Odds and Ends and Insulting Ramblings

It will be four years before this day comes again. Odd how that fact does not fill me with confidence in the Julian Calendar system… among other things.

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Language interests me. Possibly because I’m so bad at picking up new languages. It interest me the things that are lost and changed in translation.

The Uncanny X-men in Spanish becomes La Impossible Patrulla X, which does not mean ‘The Uncanny X-Men’. It translates literally into The Impossible Patrol X. Patrulla meaning Patrol, a small detachment of soldiers to secure the safety or peace of a place.

So the X-MEN though translated, is changed in the translation, to PATROL X. A subtle change admitted, but change none the less.

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Closing out Black History month, I have to remark I really hate the term African American.

It’s right up there with morons using the term political correctness instead of the word respect.

Just use respect whenever you rant about political correctness, and you’ll realize what the eff you’re really complaining about. Racist bastards.

Now back to African American.

Nationalistic boundaries have no place in an ethnographic designation. It’s been removed from the unifying way it was first broached in the 60s, to a moronic misnomer. What is wrong with Black or Colored or Moor or Nubian or hell even Pan-African, all of which are inclusive terms that define your ethnicity regardless of whether you live in Canada or France or Brazil or China or Honduras or Haiti or Senegal.

How such a stupid term is not only in general parlance, but is on federal forms just goes to show you how poorly most people in America reason. And don’t even get me started on separating Black from Hispanic. What the eff are you talking about? How do you separate blood from blood? Keep your divide and conquer nonsense.

“Just like the Spanish, raping the Black and Indian women and creating Latinos!”— Immortal Technique

If you’re walking around and defining your ethnicity based on your nationality, which may work in homogeneous society but does not work in a heterogeneous society, then you sir and mam… are doing something moronic.

And you may want to stop and think, and scratch out that stupid line on federal forms that says African American, and write instead… “Eff You! I Wont Do What You Tell ME! ” (Yeah, that is from RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE).

Think… better.

It’s the only salvation you have.

.

Recommended Short Film! Ricardo De Montreuil’s THE RAVEN

I’ve always been a fan of short films, but recent praise of the short films of Neill Blomkamp (DISTRICT 9) and Carl Erik Rinsch (THE GIFT) has set me back on the path of finding great new voices in film. Particularly short film.

I’ve found one of those voices in Ricardo De Montreuil’s absolutely brilliant 6 minute short THE RAVEN. Fluidly filmed by Director of Photography Alex Sanchez, THE RAVEN is a chase flick, wrapped in the trappings of a not too distant, or far-fetched dystopian future, where men are exterminated by machines (considering as you read this, somewhere unmanned planes are dropping fire from the sky, and major metropolitan municipalites are considering unmanned robotic droids to police the cities… it is a fiction uncomfortably close to tomorrow’s facts).

But above the cautionary tale, which has been and always will be at the heart of sci-fi or speculative fiction, it’s just a good, impressively and stylishly made film that can be enjoyed with your brain switched off if that’s your wont.

But I think you’ll find it an even better film, with your brain left on, and tuned up. Victor Lopez as the title character has to carry the film, and an impressive job he does. For my money I rate this film a bit higher than both the DISTRICT 9 short and THE GIFT short.

And in addition to it being a great short flick, it’s a great short flick with a character of color. And that goes a long way with me. Going back to my previous FOX rant, and extending it to all of Hollywood, I am personally sick of films with no characters of color, or characters of color as token, stooge, side-kick, or comic relief.

I as a consumer, have become very Asian these days, in that I refuse to support a movie that doesn’t have characters that represent me and mine offered in progressive, uplifting roles at the least, and preferably starring roles.

I have no problem with Matt Damon in a trilogy of Bourne movies, but I do have a problem with Denzel Washington and Carl Franklin despite their first Easy Rawlins film being a commercial and critical success getting shot down for funding to do the rest of the series. Or Jai White (with his brilliant BLACK DYNAMITE), and Danny Glover or Avery Brooks or many other filmmakers and actors, with their films relegated only to film festivals, and not picked up for distribution.

While the millionth and one WEATHERMAN or Slacker Romantic Comedy, litters theaters around me.

When a culture is denied positive, uplifting images, and is fed instead only on the media of people who dismiss them at best, deride and denigrate them at worst, you get the erosion of culture. You get an inner city of mad dogs, that absent of their own value, are absent any ability to value others. You breed mad dogs, and that is ultimately a failure for the larger society.

The foundation of the empire crumbling with miseducation, poverty, violence, crime, hatred, and ignorance, can it be long before the tip of that pyramid, the pyramid of empire, slides into the sea.

It can not.

So these days I tend to speak with my dollars, and with my attention. So when I do see a film that is both great, and not utterly Eurocentric, I ‘m happy to give it the attention it deserves.

This is a great short flick, and here’s hoping the filmmakers get the attention and funds they deserve to bring us more shorts and hopefully features.

Strongly recommended! View it here!

NOFATCLIPS is a great site because, unlike YouTube, it is monitored and comments have to be approved. This eliminates the lowest common denominator “discussions” that go on at You-Tube.

And even more importantly it allows you to view these films without needing Flash (one of the most insecure formats ever devised. More and more viruses and vulnerabilities are being spread through bobbytrapped Flash files. If you are using Flash it is not a matter of if you’re going to compromise your system, it’s a question of when). Not needing FLASH for me is a HUGE plus.

Strongly recommended site to host a strongly recommended film!

“Just like the Spanish, raping the Black and Indian women and creating Latinos!”— Immortal Technique

So how do you separate the source from the sourced? How do you separate Black from Latin? Answer? You don’t. Though people are trying hard, the same people, the same minority, who have always relied on divide and conquer to hold their always tenuous grip on the illusion of control. And the sooner the two halves of my blood educate themselves about this, move from ignorance to epiphany, the sooner this world can pass from war to peace.

