Just so we're clear:

CRACK killed Applejack.

He jumped in, but he couldn't

(what?)

jump back.

(cuzsee, now)

DEATH

lives in the rock house. ~~~~~~

kcarc.

Theorem: Social Science Edition

I think I think that:

how poor people exist now has changed.

I remember a time when it seemed like the poorest people were the ones who exhibited the most faith in a/the higher power. They had very little that was tangible, so their capital consisted mostly of the intangible and that was typically where they had the most invested.

Now, it seems like the only people who can afford/afford to have time to believe in God are the middle class and up (peepyourlocalneighborhoodmegachurchandtellmeifyouthinksomebodypoorwouldbecomfortablegoingthere).

Simplified,

(g/God) = hope

In the past, po' folks, if nothing else, had God.

Now,
after the foreclosure on their faith by the specter of survival in daily life,

maybe folks can no longer afford to hope.



So, how to you convince somebody to

spend

some

time

praying?


(shrug)

Award Shows

I've been to my first (as a nominant).

I've been to my last ( as a nominant ).

It seems sensless to me to put oneself in a competitive environment, when that which is being graded was not created for the purpose of the competition.

(and of course, it could be, maybe it was - but not by me)

If I can't genuinely clap for yo sh!t, I really would prefer to not burden you with the poison of my presence.

At least not unless I think I deserve a little stomach distress.

{shrug}


*although, it did afford me the opportunity to be hit with a line. Well, when women do it it seems much less like one;

"you look lost"

"I'll give you this...but you have to promise to use it"

(eyebrow)

...

I wonder

how many people born on the continent of Africa,

typically along the central western coast and somewhat central inland,

have asked the questions they weren't supposed to ask
of the people who refused to answer
and searched for a barely-to-non-existant paper trail

in order to find their distant blood relatives on the other side of the water....

who really aren't distant by so long ago.

If there are 360 degrees in a circle, why do there seem to be an infinite amount of perspectives?

hm.

Same-Sex Rape Justice in Dubai

courtesy of the NY Times (who FINALLY made their web content free)

In Rape Case, a French Youth Takes On Dubai

Correction Appended

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 31 — Alexandre Robert, a French 15-year-old, was having a fine summer in this tourist paradise on the Persian Gulf. It was Bastille Day and he and a classmate had escaped the July heat at the beach for an air-conditioned arcade.

Just after sunset, Alex says he was rushing to meet his father for dinner when he bumped into an acquaintance, a 17-year-old, who said he and his cousin could drop Alex off at home.

There were, in fact, three Emirati men in the car, including a pair of former convicts ages 35 and 18, according to Alex. He says they drove him past his house and into a dark patch of desert, between a row of new villas and a power plant, took away his cellphone, threatened him with a knife and a club, and told him they would kill his family if he ever reported them.

Then they stripped off his pants and one by one sodomized him in the back seat of the car. They dumped Alex across from one of Dubai’s luxury hotel towers.

Alex and his family were about to learn that despite Dubai’s status as the Arab world’s paragon of modernity and wealth, and its well-earned reputation for protecting foreign investors, its criminal legal system remains a perilous gantlet when it comes to homosexuality and protection of foreigners.

The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he, his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier.

“They tried to smother this story,” Alex said by phone from Switzerland, where he fled a month into his 10th-grade school year, fearing a jail term in Dubai if charged with homosexual activity. “Dubai, they say we build the highest towers, they have the best hotels. But all the news, they hide it. They don’t want the world to know that Dubai still lives in the Middle Ages.”

Alex and his parents say they chose to go public with his case in the hope that it would press the authorities to prosecute the men.

United Arab Emirates law does not recognize rape of males, only a crime called “forced homosexuality.” The two adult men charged with sexually assaulting Alex have pleaded not guilty, although sperm from all three were found in Alex. The two adults appeared in court on Wednesday and were appointed a lawyer. They face trial before a three-judge panel on Nov. 7. The third, a minor, will be tried in juvenile court. Legal experts here say that men convicted of sexually assaulting other men usually serve sentences ranging from a few months to two years.

Dubai is a bustling financial and tourist center, one of seven states that form the United Arab Emirates. At least 90 percent of the residents of Dubai are not Emirati citizens and many say that Alex’s Kafkaesque legal journey brings into sharp relief questions about unequal treatment of foreigners here that have long been quietly raised among the expatriate majority. The case is getting coverage in the local press.

It also highlights the taboos surrounding H.I.V. and homosexuality that Dubai residents say have allowed rampant harassment of gays and have encouraged the health system to treat H.I.V. virtually in secret. (Under Emirates law, foreigners with H.I.V., or those convicted of homosexual activity, are deported.)

Prosecutors here reject such accusations. “The legal and judicial system in the United Arab Emirates makes no distinction between nationals and non-nationals,” said Khalifa Rashid Bin Demas, head of the Dubai attorney general’s technical office, in an interview. “All residents are treated equally.”

