Understandable Mistake or Shameful Shit?

So I've been following this guy Humanity Critic for a couple of weeks now. He's got some interesting stuff to say and a style to his writing that I like, appreciate, and will probably start to bite. HC is constantly Twittering and has put me on to some good links regarding Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State talk that's been going on.

Well last night I got a tweet about Busta Rhymes being a homophobe with a link in it and the link takes you to a video of Pharrell and DJ Premier talking backstage or in a Green room somewhere.

The whole setup is a little crazy because before seeing this I wouldn't have really thought that Premier and Pharrell would hang out. Premier is 42 but looks like he could be in his 50's and Pharrell's little skinny ass probably won't ever look more than about 19, so the visual is striking when you see the two of them together. Then consider that stylistically the two men are on opposite ends of the spectrum; Premier is straight old-school and Pharrell skates and listens to Steely Dan. But when you look at the variety of artists that both Premier and Pharrell have worked with and the success that they've both enjoyed, it's not that surprising that they would be kicking it.

In this video Pharrell is telling a story about Busta Rhymes. Not surprisingly, Pharrell is a pretty talented mimic and the way he relates the story is funnier than Hell. In addition to changing up his voice he also takes on the Busta's abrupt and strident body language, the extra loud tone, and the barking rhythm that makes Busta Busta. The conclusion of the story is that Busta is upset because some dude (one of the Jungle Brothers) that wanted to take a picture with him was wearing mascara.

I could go either way on this story. I'm not down with the homophobia, but tripping because some dude is wearing mascara doesn't really mean much to me. This isn't me defending Busta or going soft on homophobia. Just like accusations of racism, I like to wait until things are fairly clear cut before I level the charge of homophobia against someone. None of this is the point of this post, we're just getting to the incident that inspired this post's title in the next couple of paragraphs.

So like I said, I've been following Humanity Critic and I decided to follow up on this by leaving a comment on his blog at vibe.com. In order to comment you have to register, mildly annoying but really no big deal. They ask for your city and state, I type in Washington and in the drop-down list for states "DC" is nowhere to be found. Fuck me gently with a chain saw, I can't believe this just happened.

Now ten years ago or maybe even five, I could understand how something like this happened. But it's 2008, shit like this should have been straightened out a long time ago. It's incidents like this that have radicalized my thinking about DC statehood. When I first moved to DC getting representation in the House would have been enough to keep me happy, but now I say fuck all that! DC STATEHOOD NOW!!

As far as Vibe goes, I've always thought the magazine was kind of whack and now I have proof. Vibe.com I'm puttin' y'all on blast. This is some trifling, shameful shit. I find this diss of DC especially disturbing from an African-American oriented publication and website.

Who the hell is running your site that they didn't notice that you have ZERO users from D-Chocolate City-C? Maybe you just don't care that you don't have any users from DC, it's not like there are any black people there or anything.

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T Diamond Ranch

So after the call was made for Obama last night at 10pm our (central) time, we hit the road for Montana. I caught an hour of sleep before we left the in-law's place and slept the first two hours we were on the road before I took over behind the wheel at about midnight. We drove across western North Dakota and Eastern Montana until about 5:30am when I had to pull over to rest. I caught another two hours of sleep in the car and then not too long after we resumed our trip our route took us off the interstate.

Once the sun was up I could see that Montana is beautiful, it reminded me of the phrase "magnificent desolation". We stopped for breakfast in the thriving metropolis of Roundup, MT before coming into the home stretch of our trip. About 20 minutes outside of Lewistown it started snowing; I'm not sure of the geography of the area, but apparently we entered some mountain range. There was much rejoicing when we finally pulled into the driveway of the T Diamond Ranch.

After greeting everyone and a lot of hugging and excitement, BabyRat and my nephew/Godson (n/g) demanded to go out and play in the snow. We made a snowman and burned off some of the energy that BabyRat had built up sitting in a car for 12 hours before we had lunch. I won't bore you with the rest of the day, but it was pretty standard fare.

