How to cellebrate Caribbean American Month. [from The Blackberry Chronicles]

Sometimes I have what I call an "I'm loving me some Barack" moment. This was one of them mid month this past June:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as National Caribbean-American Heritage Month. I urge all Americans to commemorate this month by learning more about the history and culture of Caribbean Americans.

This is one of those stories that got very little to no media attention and I wonder how many ppl even know. I encourage everyone to read to official presidential proclamation in its entirety. This is indeed a joyous and monumental day for all of us of Caribbean/ West Indian descent.

Sidenote: Some people like to kick n scream n cuss about names and say nonsense like "I'm not west indian! There were no indians in the west!" Well newsflash! A: Caribbean implies that of the Caribbean sea. Guyana is not an island and its not in the sea but is included. Puerto Rico, Cuba and DR are in the Caribbean sea but are not of West Indian culture. B: Caribbean comes from the word "Carib" whose etymology derives from Cannibal so pick your poison. "A rose of any other name...."

So halfway through the month you might be thinking: "good googa mooga! Holy current roll batman! I have been slacking and not doing my part to honor and celebrate the great West Indian nation. Hark! How for can I ever celebrate and partake in thus glorious recognition?"

Good question little timmy! I'm glad you asked. So in order to help educate the masses, I have braved painstaking liberties to compile the official complete guide to celebrating West Indian American heritage month. One mustn't feel compelled to do everything bc everything is not applicable to everyone. Some of these are old fashioned, some of these are more advance but not for the novice W.I. Tis merely a pallet for allyuh to choose from.

How to celebrate West Indian-American Heritage month:
1. When driving, disregard 40% of your local DMV manual. Standard laws of "right of way" and common etiquette need not apply.
2. Never signal when turning or switching lanes.
3. Drive everywhere as if you have a lady in the back seat, who's water just broke, on april 15th, and you haven't dropped off your taxes yet. Curse at ppl who don't.
4. Hang dice, boxing gloves, shades, baby shoes, tassels, lanyard, flags or any token with your country's colors on your rear view mirror.....and a rosary. Not from the West Indies? Not a requisite. No problem. Just pick an island from your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, cousin, co-worker, best friend, neighbor or the last west-indian you ran into.
5. Pick an island and refer to it as "back home." Any time there's a problem with this country in the news, complain, rant and boast about how "tings" are SOOO much better "back home." Typical opener: "Ya know back in [insert country]..." Use this as an opportunity to threaten ppl about you goin back home.......despite the fact that you:
A: been living here for 20+ yrs
B: was born in the US or last went 15 yrs ago or
C: never even seen "back home" outside of cable TV or other ppls vacay pictures.
6. Exercise tactical west indian utilization of the word "ting" (substituting "thing) as a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, pronoun, subject and predicate in the same sentence. Ex. "Allyuh jus a too damn ting! Ayee minute ayu only tingin di ting till ayu duz ting an ting wi di ting. Yuh tingin on too ting!" You've mastered it when everyone around you completely understands.
7. Point with your nose, chin and use exaggerated hand gestures. This will help with #6.
8. Spend one entire week where you eat rice or chicken, or both EVERYDAY. A true west indian can cook rice or chicken 7 days a week and each day will be a different meal.
9. Men. Brush up on the news and spend at least one day debating politics with a group of friends for at least 4 hours straight. If the subject matter involves a state, or country that doesn't even concern you, even better. Bonus!
10. Women and children. Stay clear of men when debating politics. Particularly older men. They may appear like they are about to fight and knock each other out, but trust. Everyting is ok.
11. Married couples. You are not to show any type of love and affection to each other. Not in public. Not in private. Not ever. Sleeping in separate beds, rooms, states or countries is acceptable. You will know you're successful if your children start asking you for your anniversary date, wedding photos or question if you are in fact, actually married.
12. Spend one day watching an Oliver Samuels Marathon.
13. Contrary to one island (Jamaica) the official music of the west indies is Calypso and SOCA! You must fill the air with as much calypso (pronounced "ky-ee-so") soca and pan music as possible. Must be '09 or up to 5 yrs back. Ol school soca is acceptable at family gatherings, Saturday/Sunday mornings to afternoon or whenever doing household choirs. (And even Jamaica has a soca/cayiso carnival). Its not mandatory but when playing old school calypso, macaroni pie and or potato salad should be within reach.
14. Enjoy the heat......not outside, INDOORS. Disregard the fact that its June and wear sweaters/ fleece and sweat pants indoors and sleep with the heaviest comforter you own. If you're feeling really festive, use a space heater around the house, complain to the landlord once a week about "not enough heat" or turn your thermostat up 5 degrees....regardless of where it was.
15. You must attend at least one "fete" this month. There's a huge difference from parties and "fetes." But that's a whole nother conversation.
16. Fellas. The days of "ma, can I holla" are dead. You need to step your game up to ol' G west indian cat-calling. You need to wow the ladies with the romantic prowess of such beautiful pet names like (but not limited to) BAY-bee, sweet-EE, dAAH-ling, doo-doo, doodoo dAH-ling (thats a combo/advanced concepts), mommy nice child, macaroni pie, dump-ling, suga dumpling, chunkalunk, coconut wata, or consult the nearest elder west indian male, preferably one with gray hair, gold and or missing teeth. Laugh, mock, criticize and poke fun all you want. Most of these dudes have like 10-15 kids with 10-15 women.