Dubai’s economic miracle — decades of double-digit growth spurred by investors, foreign companies, and workers drawn to the tax-free Emirates — depends on millions of foreigners, working jobs from construction to senior positions in finance. Even many of the criminal court lawyers are foreigners.

Alex’s case has raised diplomatic tensions between the Emirates and France, which has lodged official complaints about the apparent cover-up of one assailant’s H.I.V. status and other irregularities. The tension and growing publicity over the case seem to have prompted the authorities to take action.

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Correction: November 10, 2007

A front-page article on Nov. 2 about the accusation that a French boy was raped in Dubai referred incorrectly, using information from a police report, to the American School in Dubai and a 17-year-old suspect in the case. The suspect is not a student at the American School, and the school says it has no Emiratis enrolled.

Power Lines

Today at a print casting for a mobile phone/technology company:

Lady from the agency seemed hesitant since my hair won't "'fro out".

Photographer says to take it anyway and let "them" decide because "his smile is electric".


If only the Piano Lesson audition had gone as well.

Hell, maybe it did.

(shrug to the past)

Time to read Topdog!

Shirley Chislolm

and her entirely too and therefore perfectly west African nose
and her gapped on the side(?!!) teeth

{there is that part of me that wishes they were still that way,}

With that lisp that's filled with ev-er-y bit and more
of the knowledge necessary to, oh, I don't know

be president?....

was and is...

wow.



Go, Brooklyn.

Electr(on)ic Commerce-zation

One down.

8 to go.

thass they Grammar; let it be...

Somebody just sent me an e-mail containing the following phrase:

"I drug myself out of the bed"

My first instinct was to reply with a humorous correction,

but I thought about it...

and in the milli-moment it took to do so,

the parad'oxymoro/niceness of it felt good like
somebody taking some cocoa butter on their
forefinger and rubbing gently my tragus.

(so i let it be)

Breakfast

greenappl
ehoney&al
mondbutte
ronArnold
sNaturalW
heat&Flax
isthejawn

Sick Sux

n/m

Et'mology

Peep post #184, 3rd word from end of first sentence/stanza.

Click here a definition via example (and to know what that excessively long thread is about, anyway).

On the Way Up the Hill...

Why do we age/deteriorate?

Given human propensity for self-inducing death

• war
• folly
• what-have-you

is it biologically necessary?

We certainly don't need it to thin the herd.

Why does nature need for cells to decrease in function until there is seizure?

Perpetual existence would seem to be a better choice given the amount of energy that goes into procreation/rearing.

.
..

Maybe...

The reason for age, is so we have a reason to try. Because, if you had forever, procrastination is much more a convenience.

So, maybe we need the prospect of an impending end to drive is to reach such that we might attain within the amount of time we have.

The concept of time itself, I would argue, is a result of a society's preoccupation with death (avoiding it).

Without aging(-->death), we are the Eloi,

maybe.

(shrug)

Mikey Simon Quotes of the Day

1. "A script is just a prison made of words."


2. "A boss is just a prison made of skin."

The Sissy Duckling

Currently running on HBO, title character voiced by Harvey Firestein.

If you haven't figured out the plot of this re-visioned fable, well, I sure hope it doesn't get too cool underneath that rock.

Kokujin

One gentleman's experience of being (a) in a (b) world.

Nina Got Something

HeeHee

(she sed "boobie")

I wonder if she knew she was gawjuss

>ay, mis pezóns!<

Kwamé Shows Me His Ass

This morning's recollected dream (I'm not kidding):

Apparently, I'm a music producer in this one.

Big Daddy Kane is doing a new album, it's produced by Kwamé. We're discussing what this new sound will be like. I bring up Kwamé's New Jack sound, whether he's going for that again. His response is incredulously "not". He seems to think "I got jokes". Kwamé, his ego having reared itself, leaves.

There was some reference to ass, so, on his way out Kwamé sets forth to show me his - literally. I avoid having my eyes make contact with it.

Having Mr. Kane's full attention, I set forth to begin a dialogue about current styles and play him "Oh"* from the ARE's Dem Damb Jacksons EP.

Having "won", dream state drifts into awakeness.

-

Though it wasn't a truly lucid dream experience, I did feel in control - it didn't feel as things were happening around me. It was unaware lucidity**.

* the beat for which I find to be quite nearly replete with butterynipplegoodness

** the phrase "subconscious lucidity" tweaks my fancy more, but it feels too similar to "lucid dream". I hate ambiguous terminology.

(raised eyebrow, upturned lower lip)

This past Thursday, while on the S67, I saw an individual with both an iPod le Touche and an iPhone.



amuse us with your feeble attempts to explain how this fails to defeat the purpose.

Martin Short Is That Dude!

The Misadventures of Ed Grimley is on Boomerang!

Ha!!

I should be asleep !

HA!!