After we get the kids to bed and the adults are hanging out I realized that it's 10pm and I haven't done my blog post for the day. So I'm trying to excuse myself to bang out my 500 words for the day, but I'm not really sure what to tell people. I don't really want to tell them, "I'm a blogger" for two reasons. The first being I would feel like an unmitigated tool referring to myself as a blogger and the second is then they may want to read my blog. It would be fine for my sister & brother-in-law, but somehow I'm not comfortable with the idea of my brother-in-law's parents reading my piece of shit blog.

I realize this hesitance to tell people I have a blog is a weird bit of cognitive dissonance when you consider that anyone in the world can google "hill rat" and this blog is the second hit. I want people to read this blog, but I guess I just don't want certain people to read it lest I feel like I have to censor myself even further. Does this makes me a phony because I don't want some people to see behind the carefully constructed facade I present to the world?

Do any other bloggers feel the same way? It's kind of like I have a desire to keep my online life and identity separate from the rest of my life even though my life in meatspace is pretty much all I ever talk about.

PS - Special to my NaBloPoMo peeps. I pushed the send button on this post at 11:20pm Mountain time on 11/5/2008. Fuck that time stamp.

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Last Pre-Election Politics Post - Updated

Let's see if I can get through a post of links without diverting onto a tangent.

1. I don't know who this Smokey Fontaine cat is, but this video is pretty decent.

2. Barack is now getting love from white racists. Obama is a phenomenon.

3. The good ol' Root has a piece on brothers and sisters who have been talking out of their ass during this campaign. Bob Johnson, Jesse Jackson, and Juan Williams all get lit up here. Conspicuous by his absence is Rev. Al Sharpton.

4. KnockoutEd reminds folks to vote over at COINTELPOL.

5. I've got to give a link to NylonThread, who got me involved with NaBloPoMo.

6. Andrew Sullivan has a nice little quote about the flap on Obama's plane.

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New Commitment

So while I've been out here in Fargo I've steadily been accumulating observations and anecdotes about life out here on the plains. The problem isn't to find the time to write, I have as much time as I need most days, but rather finding the discipline (and perhaps courage) to write each and every day. I know each blog post doesn't have to be "The Invisible Man", but because that kind of literate, precise, and clear writing is what I strive for, I often find myself paralyzed by my own limitations as a writer.

The decision I have made to get myself over the hump is to make a public commitment to write an average of 500 words a day, five days a week for the remainder of the calendar year. I'm guessing that those five days will usually coincide with the work week, but perhaps not. Sometimes the 500 words will go down in a single post, other days I may do five 100 word posts and I'm gonna leave myself some wiggle room in case I write some sort of emotionally exhausting 1500 word screed, that so long as I reach 2500 words for the week I'll consider my commitment fulfilled.

Of course, the $64,000 question is always does anyone give a fuck? I'm guessing at least a couple of people will be interested to see me spill my brains all over the internet a little more often, but this public declaration will mostly be met by raging indifference.

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Give My Man a Vote

My man from all the way back in high school has entered an Obama poster contest. Cruise by and hook him up with a vote.

Thanks,

HR

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Nick is Stepping on His Dick Again

Criminy, Nick from Murky Coffee is having a bad year. Now he's beefing with some clown named Jeff (who appears to be a bit of a dick) about Murky's various policies.

This little pissing match quickly hit Boing Boing and Consumerist and is all over local blogs like DCist and the newly minted We Love DC.

I've got nothing but love for Murky and was sad to see their Capitol Hill location go belly up, but Nick my friend you've got to get a grip. Have you considered switching to decaf?

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Another Reason to the Hate the DNC

I've been really down on the DNC for years now, in large part because they treat Black voters as being completely and totally beholden to them. Billary's shameful performance during the primaries this year have done nothing to change that opinion.

But the biggest reason I can't stand the DNC is that they are stunningly incompetent. One of my friends described the DNC as having, " . . . a tattoo of a target between their toes and ankle and no matter what, they just fucking refuse to have it lasered off." That explains the nomination of Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, the two worst Democratic Presidential candidates of my lifetime.

Now to compound the DNC's myriad sins, we have reports that members of the Afro-sphere are largely being shut out of the State Blogger Corps (they have floor access all four days, are seated next to their state delegations, and will have internet access) for the DNC Convention this Summer.

It's not that I think there is/was a concerted effort to shut out Black bloggers, but rather there was no attempt to make sure that this very important constituency of the DNC was included.

Typical shameful shit by the DNC.

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