Taking a Look Back

One thing I've consistently loved throughout my musical life is Hip Hop. I'm not sure what it is about the music, the cadence, the wordplay, the sampling, or just the all of the above but I've loved it ever since I first heard it. I remember when I was much, much younger I would listen to Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Bone-Thugs, and Dr. Dre. I lived in Hawaii and all they really played was West Coast rap. When I got older and moved to Washington, the South started getting hot and I heard Outkast and the Hot Boyz. The East was back to prominence at that point to so I heard the Fugees, Nas, and Jay-Z. Biggie had, unfortunately, died at this point, and my introduction to him was the Puff Daddy (or Diddy to those who know of him now) tribute song.

When I started getting a bit older, when I got to high school, I started exploring. Del the Funky Homosapien, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Kanye West, Aesop Rock, Brother Ali, De La Soul, etc. These were the people who I came home to. These are the people I would listen to before my parents got home. These are the people who would help me to explore what I thought and not just let myself be spoonfed an answer.

As my hip hop knowledge progressed, my exploration became even more diverse, Madlib, MF Doom, J Dilla, Deltron 3030, Kid Koala, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Prince Paul, DJ Shadow. I didn't just for the rappers, I went for the producers, the DJs, the all-the-aboves. Anything. I watched B-boys doing their things, DJs cutting at breakneck speeds and rappers going off the top because they can't stop, won't stop.

So, I bring to you a small tidbit of what I love. The raw type stuff. The LIVE stuff. I love freestyles battles, DJ shows, and B-boy battles because they're spur of the moment. The participants may have some idea of what they're going to do, but most of it all comes off the top. And that's what I want you to see. The stuff that has a few slip-ups. That's when rap is at its purest.

Here is DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist and DJ Numark doing a show with samplers. It's pretty dope.




Here is DJ Kentaro doing his thing on the ones and twos



Here's Black Thought of The Roots and Skillz having a freestyle battle in their tour bus. The object is to start with two bars of another song and then do a freestyle off of it.



The last video I can't embed, but it is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wCVkYX8wWQ

I Feel so Constricted

I hate this blog layout. Honestly, it's a real eye-sore. First of all, the background colors are ridiculous. I don't know why I chose it in the first place. But the main thing I hate about this blog aesthetic is that the words are so constricted. Other blogs such as The Cahnz's or Guia's feel as if there's a lot more space. The words flow a bit further, they aren't bound to a small rectangle.

With that said, I'm looking for a new layout. Unfortunately, all the ones I come across are either cutesy or really dark, as if they were all made by teenagers...

I wish I knew HTML because then I could make my own layout. But if wishes were fishes....the world would have food? I'm really not sure if that's correct, or if that's even an actual saying, but it stands.

Hopefully by my next post I will have a new layout. Cross your fingers, or just make me a layout. That would work wonders.

EDIT: New layout. A few kinks, but it'll do for now.

AMAZING!

Guia, Suzan and Michael were over again tonight. It was a very productive night. At some point during the camaraderie, Guia started watching videos on a website TED. It's an interesting website that gathers minds in various fields and has them present on something of their choosing. After watching a few cool ones, and a few stinkers, we came across a video of Johnathan Harris explaining his website creation We Feel Fine. Such an excellent creation. They search blogs for the words "I feel" or "feelings" and then take the sentence to the period. They classify it on different scales from geography to weather.

I suggest you check it out. It's pretty exciting. Also, try and feel something. And preferrably feel it in your blog.

For the sake of experimentation:


I feel like my friends introduce me to the greatest joys in the world.

Happy hunting cyber-cowboys.

Michael Jackson is Dead

That's crazy. For a little bit there, the news stations were carrying different stories. Some said he was dead and some said he was in real bad shape. Now we know. It's sad, but there are a couple things I noticed.

First, Farrah Fawcett died today as well, and there wasn't nearly as much coverage. When MJ died, that's all the covered the front pages of many news sites, but when Farrah died, she got a mention. Front page, but splashed across it.

Second, HuffingtonPost has completely abandoned it's Iran live-blog for the story. One man dying, no matter how famous, should not completely offset a story about protesters/possible revolution. They should have at least kept them both on the front page.

But, back to the sadness. I loved Michael Jackson's music. He was an amazing artist. I just finished playing a couple vinyls of his music in his memory. It's sad that his memory will be marred by scandal. What can you do though.

RIP MJ

Nothing Much

I have outfitted myself with a new project: to translate Juan Rulfo's only novel, Pedro Paramo. I can understand the first three sentences, but after that the language seems to go wild. I've only taken 2 1/2 semesters of Spanish, so it really is no wonder that I feel so exasperated when I try and read it, but I am commited to learning this dang language and translating this book, I'm sure, will help.

I am neglecting that language now though. I have a chapter from the workbook due tomorrow and as always, I have no motivation to do it.

