Friday
Ask Ty...April 29 [The So-Called Birther Question]
It must be Tuesday Friday, Middlespace Cadets, because I'm answering your questions
Q: Dear Ty,
I know it's Friday and not Tuesday but I'm hoping you could answer my question anyway. I've been watching the evolution of this whole "birther" thing and wonder if you think all the idiocy is race baiting? Wouldn't this sort of stuff happen no matter what his color is?
Signed,
Mad in Manhattan
Ty: Good question and an even better observation, Mad in Manhattan (MiM). But let me point out that you just used "evolution" and "birther" in the same sentence, MiM. That's funny. As funny as the so-called "Birthers" and "Tea Baggers" claiming to be "colorblind to race." STFU!
So President Obama released his birth certificate the other day. Finally, right, MiM? I guess you can say he got "Trumped." Mr. Trump, who claims to have a good relationship with "the blacks," says it's not about race but about.... Actually I have no idea what Trump's doing other than masturbating his ego.
I remember the first time I got "Trumped." It was in Jr. High while I was walking home in my very white southern California town of Claremont. A cop pull his cruiser up beside me and yelled an impolite, "Hey!" I ignored this holler because I had no business with cops and I hadn't done a goddamn thing wrong (mustn't be me). He then yelled a high authoritarianism, "HEY! COME HERE!" My mind raced, my heart beat furiously, I'm sure I was sweating, and my eyes welled a little bit. But all urine remained in my body.
"What's your name?" asked the Claremont Police Department officer opening a little black notebook. I asked him politely why he was asking me this. He replied tersely, "There was a crime and you match the description." He may as well have said, because you're black. I politely provided my name.
"Where are you coming from?" the cop asked this middle school child wearing a fucking backpack at like 3:12 in the afternoon on a Tuesday while other kids in backpacks milled about. I would not have had time to fucking jaywalk let alone perpetrate some crime. "School," I answered adding the slightest pinch of "FUCKING DOY" (and a question lilt) to my answer and a sardonic shrug like Aubry Plaza would shoot Chris Pratt.
"Where are you going?" was the next question. After a short pause, I answered, "home," That was my answer. One simple word. Nothing more. I looked directly into his steely cop eyes, unblinking but not dick-like. The word "home" hung there like onion breath but he flinched first.
See, MiM, I already knew not to give the fucking cops shit because I watched plenty of TeeVee cop shows where they use your words against you all the time. "Home" was my answer and when he pressed me for my address I "lawyered up" and said, "My mother said I shouldn't give information to strangers and I don't know you so you'll have to talk to her but she's at work right now so I'm going to need your name and badge number for her to follow-up on this situation...and...aren't you not supposed to question children without their parents present?" I used my best and most articulate white person diction, too. I didn't gesticulate. I didn't yell. I wasn't angry. I sounded more Colin Powell than Schooly D. I was just one of the few black kids trying to survive some bullshit rousting on the tame streets of Claremont, California.
Who says you can't learn anything from the TeeVee? After a little while, that cop shut the fuck up. He actually stuck his cop finger in my face and told me, "watch yourself" and split. He never provided his name or badge number or training card ID or anything. He never offered to talk with my mom. He just pulled straight fail and left. And this was a decade before "Fuck the Police" became my graduate school jam. Nigga, don't ask me any of your racist "match your description" questions because I didn't do shit. MiM, I may have been profiled by the color of my brown-skin.
--------------------------------------
Just last week the half-black president got Trumped too. By Donald Trump himself; the guy who says "your fired" on TeeVee and pretends to be important. Basically, The Donald and all the other so-called racist ass Birthers think this is Arizona or North Korea or some backwoods county where you have to show your papers all the goddamn time like some feudal peasant.
Barack Obama--the guy most of the voting public elected as the president of the United States of America in 2008--has basically strung the so-called Birthers along by their tiny testicles for like four years now. Now that it's re-election time he's all, oh yeah, oooookaaaay crazies, here's my birth certificate (while making the crazy sign/index finger twirly thing by his temple). Now the so-called Birthers all look even crazier, if that's possible. Obama basically took out the keys and drove the Birthers to school. In a short bus. It was as totally embarrassing to all Americans. Uh, actually embarrassing to all humans.