THE POINT OF NO RETURN or All I Ever Knew of God REVISITED

This is a post first published over two years ago.

It got a couple hits recently.

I read it, having not read it in over two years… and I thought it said things that still need saying.

And I think it manages… to still say them well.

I don’t recycle posts, as I’m long-winded enough, and insane enough that I always have topics for my rage or my reason. But this post seemed… especially timely to me, and worth the limelight… one more time.

Without further ado:

I’m not a fan of profanity, be it the n word, c word, b word, whatever. I don’t have a knee jerk reaction to profanity, I just think your language defines you and yours, and sometimes it traps… you and yours.

So that said, I’m not a huge fan of rap.

More precisely, I don’t like what it has become. I don’t like hip-hop. I don’t like this glamorization of ignorance, this pretense of hardness by too many men who own nothing.

Not even themselves.

You want to be a tough guy. You have a wife, you love her till the stars go dim, you have kids… you raise em right. You teach them to walk with their head held high.

You do this, you do these things, in this world… where you can be broken for walking out your door, if you can do these things in such a world.. that makes you a tough guy. How well or how badly the women in your life live, mothers, sisters, wives, friends, daughters… these things define a man.

Not simply screaming, not cursing,not defiling… but striving, sometimes crudely, sometimes failingly… toward something better for you and yours, in a world that is increasingly not about better.

Those definitions of “tough guy” and “man” are hard ones, and I have met very few, myself included, who rate them.

But sometimes the attempt is enough, the striving earnestly toward those ideals…the striving even though victory not promised, and defeat virtually assured. The attempt to succeed, even when every day you fail… has value.

Once upon a time, rap was filled with men, with tough guys who screamed… for the love. BDP, PUBLIC ENEMY, PARIS, ERIC B, TERMINATOR X, even NWA. And of course the fathers of Rap, men like THE LAST POETS and GIL HERON.

But that was when rap was coming from the streets, rather than the board offices of SONY and TIMEWARNER. Corporate mobs who promoted their Gangsta Rap to the exclusion of all else, who take every virtue and twist it till it’s a vice.

That is America defined.

It is that place, where all virtues are twisted until they are vices.

Blues and Rock, vilified colored music, until they could paint it white… and sell it… and call it Elvis. Rap, same thing. Vilified urban music, until they could paint it white… and sell it ….and call it Eminem.

They can replicate the noise, but somewhere the heart is lost.

They, commercial America- the sellers of standards, have a way of only glorifying the worst.

It really is, about co-opting and corrupting any positive movements… before they can grow.

Which is why more people know the name Eminem than Paris, know Rocky than Joe Frazier, know Arnold Swarzenegger than the man he executed… Stanley Tookie Williams; because America is that place where they sell the lie, when the truth is the wrong color.

So the best stuff in America, will never make the top 40 in America. They don’t play it on the radio, or show it on the TV, or teach it in the schools.

The best stuff in America, the worthy stuff, the positive stuff, you have to hunt for, but it’s worth the hunt.

So I hate Sony Rap, and Time Warner Rap, and Corporate America defined rap. But I love real rap, rap about waking you up, from pervasive nightmares. Conscious rap. Spoken Word. Hip Hop. Call it what you will. I love the people who are still making it, people who are out their… still screaming…”WAKE UP!”

A few that you won’t hear on the radio, but you really should do everything in your power to hunt up, are:

PARIS of course, anything by this soldier, this… prophet of rage. Who for three decades… has held the line. Has held the goddamn line. His DEVIL MADE ME DO IT is one of the great albums of all time.

The usual suspects of Public Enemy, BDP, mentioned above. Also Rage Against the Machine.

And one I want to introduce you to is IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE:REVOLUTIONARY VOL II. I picked it up because of Mumia Abu Jamal, his words on it.

I love courage in people, I love people who speak to you in these volatile times not of sneakers, or cars, or hos… but of volatile times. This CD all the songs are good, some better, some worse (again I can only deal with so much profanity), but there is one song… that is exceptional. And it is worth having the CD for this single song.

I know when I hear something great, and something true, because we live in a nation and a world, where both greatness and truth… are endangered commodities.

So when I hear them…

When I hear these disused concepts… combined… it’s a beautiful thing. I get chills. I listened to THE POINT OF NO RETURN the first song on this CD, the song in question, … and it gave me chills.

I love people who will rage, RAGE…not against you,but FOR YOU! Who will bleed their guts out, rip their flesh off, for the mildest hope… that they can save you, that they can… wake you up.

A lot of people talk about God, and those who talk about him the most, typically know him the least.

Bible thumpers give me a swift pain, I’ve never met one who didn’t lie himself to sleep.

All I’ve ever known of God, any real proof, comes from people who are always outnumbered and always outgunned. Comes from the voice of… sinners and saints. And whether it’s a 16 year old Palestinian girl eulogizing friends who blew themselves up, because their death was all they had left to fight with,… or a man on death row, for not sitting down…. still standing up, or young men on a mic who have watched their neighborhoods become occupied cities and decide to speak against it… whoever the voice comes from, when it’s both great and true… it brings me to my knees.

And those are moments when I believe in God.

That some people, can go on in a world such as this… and still care so deeply, about anything. Those are moments that spur you to want to make a difference, be a better man, make a better world.

Give you the desire to fight hard… one… more…. moment.

That for me, is all I know of God.

And those moments are rare things. And listening to this song was one of them.

I had thought there were no more prophets of rage.

I have never been so glad to be wrong.

Pick up the CD, listen to the song, and if it gives you chills. Share it with a friend, and make your world a better place.

Try.