation about identity lately. Jah's post of Nikki's poem really resonated with me. I find it increasingly difficult to deal with people because of my politics, black men in particular. Recognizing gender inequity is not a very popular thing to do in the black community.

Black women who do are forever being lambasted for not dealing with the seemingly larger oppression of race, which forever privilege the experiences of black men. Male privilege and white privilege remain the two major stumbling blocks preventing black men and white women from uniting in a mutually beneficial way with black women. Because we will never be white or male, black feminists have never held the illusion that one day they'd be included in the dominant power structure. And so black men and white women continue to play the oppression olympics, never really seeing how they too will never fully enjoy the spoils of such a system.

The powers that be have indoctrinated us so well that black women will critique other black women who dare to bring gender violence in our community to light. Like Alice and The Color Purple, though not on such a large scale, FMLA members have faced a similar backlash for bringing to people's attention the intraracial misogyny in rap music.

I know where this comes from, this desire to turn a blind eye to gender violence in our communities. I know the history, how black men were "emasculated" slavery, unable "to provide" for their families and "protect their women" from the physical and sexual assaults they faced at the hands of abusive plantation owners. I know that black men were demonized as potential rapists of the coveted white woman and subsequently lynched for even seemingly looking in a white woman's direction.

And so there is this mythology of pre-colonial Africa, as a monolithic bastion free of patriarchy or the patriarchy that existed was of the benevolent type and therefore unproblematic. And it's pervasive; this has been voiced in my black masculinities class on numerous occasions as an unchallenged truth of how much better off we'd be as a people if we just returned to our roots. Dr. K's favorite and now my favorite feminist of The Continent Patricia McFadden said, "If civilization began in Africa, patriarchy probably did too. And so then, did women's resistance to it."

But it's lonely out her as a young black feminist. It makes it all the more clear that voluntary segregation or repatriations (to where?) is not the answer. I wish everyone would read and absorb and understand how these interlocking systems work. We have to learn to see our individual struggles as connected to the struggles of others. Ok. I'll stop waxing philosophical now.


First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller

Sarah Jones keeps it real

So Sarah Jones' original special on Bravo blows Chapelle Show out of the water! I just read this review that said it wasn't as political as Bridge & Tunnel but I can't make that comparison. It also critiqued her as a copy cat or a follow up to Tracey Ulman, Whoopi and the like. That made me mad! Ain't nobody said nothin' about Chapelle for coming after chris, eddie, richard, flip, etc.

From Ashia about Kitwana's remarks

Kitwana’s lecture was pretty good and I enjoyed him, until my friend asked him a question about you. He said that he thought that you and the other Spelman women had other motives for doing what you did, and that it solved NOTHING. Basically he said some of the same things that you said Chuck D said about you and the other Spelman women. A lot of the black women there became disappointed by his comments. Another one of my friends stated to me that she had to read his book on the Hip-Hop generation in her class, and he contradicts himself throughout the whole book; I guess I will have to read it. I do not know if Kitwana knows that much about Hip-Hop in the first place, because he did not know that Jean Grae plays to a predominately white crowd; he even seemed shocked to hear that.

In my NAACP meeting a long time ago, we talked about the “Nelly” incident and many did feel that he was doing a “good” thing and that you and the other women were selfish, because most of the members there “speculated” that all of you are rich kids and what does it matter to you, because all of you are in the black elite anyway, so it shouldn’t matter. Its kind of like when Michele Wallace wrote “The Black Women and the Myth of the Superwoman” and she got all of that back lash for it, because she was not in the same socioeconomic status as the black women she wrote about. Personally, I was happy to hear that some black women had such respect for themselves that they would not have a man who depicted his own sisters in a degrading way. It’s a shame that some people do not look at it that way.

Remember you don't know me!

I got a post today saying that Bakari Kitwana had some not so nice things to say about me at a speaking engagement.

I'm really puzzled by this. All I ever wanted to do was challenge Nelly to think about what he produces for public consumption, correct in the press the faulty reports that Spelman had banned Nelly from coming to campus, explain that we are not interested in attacking artists, voice that we see the way our actions are being used by whites and blacks with conservative classest and racist agendas, and try to progress a real dialog in the black community about gender. This is not a "woe is me post" but simply an attempt to make sense of the continuing backlash on a small group of students who dared to attempt to challenge a multimillion dollar entertainer.

I was telling my friend DeLaine about this and she said this is a point of realization for her. For all the times we have judged someone for their statements in the press, there is the possibility that we have judged to quickly. We may have made a generalization about someone based on what the press presented which may or may not be an accurate representation of what they mean.

