[interim Posting]

I'm not even going to attempt to justify this or tie it into something deep or philosophically relevant... I just think this is HILARIOUS! All the bored cubical workers out there, I hope this is a welcomed change in pace from your usual water cooler banter and Dilbert humor... 

Giggidy Giggidy and good day...

~Hard E. Harr~

Find it, and Mind it...

It’s a new little joint called “mind your own business”/
When somebody’s in ya face you ask em “Why you all in it”/
Now I’ma tell you how to use “mind ya own business”/
It’s a complicated thing so please quite down and listen/
There’s no simple explanation, punch line and finish/
So I’ll just use some examples and see if you can feel it/


     Ok, so I was having a great conversation the other day with a cool friend and the topic of race came up, as it often does when speaking to me.

Side Note: I talk about race not so much because it’s what I care about the most but more because as a Black Man the world never fails to let me forget that I’m black so I will not let the world forget that I’m HERE!


    Yeah, so we’re talking about race and I say, during the conversation, “You know, white people should just mind their own business” than I think, we ALL should just mind our own business. It’s clear that we live in a world of people and naturally we are all going to mingle and talk and exchange cultural ideas. The problem I have is when others start to impose their cultural ideas on to me and MY group. When whites came over to Africa, America, and pretty much everywhere else, they didn’t stop and say “Oh, this is different. It’s nice to meet you all. Lets see how you guys do things and learn from each other!” They came and said, “Oh, you guys got a nice little set up here, it’s all good. But this is how I do things. Now that I’m here you need to get down or lay down!” To that I just say MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. But that doesn’t just go for white people. I mean that for all imperialistic/imposing groups! If you’re rich and I’m not and you want to live where I live (Harlem), I say to you MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. Harlem was just fine before you (by you I mean the gentrifying population. If you don’t know what that means it’s because it’s YOU) got here. You might not understand or agree with the way we do things or how we live but fuck that and FUCK YOU. We like it, it’s ours, ease back! Who’s to say that a Wal-Mart or a Virgin Mega Store is better than the Bodega and Mom & Pop’s Record shop. Don’t even get me started on Starbucks! Even religious groups, I’m shouting you out! CHRISTIANS, mind your OWN BUSINESS!!! All I have to say about them is “Crusades” if you don’t get it you should stop reading right now and reevaluate yourself. Jehovah’s Witnesses, PLEASE mind your own business. If I get one more knock at the door at ass crack in the morning I’ma pull my hair out.
    You know I really do believe that if we all mind our own business and just deal with our own life would be better. To drive the issue home a tad more, I’ll share this. I like to think about it like a family. Everyone has somebody in their family that is not the most upright person in the world (i.e. Crack heads, in jail, stealing all the time, drunks, ect…) but you still love them or maybe you don’t. But you deal with them in your own way. If one day somebody told you that “Uncle Johnny” had to go to jail for smoking a cigarette you’d be furious, because all this time the way YOU dealt with him was just putting him outside at the family picnic. That’s just an uncomfortable feeling for an outsider to come in and dictate a way of life to you! Even the animals know how to mind their own business. You don’t see deer telling birds how to fly, Ants telling sharks how to swim, horses telling cows how to give milk or dog telling squirrels how to clime trees. RIGHT NOW you can turn on National Geographic and see an Lion chase down, bite and kill an antelope and the whole time there’s a gang of monkeys in that tree waaaaaay over there watching. Now, if you could hear those monkeys and understand that conversation do you really think it would be like “OMG, Earl, we should send a delegation over there to try and rectify Lion/Antelope relations and see if we can come to some sort of peaceable agreement for all the lions to de-claw ASAP. If they don’t comply, we’ll send in the Elephants to maintain the peace.” That’s some bullllllllll shit! That conversation would be a LOT more like “That’s a damn shame what that Lion did to that Antelope” and that would be it. They would stay in that tree and “MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS.”
    In closing I’ll say this. People, you know when something is your business so please just mind your own… For those of you that don’t know when shit isn’t your business here is one way that I think will help you in years to come. If you see, hear, or think something might be happening and you don’t have a clear, almost instinctual reaction to it but somebody else around you does… then it “isn’t your business” it’s theirs and you should let them handle it. If it doesn’t have anything to do with you, let it ride…

Thank you for letting me vent, I look forward to your hate mail… ☺

P.S. No animals were injured in the writing of this blog…


~H. Herald ~

A More Personal Note...

   This time around all, I’m writing about me. I know I know, your thinking “It’s YOUR blog, aren’t they all about you?!” Well, yes and no. Usually I write about issues that I think about, that effect the larger community. Broad themes and things. But today I’m writing about me or should I say something that bothers me about myself or perhaps others. That is where you all come in. The following issue is something that I have thought about a length, it’s ruined great relationships and put strains on potential relationships. At first I felt completely justified and later I felt as though it was an irrational thought and ever since I have been teetering back and forth between those two opinions. Well, I know by now we are all asking the question, what is this issue? Well, let me tell you.

 

It’s not something I can explain with one phrase. I’m going to have to “break it down” so-to-speak.