The vast right-wing conspiracy couldn't get anything to stick to Barry Oh!® so they're still--still--beating this dead horse. But the timing of the release now makes the already crazy Birther movement look clinically insane. And all the mainstream and establishment GOP apologists? Now they look retarded too.
OF COARSE™ it's racist, MiM. Doy! And any Democrat is going to be processed through this kind of meat grinder. Remember, MiM, Bill Clinton was a murdering, womanizing, bastard-fathering, socialist, married-to-a-lesbian, half-black, communist, baffoon. It's just bizzare.
Just a guess.
-ty
Thursday
Saturday
Friday
Question of the Day (Easter Egging)
"Hola, amigos. You all right? I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya'."
- Jim Anchower
"I’ve needed time to reflect on what all this is, but it’s been a good long time, hasn’t it?"
- Chris Onstad
"Or, if you want, realizing that revolutions and movements either burn out, go underground, or fade into what's next."
- Bethlehem Shoals
"My art will live through you / Dream beautiful and unusual /
Wake up like everyday new to you / Stay true to you, a hood musical"
- Al Be Back from Kanye West's "Good Night"
Monday
Songs On My Phone Containing The Word "Hands"
Clap Your Hands, A Tribe Called Quest
Clock With No Hands, The Roots
Empty Hands, Lenny Kravitz
Hands, The Raconteurs
Handshake Drugs, Wilco
Praying Hands, Devo
Silver Trembling Hands, The Flaming Lips
With My Own Bare Hands, Ween
With My Two Hands, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
Sunday
Friday
Thursday
Wednesday
The Cycle
I.
The dance with demons invited
A frustrating old-style pressing
At every step and turn of late
Nothing free and nothing easy
In these bigs
Only grounding cycles back
To decades-old formulas
II.
Memories recall when all bets
Were so easily covered
And being significant was important
To actors and observers
Now everything has changed almost totally
Underdogs and children rule now
No one loves these gods anymore
III.
Signposts at crossroads
Suggest more of the same
Versus all of the different
Nipping tucking evoking
Lessons from all the failure
Not for anyone anymore anywhere
Creation based on obstinance and spite
The dance with demons invited
A frustrating old-style pressing
At every step and turn of late
Nothing free and nothing easy
In these bigs
Only grounding cycles back
To decades-old formulas
II.
Memories recall when all bets
Were so easily covered
And being significant was important
To actors and observers
Now everything has changed almost totally
Underdogs and children rule now
No one loves these gods anymore
III.
Signposts at crossroads
Suggest more of the same
Versus all of the different
Nipping tucking evoking
Lessons from all the failure
Not for anyone anymore anywhere
Creation based on obstinance and spite
Monday
Saturday
Friday
Irish Pat's Caffeine Attack
Yesterday I went to my favorite coffeehouse and asked Irish Pat for something good to drink with a piece of chocolate walnut banana bread. I'm not a "the usual" kind of guy, surprisingly, so Irish Pat said something I didn't pay attention to and I ended up with a very strong iced drink. Yes, all four shots of espresso were in my drink.
I basically became Tracy Morgan for a couple of hours thanks to Irish Pat.
Monday
"The Jewish Salesman from the Nut Factory"
People hurrying
Scurrying about like them
Scurvy pirates invading
Sensibilities in search of paradises
Celebrity fleeting and defined by
Ownership of very large things
The fun house mirror
of my own reflection echoes
Little comedy and much horror
Vague with nostalgia as we
Near a novel's end with that
Realization of ending's beginning
When potholes became staircases
Into our own narrow psyches and
We find ourselves locked into
Windowless candy man vans
The loudest screaming cannot make
Tangerines into grapefruits
Scurrying about like them
Scurvy pirates invading
Sensibilities in search of paradises
Celebrity fleeting and defined by
Ownership of very large things
The fun house mirror
of my own reflection echoes
Little comedy and much horror
Vague with nostalgia as we
Near a novel's end with that
Realization of ending's beginning
When potholes became staircases
Into our own narrow psyches and
We find ourselves locked into
Windowless candy man vans
The loudest screaming cannot make
Tangerines into grapefruits
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