End of the Year Dump

Here is a list of my top ten music downloads of the year. Note these are all free promotional material is is widely available to download and encouraged by the artists themselves.

Revolutionary But Gangsta Grillz: Dead Prez
If you thought they were militant before, just wait.
The Madness (Onye-Ala): J. Periord & Nneka
Beautiful, amazing Nigerian soulstress, and she might just be mad.
The Cleveland Show: Chip Tha Ripper
Name sames a lot. but the flow will have you hooked.
Late Night With The Roots: Various Artists
Fallon's show is painful to watch. Roots, as always, rock the house. Now here is a way around all that
Mos Dub: Max Tannone
Simple and plan, Mos Def over classic reggae and ska. what more do you want.
Roses N’ Guns: Nikki Lynette
Hard, raw girl from the Chi - a little Axel Rose, a little Nina Simone, all just Nikki Lynette.
Live at Southpaw BK: Quadron
Amazing soul, electric pop duo from Denmark. This is a must have, watch their videos too.
Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers: Wu-Tang vs. The Beatles
Mash-Ups for the most part are what ever, but this effort is solid. Unfortuneately it is no longer available for download
Winter Skank Mix: 100dBs
Just a nice old skool mix of ska using original equipment.
NBA LIVE 10 Mixtape: Mick Boogie
From De La Soul to Matt & Kim to Zion I to Six Sense, this mixtape is awesome. The two tracks from De La alone is worth it.

Anywho, Happy Christmas and remember, the best type of giving free.

Silly politics silly nostalgia

Working backwards, Joe Kline of Time Magazine, said on the Meet the Press this morning that the Health Care Bill has a provision in it that requires “small” business owners to provide space for women to breast feed/pump। He thought this was silly, because his dad owned a small business and would of told the women to use his office. Awe, Joey gots a nice daddy. And if more people were like him we might not just need a government at all. Right?

Well the sad fact is that women, pregnant women, and women with children are discriminated across the board. In this country once you become pregnant you are on the road to disability. Most employers don’t even offer maternity leave. So I’m sorry Joe, healthcare reform might have some funny provisions, but we can’t all be your daddy.

However, Peggy Noonan doesn’t want to be your mommy either. Noonan lamented that for the first time in her lifetime (ooohhhh) there is real prospect that children won’t do better than their parents. I’m sure those older to me can attest to other times that this has been true, in fact I remember as one of the platforms that Bill Clinton ran on in 1990s. But furthermore, do we need to strive to do better than our parents. Doesn’t this affectively say that our parents were some kind of failure? And what do we mean by better?

My parents spread the middle-class economic gap, and I hope to land somewhere in the middle. But that does not constitute better in any real way. I asked my students that other day to define success, and one said, “the ability to take care of others.” My parents have definitely done that. Taking care of others does require money, but it requires much more than that, stuff that is not related to money. In fact, money often corrupts the desire to take care of others. This could be because gaining money often requires for you to think of yourself in competition with others, as oppose to community.

I think that the rap group Chiddy Bang says it best, “I know I’m privileged because while I’m in the booth, my cousin is in the village.”

Stroking

I’m sure by now that most of you have seen Colbert’s testimony to congress। His performance was spot on as they say – bitting satire at some of its finest। But what was even funnier, or shall I say, what congress found funnier, was their own questioning to the panel of testimonials, which included Carol Swain Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University and Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.

Reductive reasoning and pigeon holding seemed to be what is taught and fostered by our congress। Not to mention a sense of superiority that dismissed everyone on the other side of their bench. One line of questioning went something like this to Colbert from senator Lamar Smith (R-TX), who also recently said to Rupert Murdoch, “Gosh Fox News is great.”

‘how many workers did you work with that day’

Colbert looks to Rodriguez and confirms ‘about 100’

‘Do you know how many were legal or illegal working’

‘I didn’t ask them for their papers’

‘So you don’t know’

‘No’

‘So since you didn’t ask, we can assume that most were legal’

What the fuck। The line of questioning, and part of the reason for Colbert’s testimony, was precisely to say that Americans don’t do this work, nor would they willing do this work.

It is this reductive, self & national aggrandizing logic that is killing us. Even senators from the “left”, who were primary African American on this sub-committee, held the same arrogance and dismissiveness. It was sickening on all fronts.

Napkin Poem

1st baseball game @ tiger
stadium I booed the
national anthem to
be silly cuz there
was a moment of silence
The shock of the sound
was surprising - I was
wearing a Los Angels hat
that I bought in the
parking lot - I was 9.

USownians

So I had a student give me a note the other day. It roughly said that since it is summer quarter I assume that students don’t want to be in class, but many of them actually enjoy being in class. Either way she shows up late the next day.

As I’m reading over her first essay on the military industrial complex and the Jarecki film Why We Fight, she writes in her intro, “One of the most recent wages of war was September 11^th where Iraq waged war on the U.S. by bombing the twin towers in New York.”

WTF!

My Blood's Boiling

My blood’s boiling
I have hate
Little bit of fear
And no room to explode

My fingers and genitals
Are trembling
My eyes are open
My lids are half closed

I want out
Of this skin
Out of this style
Into a new way

No more wishing
No more wanting
Just accept this is
De Anza Town

ABC Workshop

This is just a quick stab at an alphabet poetry writing exercise. enjoy!

Abandon hope and fear
Benevolent now
Castrates
Distinctions between yous
Elder yous
Forever yous

Gathering the force of
Hurricane thoughts
Inflamed souls
Jumping Jumping Jumping
Keep Jumping
Longer farther higher
Make yourself more yourself
Make yourself more the moon
Naked, grey, and bare
Original sun god
Placed in the sky for all to see

Quick, don’t blink
Run after the dawn
Start a yelling match
Tear your opponent apart
Universally
Victory is to
Win nothing
eXtradite your past
Yawn @ the thought of pleasure
Zig Zag Zig
Arm Leg Leg Arm Head (allah)