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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Black Culture

I don't know why, but one minute I'm not doing much but rolling around in bed and the next thing I know I'm thinking about the Black Culture. Maybe it was because of the BSU meeting today where a professor came in and talked about one of the courses he's teaching in the spring about urban communities, making them better, designing them, and improving the area that we live in. Maybe that struck a chord, or maybe it was Gabby's (a.k.a my ex-wife. lol.) talk about professionalism and how we need to be more professional at our meetings inside of shouting over each other. She raised very good points that seem to combat all the reasons people tried to throw at her. But I started thinking to myself...

What happened to our Black Culture?

I kinda wish I could write a paper on this because I'm feeling all sorts of ways over it and it's really eating at me. I read a novel not to long ago that discussed the transition from generation to generation and the changing of the culture. The novel was entitled "Long Distance Life" by Marita Golden. I suggest you read it. But back to my question and my thoughts.

I feel like my generation and perhaps the one before it as well (thinking about the generation my older sister falls into) doesn't really care about our past and how far we've come as group. We never make a point to reference the struggle of those days unless it's during Black History month. The only struggle we ever make reference to is getting out of the ghetto and making money, which compared to the struggle of our grandparents isn't even a struggle. I feel like music and movies that feature, are directed by, and produced by Black people don't show how we're moving forward and continuing to make history. They all show us just accepting where we are at and not trying to go anywhere unless money is guaranteed in the process. Maybe that thought is wrong, but I feel like unless you wave the aspect of getting rich in front of someone in my generation they're not going to take any incentives to make a change.
It scares me when I think about it in perspective to when we get older and I have children. What kind of world would I be bringing them into, where the people of my generation are just settling?
Hip-hop music was designed to show that we had thoughts and opinions. It was a way of us letting the world know that we weren't stupid and unaware of what is going on. Now the music is all about who has the most money and fame, sex, violence, and drug. Occasionally you'll get the song about their struggle growing up, but nothing in their lyrics speaks much towards empowerment or how we should progress to become better than we are right now.
Honestly, I believe if Barack Obama wasn't running for President, many people in my generation wouldn't even care or bothered to register to vote. They've forgotten just how much of an impact they can make simply because they think they don't have to because it was done already for them.

What happened to the Black Culture?

The Black Culture my parents grew up in, where they watched their parents experience racism, actual racism. Not this culture where my generation simply tosses the word around calling people racist because they say something they didn't like. Accusing people of racist tendencies if they are denied something. It's almost as if my generation is using excuses to get what they want and sadly some people are giving it to them for that main reason. No one wants to be called a racist in this time and age, and if you get called one, you'll do everything to have the person who said it to you take it back. That's what my generation is doing. They are forcing people to give them things they often times don't deserve just by calling them racist.
We also don't have respect for each other. You can't have a culture unless you have respect and I feel like my generation has neither. We don't have respect for each other. We are constantly going after each other in one way or another. We are constantly trying to hold each other back from achieving things and labeling those of us that decide to achieve things. No one wants to be called uppity or bourgeois, yet that's the label given to us that want to have a better life and don't want to settle. No wonder some of us have taken on the label and kept it moving with our nose in the air and not a care in the world to what happens to those who gave us the label.
I feel like my generation has lost respect for all that has come before them. It's sad, but in my mind it's also true.

I just want to know what happened to our Black Culture? Is it still around? Twenty years from now, will be ok with the fact that this is our culture?

I mean, I can say if it wasn't for the black culture we have now, our full figured women probably would never be recognized. Other than that, I can't see anything that my generation has done with our culture to make it a better one.

I think we're settling, forgetting, and disrespecting our rich heritage.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A Trip Down Memory Lane...

Today I deleted my Myspace account.


Traumatic? Not the slightest, but it did take down memory lane. I mean, I had to backup all my pictures because prior to my Facebook days of photo sharing, I was using my mother's laptop to store my pictures and upload them. Let's just say some things went bad with the laptop, so I backed up as much files from it as I could. Shortly afterwards, my little sister and my dad got into an argument over laptop usage and let's just say the laptop lost the battle.


My current laptop is still a toddler. It turned one in like July and quite frankly, all my old photos never got restored on it. So today, I decided to do the dirty job of storing the ones I had on my Myspace on my laptop. This is what started my trip down memory lane and kinda made me squeamish at certain areas in thought.