In other news, I have completed the first book of the summer: James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. I love the last line of the work, "If we do not now dare everthing, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more Water, the fire next time!" I might do a complete review for this work later, but for now, it will suffice to say that this is a must-read for anyone who believes in equality. I rank it just under The Autobiography of Malcolm X in the growing list of books that have shaped my thinking as an activist.

But that's it. The Sims 3 is addicting and I have to stay away from it, lest I find myself playing until my eyes bleed. I'm going to the Transformers midnight showing tonight, that should at least be interesting. I'm not much for Michael Bay, but I loved Transformers when I was young and nostalgia is always worth the admission price. Also, I just want to see the Decepticons wrecking crap for and hour and a half.

Well, really this time, that's it.

A Good Weekend

So, this weekend was pretty excellent. Went to Year One on Friday, which was cute, and watched Dragonball Z with the friends. We're such nerds.

Saturday, though, was epic. Guia got to my apartment at 12ish and while we waited for Suzan and Michael to get here, we made a list of things to watch, only two of which were actually realized. We watched a short anime called Kakurenbo (Hide and Seek) which was really good. Then we watched the entire series of Elfen Lied (which is 13 episodes). After watching that for 6-7 hours straight, we decided to act really nerdy and play some video games and watch youtube videos. All of these things were done using a VGA cord to hook the computers up to the TV my apartment complex so graciously added into our lease. It was awesome. I will always watch HD youtube videos on this TV from now on.

One of the video games we played was Rubberduckzilla, which was interesting but we couldn't get it to act correctly, so we gave up after a while. After that, we just had a Sims 3 party. Each of us spent hours and hours meeting friends, working, and getting angry with our idiot Sims. Or maybe that was all me. Seriously though, that Howard Lightning is an imbecile. He screwed up waffles 3 times in a row. Also, he takes the longest showers ever! He can also pee for 10 minutes straight. Sims are weird creatures.

So, that was my weekend. It was pretty awesome. I also found this video on HuffingtonPost with mainly a picture slideshow of the events in Iran set to Rage Against the Machine's Freedom. It's pretty excellent.




Also, I'm watching Ninja Warrior on G4TV and one of the bumps they have for the channel features Del the Funky Homosapien rapping about G4 and video games. That's so awesome.

PETA

PETA is the scourge of the Earth. Their tactics are widely known and condemned, but they don't care. Why is it that I dislike PETA?

Because PETA is the biggest target for those looking for hypocrites in the animal rights field. PETA kills upwards of 90% of the animals that fall into their care. Last year, I believe, the figure was 95%.

So why is it that PETA focuses on splashing people with red paint and using every scare tactics in the book (from racism to islamaphobia) instead of finding the animals that come into their care a home?

I'm not sure, but I definitely don't support it.


EDIT: Interestingly, the website PETAkillsanimals is the third site that comes up when you search PETA on Google.

Iran

It's truly amazing what the protesters of Iran are doing. The government is trying to stone-wall them at every turn and yet they keep coming up with ways to organize and stand defiant in the face of oppression.

With many communication tools cut off by the government, the protesters were faced with certain disorganization. They could not text, they could not email. They were cut off from mass communication. But thanks to a certain micro-blogging site called Twitter, they were still able to organize.

That is the first great thing. The second great event was the international response to the Iranian protester's plight. Twitter users would pass on information to others and inform others to do the same. Some users even changed their location to Tehran so that they could fool Iranian censors and buy the protesters some time.

The biggest victory for the alliance of twitter users, both Iranian and international, was getting Twitter to postpone their scheduled outage. This outage, for maintenance, would have happened at a unfortunate time for Iranians and would have left them without communication in the middle of the day. Twitter, after receiving a massive campaign aimed at postponing the outage, agreed to the campaign and moved the maintenance to 1:30 Tehran time.

It's truly amazing how these things work. There are those who believe that humans are naturally selfish and wicked, but I think that times like these show that man is capable of so much and will not hesitate to help their fellow people.

Protests and Demonstrations

What makes a protest successful? How does one quantify or even qualify the success of a demonstration?

At Baylor, there is a person who rides around on a bike with a sign about Jesus. I was commenting to a group of friends that this was futile exercise because it had no real ability to reach out to people, to which one of my friends replied that the sign has already worked because we were talking about it.

How is that a success? The fact that I was discussing this sign, and what I believed to be the sheer stupidity of it, does not bring me any closer to accepting Jesus as my personal savior, nor did it bring anybody in our group to reject their materialistic ways and rededicate their lives to Jesus. This sign did not achieve anything simply because people saw and talked about it. True success should be measured in not only in the word spreading, but actual action taking place because of it.

