Cogito Ergo

I used to be ugly.   At least, I thought so.   Pre-teens don’t know shit about beauty but what matters is that I felt ugly and as far as I’m concerned beauty is something that any sentient being must affirm in the self before acknowledging from without.   Simply put, I felt ugly so I was ugly. My ugliness stemmed from one main factor for me: my dark skin.   We are talking late eighties and early nineties here.   Follow me to day when Al B. Sure tore up the airwaves, Aaliyah danced into our hearts and Mr. T. and Apollo Creed were big black dummies destined to get that ass whipped by the noble White man. I had an affinity for playing basketball and touch football with my friends.   I had never even heard the word “sunscreen” before which meant if it wasn’t winter time, I had a nice Taye Diggs-esque color going. My extended family on my father's side is almost all light skinned because my Great grand father on that line was a full blooded Iris...

I’ve met a lot people in this world and one of the most interesting aspects of someone is what they are afraid of.  I’ve come across some crazy ones that I just can’t explain (feathers, butterflies, da gubment), and a couple I can sort of see (clowns, wasps). My biggest fear is not quite a phobia because it isn’t a fear of something concrete.  I’m actually scared of losing my mind.  If you read my blog (and you are a smartass) you might say the process has already begun, but bear with me.  The blog actually lets me get things off my chest which an overactive mind needs to do from time to time.  Also, if I do lose my shit one day, we can all go back in my blog and see what you fuckers did that made me nuts. Anyhoo, back to me.  These are a few reasons why I’m afraid I might go crazy. Reason #1:  I don’t think I’m normal                 I embrace my oddity, I re...

Anyhoo, later in the day, before I went the bed I did a little channel surfing and lo and behold who did I see?  Chris fucking Brown on Jimmy Fallon. Somehow we all seemed to have forgotten the fact that this dude beat the shit out of Rhianna.  This wasn’t just some girl with a bloody swollen face.  This wasn’t a groupie or some chick that got lippy in the line at Burger King.  This was Rhianna!  She was a beautiful young woman with a great career in a high profile relationship with this dude and there she was, looking like Rodney King. What was almost worse than the bruises on her face was the look of shame she had in the photos.  It was the look of defeat. I know Rhianna has claimed to have moved on but here’s the thing.  Abused/abuser dynamics are a situation most of us do not understand fully.  What I do know is that the abused often stay because they feel so devalued that maybe they can’t see a better situation so it is up to all...

This is how the game goes.  If you don’t work, you don’t eat so you get out on that corner and work, bitch and don’t come back here without daddy’s money. Now I’m sure not too many of us get that exact same speech every morning (or night) but we do get similar prompts to get off of our asses in more deceptive forms such as “The baby is almost out of diapers” and “I don’t have anything to wear, sure wish I had money to go shopping.” And what do we do?  We get out there on the stroll for 8-9 hour shifts and give ourselves away to the man with the hope that one day we can have saved enough nickels to maybe do some pimping of our own. Why do we participate in this dire situation?  Because the hoing is all we knowing.  Work, eat and repeat has been drilled into our heads since grade school and so we don’t see anything wrong with it.  Somewhere in economics 101 we all learned that profit is earned when a good or service is purchased for a higher amount than ...

I’m always try to keep calm.  Reason being is that I’ve gone the fuck off before.  I don’t mean that I was being an asshole to some customer service rep or flipped someone off on the road.  I’ve found myself being completely out of control and being regretful of my behavior almost immediately after. These kind of flip outs have been with me for some time, too.  I submit to you two times when I flashed on a nigga, both before I left grade school. I had this good friend in 1 st  through 3 rd  grade.  Let’s call him “Bill”.  Bill was a little feminine, but I didn’t really care.  I was very quiet back then.  Niggas probably thought I was gay, too, so we got along just fine.  Even at that young age, he started getting in good with the girls (because that nigga had to be gay) and I was becoming a loner, known for knowing all the answers in class so we slowly drifted apart. Fifth grade comes along and we were in the same class...

I love being a married man.   That being said, there are certain complications that come with the territory.   For instance, after I took my vows, turns out I was still a human male, which is nice when it comes to sexing up the wife, not so nice when in the company of other boobs and badonks. Now I haven’t become a master of avoiding attraction from the opposite sex quite yet but I’m working on it (not really).   One thing that I’ve noticed is that if the right song comes on, it amplifies all of those carnal urges your pastor swore would get you straight into hell. In the real and married world, it isn’t the devil you face when you give in to your urges, it’s that pissed off spouse.   In the interest of saving you all that sort of pain I’ve come up with a top ten list of songs that you should never, I mean NEVER, get caught alone in a car, on a couch or on a dance floor with anyone other than the one you’re with.   And for any nefarious females look...

The summer of 1998 was a good time for me.   I had just graduated from high school.   I was soon headed to the University of Kansas for my freshman year and I had begun that elusive growth spurt that everyone else in my class ended 2 years before.   Yeah, life was looking up. (Still no women though) There was one battle that I was continuing to lose, though.   My hair was still rather unruly.   It might be odd for you to think of a Black man with bad hair but trust me on this one.   Some of it is curly, some of it is downright nappy and some of it even has the nerve to be straight.   As if that wasn’t enough, I have a second hair swirl.   I have one in the back and another that shifts the direction of my hair in the front suddenly to the right which means when my hair is low, it looks like I’m attempting some sort of comb-over.   It takes excessive brushing and plenty of Murray’s (find a hood friend if you are not sure what Murray’s ...