Sidenote: Rule of thumb, the most important thing should either go first or last to really emphasize significance.

Most important of all: you must learn as much as possible about all the other islands. Master the accents. This has nothing to do with unity, but quite the opposite. The Caribbean is the most divisive, dysfunctional household on earth. You must use this knowledge to insult and degrade each island....out of love of course. Forget cricket or football, the international past time is hating, dissing, ranking, snapping on other islands.

Hands down the biggest offenders, Jamaicans and Trinidadians. Should they pre-empt an unwarranted attack, call the Jamaican a beef patty and ask why the women talk like Jabba the Hut and the men pants are tighter than them women? Call the Trinidadian a pulouri and make fun of the sing-songy accent. If they persist, jingle your keys or bang anything that will make a "ping-di-ding" noise. The noise will ensue an uncontrollable urge to begin whining. It will distract them long enough to get away. Tell a Baijian they talk like they have hot metal balls in their mouth. If u actually can find one of the 12 ppl from Grenada, Antigua, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Kitts or one of those other small sandfly islands, hold up a magnifying glass and offer an award to anyone who can find these islands on a map. If you see a person with more gold than Mr. T, they're probably Guyanese.

Sidenote: I'm made in America but manufactured with Grenadian parts, but I'm an equal opportunity hater. Our dollar is worth more than the rest of them so kick rocks!!!

Now as a courtesy, leave the Haitians alone. Haiti was the first independent black nations in the west and one of the few armies to defeat Napoleon and for the subsequent 200+ yrs have been unjustly persecuted, discriminated and hated on more than any other island. Respect that rich culture.........but if one of those Haitian booty scratchers should start with you simply remind them that Haiti is not an island or country, but merely a town in the Dominican republic.

WARNING!!! Make sure you only do this amongst close, close, CLOSE friends bc letting a stranger hear you talk like this might lead to lost of teeth (and replacement with gold ones if you're Guyanese). West Indians like to cut ppl. There is a machete in every household even if they don't have a front or back yard.

Sent via Raphael  "I am Raphael Charles and I approve this message"

"The Obama-Boomers"

A friend of mine wrote about an interesting convo about progress in this country. The question was,

"How long will it be until people are truly colorblind?"