This anecdote quite succinctly expresses my ideas regarding protests and demonstrations. Sure, if these protests get people talking about Rwanda, taxes, or any number of things, that's commendable but it does nothing for the cause. People should be expected to donate money, lobby officials, or get involved with the cause. One should not set their goal to be the mere discussion of the ideas presented, but the goal should instead be getting those people involved in solving the problem. Discussion is great, but action is the only way things are going to get done.

I find protests and demonstrations to be poor ways of getting things done unless they are done in direct opposition to the problem. A protest in America about the genocide in Darfur does nothing. A protest outside of the capital in Sudan is a much more effective way of protesting.

But that's not it. Simple protests can never be good solutions to a problem. A legal, constitutionally-protected protest does nothing but say you're angry enough to take time out of your day to talk about this. That says nothing to anybody. Real protests cause damage. A strike, a simple but effective protest, causes harm to the company. They lose profits, they lose supplies. They cannot allow that to go on for long. They are forced to change their ways.

Illegal protests, and by this I mean any protest that involves the breaking of laws, are much more effective than legal protests. Protests in which protesters are met by brutal retaliation are also more effective. These change minds. Take the 1968 Democratic National Convention. This turned into a riot that changed the conceptions of the American mind at the power of the radicals. The Chicago Seven protests disrupted what was considered the civil processes of the American judicial system. The Kent State University shootings changed the perceptions of Americans that the government was there to help. When blacks in the South protested against the consolidation of power in the hands of the whites, they were greeted by fire hoses and attack dogs. When this was broadcast to the rest of America, the perceptions of Southern justice and legal apartheid changed. This didn't merely create discussion, it created a complete shift in the thinking of people. They could no longer ignore the problem. It was in their schools, on their streets, on their late night television.

People sometimes try to adopt civil disobedience tactics and use them in their own protests, but often times they don't understand what they are doing. Sit-ins, one of the practices of Blacks in the South, are commonly used co-opted by newer protesters. This ignores what exactly the early protesters were doing. They were challenging deeply rooted conceptions of social order and putting themselves in the path of physical and legal harm. People who use it today often do not have these attributes working against them. Their protest is turned into simply an impotent demonstrations of their annoyance and lack of power.

Protests can never be the only tactic though. Those who rely on it as their biggest event are doomed to fail. Real change comes through the government, whether it be executive, legislative or judicial. Protests should simply be used as a recruitment tool. To depend on it as anything else is to make failure a goal.

Call It What It Is!

Terrorism


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/10/holocaust-museum-shooting_n_213831.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/31/george-tiller-killed-abor_n_209504.html

The death of George Tiller was our first indication at what was to come. Anti-choice activists have been running out ways to scare and shame people out of abortions, so it seems some of them have chosen violence. This isn't something that is an isolated incident. George Tiller, before being gunned down by a domestic TERRORIST was previously shot in his arms and had his clinic bombed. He wasn't the only one. In the 90s, abortion clinics were bombed mercilessly with doctors and even women going into the clinics beaten, sometimes to death, right outside.

The shooting inside the Holocaust Museum was done out of nothing but pure hatred. The perpetrator is a known anti-Semitic white supremacist. He previously attempted to hold the Federal Reserve Board hostage. His actions are in line with what we define as TERRORISM.

Dictionary.com defines terrorism as such: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.

George Tiller was killed because he was an late-term abortion provider. His murder was used to scare those who do the same. His murder was to be a victory for anti-choice proponents since he was one of the few providers in the country.

The Holocaust Museum shooting was done to scare Jews and "sympathizers." It was done to intimidate these communities and keep them on the defensive.

It'a about time we start calling terrorists terrorists. These men, and many more as well, are terrorists. Anyone who commits a hate crime is a terrorist. Any use of violence or threats to get one's way is an instance of terrorism.

But let's not stop at identifying these people as terrorists. Let's start prosecuting them as terrorists as well.

EDIT: RIP Stephen Tyrone Johns. He was a security guard who was shot by the suspect.

America is on a Roll!

So, New Hampshire is the 6th state to recognize marriage rights! Yay!
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/03/us/AP-US-XGR-Gay-Marriage-New-Hampshire.html?_r=1&ref=us

Keep it up America!

100th Post!

I was going to say something exciting for my 100th post, but I can't. When I decided to write this post, it was with one purpose.

I reject my atheism.

I have to sleep in a bit because I have class tomorrow, so I will probably flesh this out in another post, but for now I will sketch this idea.

I don't reject my lack of belief in a God. I reject my atheism. To define myself as an atheist, I define myself as a naught. I lack a belief in God, therefore my being is a lack of belief. I reduce my being to what I am not. I refuse to understand myself and allow others to understand me by what I lack.

I read once that Albert Camus said "I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist." I used to wonder what that meant; what he could possibly mean by that. Today, I was reading his notebooks and came across this quote and I finally understood. He is, not isn't. His being cannot be defined by a lack. And today I affirm with him that:

I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.