I mean, much of it reminded me of my senior year of high school. All memories of my ex (who I don't harbor resentment or anger at) and the people I thought I was close to and assumed were actually my friends. How quickly things change over the matter of years and a summer.


I mean, my ex and I were pretty close, but things just faded away. Regardless of whether or not the rumors of what he supposedly said had anything to do with it, I don't know. I just know we aren't as close and we don't say much to each other. Ever. Well at least since the whole drama that went down this summer, which pretty much made us lose contact and aided in the creation of an war of sorts.


As for the girl who I thought I was friends with. I just have to shake my head. The argument was truly uncalled for and so were the additional participants that got dragged into it, but at the same time I can't really say anything. I said my piece. I was mature about it. She wanted to call in reinforcement and thought she had it all in the bag, but pretty much it backfired in her face. So, I have nothing left to say about that situation.


But as I was saying...it just brought back all these memories. The good and the bad. The old and the recent.



Sunday, November 8, 2009

Just Saw This and Now I Want It....



[Double Breasted Wool Olga Coat...]

[LINK] 
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33915198

My Nails...

I mentioned I didn't like my nails, but I never showed you what they looked like. So here it is:
















I guess the reason I don't like it is because I don't have a steady hand and doing acrylic on your own hand is extremely hard to do, especially when you want it to look right and this clearly didn't look right. The only reason for the black lines on the white tips is because I messed up the acrylic on one hand and had to do something to make it less obvious. So I did that and in the begin it turned out nice, but then when I switched hands to do it on, it started to look like crap, so I had to make the first hand slightly crappy as well so it'd balance out.

But, I think the lesson learned here is that I shouldn't do my own nails or I should spend more time doing them so I can perfect the art of doing it myself. Either way, this nail thing has to last until Thanksgiving break.

Def just made my day!

So I was on Twitter and saw this Twitpic:

Just Finished fitting @TheYBF for a Mag shoot on Monday! Only 12 of these were released in America!

I immediately thought to myself, WOW. Those are some cute shoes, but sadly the caption underneath told me everything I needed to know as to why I wouldn't be able to get a pair.

"Just Finished fitting @TheYBF for a Mag shoot on Monday! Only 12 of these were released in America!"


If that isn't fair, I don't know what is. But I decided to make an attempt to follow the person who clearly wore this and devoted much of their Twitpics to shoes upon fashion to accessories. I really think you might enjoy their Twitpics as much as I have, so here's the link to their official Twitpic page.

Link Here: Jason Rembert

Yet another uneventful weekend...

So I'm coming to the conclusion that my weekends are becoming increasingly dull and uneventful. This weekend, all of that has to change. HAS TO!!!

Well, this weekend will be my 10 month anniversary with my boyfriend and hopefully (cross my fingers) he'll come and spend the day with me. Honestly, we wouldn't have to do anything, that would be enough excitement for the week for me to call it eventful.

Yesterday was quite uneventful. The only truly exciting thing and that wasn't even all that uneventful was meeting "Stranger." He's a junior at Trinity (a local CT college in the area) and was on my campus yesterday, at my place of work, because he was hungry and had a meeting upstairs with the brothers of his fraternity. (I completely forgot the name of it, sorry.) Basically, he helped me pass an hour, approximately, of work down here. We talked about the part of NY we were both from (he's from Brooklyn, go figure). He told me that Queens was wack, but said the fact that I lived in Jamaica, Queens made it slightly better.

Let's just say we held a decent conversation, before he decided that he should go back to his meeting. His meeting lasted over 4 hours. How do I know this? My work shift is 5 hours. His meeting started an hour after I started work and I left work before he left his meeting. Makes me curious as to what a fraternity needs to have meeting about for that long.

Other than that, I actually got to work yesterday. Surprisingly people were around and were buying things. Most of them were from a sorority, I'm going to assume Delta Gamma considering that is what my roommate is pledging and they all seemed to come down here shortly after she went back upstairs with some girl.

My night continued on with me doing my nails (which I detest) and my laundry. I didn't have enough to dry both loads so I stuck both loads in the dryer and my clothes were still wet when they came out. Needless to say my room looked a hot mess with my clothes sprawled everywhere.

Didn't have enough money for the dryer so I did this
(My clothes all over my bed, in an attempt to dry.)

But, Peter came back to visit us. That made the night exciting, but he left to go to a party and left the rest of us in the dorm with nothing but each other's company and music. Heard some good ol' throwback joints though. Had Ja Rule on blast, lol. I drank the little of my Long Island Ice Tea, that I had left (there is still some in the bottle) and decided to call it a night cause nothing exciting was occurring.