One person said "never" while my pal Justin replied "25-50 yrs." I agree with Justin's hypothesis. For a more obvious and dumb reason, first of all, in 25-50 yrs, most ppl who were over the age of 7 during the 60's (the the height of racial tension in this country)will be long gone and dead. So will all the other adults who were set in their ways at the time. These are the extreme racists.

Sidenote: They call "7" the age of reason or the age of awareness. Usually by that age a child has their foundation of morality and has some perception of right or wrong. Adolf Hitler once said, "give me a child until the age of 7 and I will have them for the rest of their life."

Side Sidenote: I don't normally make it a point to go around quoting Hitler if it's not germane to this point, so put away your pick axes, torches and cancel whatever calls and emails you were about to send. Find me a relevant quote pertinent to that particular topic and I'll retire Adolf.

Second, this election wasn't won off of race it was won on age. A new more tolerable acceptable generation is rising to political consciousness. Unfortunately most of the power holders today are in the first category. In 25-50 years, that will shift.

Third, over the last 15 yrs, interracial marriage, dating, breeding has become so commonplace and will only continue to proliferate exponentially. In 25-50 years, there may not be any minorities, not to mentions you'll be hard pressed to find anyone 100% let alone 50% any one ethnicity. We will have become a nation of hybrid muts.

Lastly, we have an 8 yr window of the Obama generation. Basically every baby born in the last 4 years and the next 4 will associate the thought "black man" synonymous with the thought of "American President." Do you realize how profound that is??? Not to mention any child born this day on, can no longer really see black men as inferior or unequal if we've had a black president (sans the exploitation).

Think about when you were 5, 6, 7, 8 yrs old. Other than Santa, Easter Bunny and Mickey Mouse (Huh HA!) there was no icon higher than a former American president. Remember all the stories we heard about George Washington, Lincoln, Ford, and Jefferson. I remember I was 8 in '88, when 1st Bush was elected president I was so lost. All I knew for 8 yrs up until that point was Ronald Reagan when anyone mentioned "president." Why is he leaving?! Why were we changing?

The baby boomers shifted and control the world today. Imagine what the Obama-Boomers are going to do?

The EX-Files

Question(s):

After a relationship is over, do you keep in contact with your ex? Or do you cut off all ties with them (especially right after it ended)? Do you delete them from your contact list, facebook, messenger, etc.?

What measures do you take to heal and move on?

Feel free to answer all or parts of the question posed.

This question was posted by *nycyahdie* on one of the blogs I frequent:
*Misconceptions of Me* and my response kinda grew into this.........
PROLOGUE:

Sidenote: I would like to thank Stan Lee, Chris Claremount, and the good ppl at Marvel Comic books for making me the only kid in my entire elementary school who knew what the word "Prologue" meant. In addition to good cartoons comic books did wonders for the vocabulary. You give your kids some "Thor" comics and I promise you Shakespeare will be a walk in the park.

When the weather gets warm, a handful of my buds and I get together early Sunday mornings for a couple hours of basketball. We always say "lets take it easy and have a calm relaxed game............." Yeah! OK! As aggressive and competitive as these dudes are? In three years it hasn't happened yet. In our first game dudes usually have to stop for water when the score is only 4-6.

So in my overzealous defensive fervor, one time in an attempt to save a ball from going out of bounds on a turn over, my feet slid out from under me and one of my knees banged and skidded the ground. It cut pretty bad and deep and blead. It's okay... I saved the ball. No one had bandages so on some Rambo shit, I proceeded to:
-walk it off
-rinsed it with my drinking water
-lick the wound and declare how great my blood tasted (say what you want, the other team got shook)
-band up the wound with a paper towel, a du-rag (the official head wrap of the black community) and spare wifebeater
-help my team win 3 games in a row.

....probably more residual affects of watching 300 2-4 times a week at the time.