 

I hate when people I know and like are friends with people I don’t like. Hum.. I guess I could put it in one phrase… :-/

 

   Now, that seems simple enough either get over it or just don’t be friends with those people either. Ha! How naive we are. First we must look at the rationality of this point. I know that it is well within my rights as a person on the planet to like or not like anyone that I choose, as an extension of that I can choose to disassociate with the people who like the people that I don’t like. But how practical is this? Having recently left the undergraduate environment I understand the almost inability to not have anything to do with any particular person. What I mean by that is, the community is so small that it is inevitable to know somebody that knows any other person. I would even go as far as to say that this is triplely so in the minority community at ANY institution in America. The Black and Brown community is hyper sensitive to its members. You might not know everyone by name but you surely know who’s who. For example, when the freshmen come in you can look at a face and say to yourself “Hey, look, a new Black person…” So with all that said. I get it, you can’t just cut yourself off from “undesirables,” fine. But the issue I’m having is that I can’t help but be disgusted or turn up my nose at people who deal with them as well. Now, I know that I’m not the end-all be-all of social ranking. However, I DO think of myself as a good judge of character. So I feel as though if I don’t think this person is worth associating with why would anyone worth anything think otherwise. Does that sounds bad? Cocky? Arrogant? Victorian? These are things I would like feed back on. But moving on…

   To make it a little more personal. I’ll do just that… There is this young lady, lets just call her Wood Chuck or W.C. (Dub. C) for short and there is this nigger (I use the term because as all black people know There are Black Folks and then there are Niggers. This guy is a Nigger. White people, if you don’t know the difference ask your Black friends… But don’t ask your Nigger friends cause they will get offended) the Nigger we’ll just call, Ike. So, a little exposition on the story, Ike is this nosey nigger who at one time I was cool with. I knew him independently of anyone else I knew, which is to say we didn’t meet though anyone. As a matter of fact I once found his student ID card on a campus shuttle and instead of being niggerish and using up all his money at the vending machine I chose (in a attempt to promote non-niggerish behavior) to turn it in and facebook him that I found his ID and he could go pick it up. Now, here we are several months later. Remember, I know him independently of anyone else I know… and we don’t even know each other that well but I mean I went out my way to find this dude and give him his card.  That’s beside the point though, so a few months maybe a year go by and it’s always cool when I see him.  At the time my then girlfriend and I were separated. During that time I went on a date or two with one of Ikes friends, although I had no clue that she was his friend. Long story short Ike goes out of his way to mislead his friend into thinking that I was cheating on my girlfriend at the time to date her when in actuality we were not together and (this is a side note) he was actually dating my girlfriend at the time BEFORE we had separated and from what I believe they had been seeing each other for a while. Now, to make a long story short I will spare the details of the entire situation but I said all that just to show that this dude is a Nigger! Lol.

   So, now, W.C., she and I have known each other for SOOOOOOOME time. We met very randomly and just continued to stay in Semi-Touch over that last year extremely recently we have been talking and chilling form time to time. She’s cool as a fucking fan. No complaints as far as her character or anything like that. But then! And here’s the kicker… I’m scrolling through her facebook and BAM! Guess who’s on her buddy list… That shiftless ass, motherfucking nigger, Ike… Now, I will be the first to proclaim that facebook is by NO means the final word on one’s social network of friends. However, that did get me to thinking… So I hit the “Pictures” button and low and behold W.C. and Ike… Hugged up like freaking best buddies. His sweaty ass face pressed against hers at some tight, hot ass party, sharing drinks, talking and given the context of the situation doing whatever else… It just makes W.C. so much less appealing in so many ways (lets get out the gutter by the way. I’m not talking about sexually, just in terms of wanting to get to know her or letting her know me). I want to straight say “If you’re friends with them I’m not friends with you” but come on America how 5^th grade is that shit! But at the same time I can’t help but think about how much I HATE this Ike character. Even more so now because he’s affecting relationships I have with people that don’t even have anything to do with him. Rock and a fucking HARD PLACE people!

   With all of that though, isn’t it Human nature to be territorial of ones circle of friends and people you value for one reason or another. I mean if you have any kind of caring feeling for someone and you think that something is bad for them isn’t it only natural for you to not want them dealing with it. If I know something is dirty and I just saw you put on a white T, assuming I care, I’m not gonna let you walk into the dirtiest room in the house! That’s what Ike is… Straight dirt.

   So, back to the original question, given that W.C.’s is a wonderful person with not strikes against her name from my p.o.v. accept that she is friends with Ike. Am I justified in thinking less of W.C. because of that association? Please Post, Please Comment, or shit just send a brotha an email! I wanna know what to do America!!!

 

Lastly, a few proverbs that come to mind…

“You’re judged by the company you keep.” and “Birds of a feather flock together.”

 

~H. Herald~

 

 

Mic Check 1,2-1,2...

Ok all, I'm just trying something out... If I can get this to work it's gonna take this blog thing to a whole Otha-Notha level for a brotha... let's see.

Aight, so apparently this works... I've GONE multi-media. Great, so this is a re-production of Blue Magic by Jay-Z. Now, I don't know who you are reading this but you must say that this is ten times better than the original. It's by this dude "MidasTouchLive." I found him on YouTube. Basically this dude just takes songs that are already out and makes them HOTTER. He has over 20 tracks (with videos) and all of them have been better than the original. He's basically the next generation of rap. He just takes something that is already out and totally makes it his bitch. And at this point that seems to be a major part of hip hop. Taking the "ordinary" and making it special in some way. Until his style becomes the Stat-Quo, this dude is FIYA!

More to come... stay tuned world...

~H. Herald~