I too have been guilty of this, of making up my mind about people I've never met and to be on the other side is really humbling. It feels terrible to be misrepresented and talked about by somebody you respect. I am assuming that Mr. Kitwana hasn't read my articles or got a faulty sense of who and what I am about from the media at large. I'm concerned about more than how black people are represented. I, we, work on other things like reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, peace and justice issues, etc. This probably reads like I'm on a soap box but I want to be clear that this is not an incident in isolation for me but another action in a continuing string of actions designed to bring some light to something going on in the community. This one just got media attention.

I really wish this thing would die. Not that I'm not dedicated to the issue but now it has a life of it's own. Maybe things will quiet down after the town hall meeting next week.

Downtown . . .

This weekend I interviewed for Emory's Women's Studies graduate program with 11 other finalists for 5 funded slots. It was surprisingly tame. I really felt out of my element on Saturday though. The segregation on this town is so serious and as Frances pointed out Emory "is a different world from 'A Different World.'" Maybe, if I get in, I'll still live in the West End.

The research that some of the other candidates are doing is frikken amazing! A woman named Alex is doing work on sustainable communities and creating sustainable campuses that grow their own food. The implications for communities to return to more subsistence based living are global! It made me think of migrant workers out west being freed from the oppressive system of produce work. I didn't get a chance to ask her though about who "owns" the land and what that means for indigenous people who are still displaced from their land.

Lizzy is doing work on media representations of menstruation. She was talking about how the companies who produce pads and tampons, have the unceremonious task of doing menstruation education and how problematic that is. I'm sure we all remember the "I Got It" videos of our childhoods. She's also looking at reality TV through the same critical lens. The other people were really cool too and doing equally interesting things but those resonated with the most.

Oh, but one of the grad students is looking at compulsory monogamy. It was really cool to talk to her because I learned a million new words like "heteroflexible" and "polyamory." What other field lets you make up words?

I watched the Fashion police on E! last night and of course I got upset. They had that Kojo/David Evangelista -esque guy and Kathy Griffin, who have never seemed so fashion forward to me but whatever, commenting on what people wore to the grammy's. They showed footage of Raphael Saadiq with EWF, and of course they didn't know who he was or even distinguish him from the rest of the group. They showed Ben Harper, another beautiful brother who has "transcended" race, with a preggers Laura Dern on his arm as they discussed whether or not the child was his. Kanye threw up the roc and Kojelista asked "why do they do that? what does that mean?" he seemed somewhat miffed by his ignorance to the significance of the symbol which made me smile a little bit.

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The title is an homage to coko, lelee, and taj. One of my friends tried to argue that gay people had a monopoly on sexual bluntness. Not that downtown is so very blunt but it's subject matter created quite a stir when it came out; J also gave them a shout out so they were on the brain so i listened to the album again. It's fire and at times it reaches for a feministic stance on sex. The way black women were singing about sex then was so inspiring.

I'm so hyfie . . .

So I haven't blogged in a while because I was waiting for confirmation on this theory I had. However, I am very impatient so I'm just going to put it out there.

There is this song that's been playing on Atl radio stations recently which i believe is the unofficial anthem of the California version of crunk called "hyfie," which I don't even know if I'm spelling correctly. I first learned of hyfie during an MTV newsbrief where Sway went to "the streets" of the bay area and asked young people to define and dance "hyfie." It looked a hot mess! It looked like people imitating people who don't know how to dance. It reminded me of an episode of flash forward where Tucker and the gang trick a sociologist into believing that there is a secret teenage world and language that adults know nothing about. I would love for it to be discovered later that these kids played the ultimate prank on MTV by pretending that the "hyfie" craze was real.

We could take a bank . . .

I watched Set It Off with marge and cate yesterday. We all cried. I used to take great pride in saying I wasn't a crier but I don't think I can say that anymore. That isn't to say that I cry a lot, just that now I probably cry at emotionally appropriate moments.

Jalylah im'ed me to say that she got my message, she'd call me later and "p.s. tonight we had dinner w/ jordan carlos and his girlfriend." Then she signed off! I am aching for details . . .

BGS is an OG!

Last night was the spike film forum in King's Chapel. Our little clique of progressives sat together and gave Dr. Guy-Sheftall a hero's welcome as she took the stage. She was so blunt and so direct, both critiquing and praising spike as she deemed appropriate. I love it when people regulate (shout out to jalylah the other great regulator I know) especially when it's Dr. guy-sheftall checking someone's faulty gender analysis. We had a more intimate discussion in the women's center following and it was great to hear my fellow FMLA sisters hold it down and reflect their truths about the protest and how we thought about it. It was also interesting to see how professors responded to celebrity; I'll leave that alone. The most important thing to me was seeing the FMLA in action. We are so serious and I really feel like we can set this world right again!

let it go . . .

Ayoka's class met for the first time and of course, it was frikken amazing! She's so together! I also had to deal with that prolific morehouse ego today too. Hats off to sarah for checking ol' boy in a serious way!