Now granted I clearly would not last too long on E.R., Greys Anatomy, M.A.S.H. and couldn't even practice medicine in mehico, but to make things worse I proceeded to pick at and peel off the scabs whenever they healed for the next few days. Lord knows between sand flies, mosquitos in the caribbean and growing up a boy with two older brothers I have my share of scars on my leg, but most of them have healed realatively smoothly. Had I left it alone, it may have healed a little smoother, but now I have what looks like half a raisinette raised on my right knee.

Sidenote: I am notorious for that and picking bumps. Yet another thing I blame my brother on, who used to break pimples on my face during my glorious acne adolescence.

Sidernote: To all Mehicans and Mehico enthusiasts, its a joke. Don't weigh too much into it.

EPILOGUE:.........if a teacher accuses you of plagiarism, take is as a compliment.
Of my two major relationships, in one we stopped communicating for a few months and today we're cool. Ironically, I tried to maintain communication with the second and now we don't even talk, nor do I want to right now. I still have her number somewhere... just not in my phone book...rather a note on my phone. We're not facebook friends...but I have her email, should I need to reach her and we check on each other from time to time. I feel like we tried to force the "still be friends" phase right after, before I even got passed all the issues that lead to the break. I may have been extreme but the more accessible they are, the more tempted you will be to reach out to them, and that doesn't help you to progress or move forward. I'm good friends with a lot of girls I dated or "had relations" with but it didn't happen in a week, month or even a year in some instances. A break up is a wound and it won't heal properly if you keep picking at the scabs right after it stops bleeding.

In another sad irony (which unfortunately is the constant theme of my life) both of them are out of the country, which for my sake makes it easier for me. However, with local ex's that may be trickier. Most of us either experienced running into an ex who looked like crap on one of our good days (YESSSSSSS!!!! VICTORY IS MINE.............OH EFF yall. Don't act like its just me or I'm the only one who thinks like that), or ran into an ex when they're having a "you can get it" day. If you hang out with your ex for a second, sparks may fly, especially if it was hard for you to pull away or you were the one who was dumped. You DID after all see something and have something with them, not to mention if the sex was good (this is moreso true for ladies, bc its harder for a lady to find a good sex partner than it is for guys) the prospect of ex-sex is always lurking. You may be tempted after cruising down memory lane to pull over on the nearest off ramp for a pit stop and grab a bite....reload the tank.....quench your thirst....relieve your pelvis...or just simply get some,is what I'm trying to get at for the slower audience. BUT, here's the inevitable revelation you will come to.....THERE IS A CLEAR SPECIFIC REASON WHY YOU AND THAT PERSON ARE NO LONGER TOGETHER, and the longer you spend with them, the more apparent this will become and all the reasons why you parted will come rushing back to you faster than the blood in the vessels of a horny pelvis.

Sidenote: Luckily, Maxwell is finally back with a new single that slaps me in the face bc each verse in his new song is about said two major relationships. If Badu was my wife back in the day, Maxwell was my best man and wedding singer.

Sidernote: For those of you who do not speak Maxwellian, he sings in such a manner that tends to gel words together, so until you can decifer on your own, heres a clip with the lyrics in it. Seriously, at one point I thought some of his songs were in another language.

Sidestnote: Damn near 99% of the females I know who are hung up on (pun not intended but welcomed) a certain dude, its because some aspect of the sex or the tongue was amazing.......but will never admit that it is a factor. You women are just as superficial as guys if not worse sometimes. GEEZ!!!

Take time. Focus on you. Not to get over the person, but to heal yourself. When you give, you give yourself away (shout out to U2)and you need to makeup for and repair that missing part or else you'll be of no good to the rest of the world and scarred for life. In regards of moving on, keep busy. The chains of worry are heaviest in the idle hours. Nuh linga! NO LINGA!!!

Sidenote: I warned yall about bs dancers before, so just to help you steer clear of that, here's the best, most comprehensive break down of the dance I've seen if yall want to learn. KETCH DI DANCE!!

"I shall lose myself in action, less I wither away in despair" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope my convoluted answer helps CM.

Well readers, what do you guys think on the subject?