That was last night.

Today, the final night of the weekend, I have doubts that things can recover and get better. It's already noon and I'm at work. Only one person has came to buy something here. No one has made a guest appearance and held a conversation with me. And I have to clean my room when I get back and do my homework. I highly doubt there will be an last minute parties going on with everyone gearing up for classes tomorrow and getting there homework done tonight.

I guess I should keep hope alive, but I think I'm more excited about the fact that my shoes will be arriving this week, I will get paid, and it's my anniversary weekend.

Here's keeping the hope alive.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Finesse Have SHIPPED!!!

So remember those pair of shoes I ordered from ShoeDazzle.com, well they shipped today via FedEx, so I take it they should be here by Wednesday the latest. I'm so excited.

So if you weren't aware of my ranting and raving about ShoeDazzle.com, I'm gonna have to ask you to look through the older posts in the blog, because it's too much to recount in this post. But, I did want to say this one little fact.

ShoeDazzle memberships is not $39 a month. It is actually $39.95 a month.

I checked my account earlier this morning and made this little discovery. So, I'm practically paying $40 a month for a pair of shoes. Some may think that's too much money, but I don't think it is. The way I look at it is like this. I have to learn about balancing my checkbook and what better way to do so than with a monthly subscription to shoes. It'll show me what it's like in the real world when I have to pay for my cell phone, house phone, internet, and cable. (I don't pay my own cell phone bill, I know, I'm lucky.)

But just so everyone can see the shoes that I decided to order here they are:
003-000015-0100 Finesse

I just naturally liked them to be completely honest and now I can't wait to check my mail and get them next weekend.

I have a really good feeling next week is going to be a good one and nothing like the horrible week I just endured. Day and last night was proof that things are definitely starting to look up for me.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Annoyed

oibabycc[1]

That's how I feel right now. Annoyed. Upset. Outraged. Angry. Frustrated. And all other words that sum up the emotion in that picture.

It's official that I've been dealing with the worse week of my life. Nothing has proven to go right just yet and it's frustrating me. I still need to go my dean and get him to sign this paper for a class I'm taking that I was registered for and apparently no longer am registered for, so I can get my credits and grade at the end of the semester.
I'm also waiting for my SS so I can submit it to Human Resources and finally get paid. I'm in dire need of cash and my cash flow has startling dwindled. Yet, my campus mailbox reveals no letter from my mother alerting me that I have this item.
Secondly, I got my recommendation from ShoeDazzle, picked my shoe, and it hasn't arrived yet. I wonder if I was living at my house if the shoes would have arrived already or if I'm just really bad at estimating the time that these things are shipped and length of time they take to arrive. Either way, it has made me extremely agitated.

My breakfast didn't even help to cheer me up and to make matters worse, some uninvited guest is sitting across from me in the God forsaken GSU in an area I thought I had marked off from intrusion.

So, if you couldn't tell before, now you can see why I'm so annoyed.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

HBOImagine.com

Alright, I'm pretty sure we've all seen the ads on HBO for this new Imagine thing they have going on and are currently busy promoting. (Or maybe it's because HBO is the channel in my dorm that the TV stays on). Let me just say, I give it thumbs up. It's freaking genius.

Ok, the whole point of the campaign is to show that there is more than one side to every story and to know every side you have to see it from every angle, so it makes a point to do just that. I must warn you that everything is interconnected and you have to go through everything in the web before you'll ever be able to figure it out. And if you still don't get it, when you click at the bottom of the screen, it'll guide you through the story so it all makes sense at the end.
Let me just say this...IT'S CRAZY!!!!!!
There are so many twists and turns that you wouldn't have even seen, but you have to be patient if you want to get the whole story and REALLY know what's going on. But it is most definitely something worth checking out and I am so freakin' happy that I did. It most definitely made my night and now has me questioning the big film producers of my time. Why haven't they thought of this before?
Another incredibly exciting part about this is that it's open the public, meaning they want young film directors to make their own versions. A challenge that can prove who has real talent directing and writing versus who doesn't. To get all the details you have to go the website, but trust me you won't waste your time. It's truly worth it.

Let me just say, you're in for one hell of a surprise and if you didn't know it before, It's more than you imagined.


Link Here: HBO Imagine

So It's Been A While...

I apologize for my lack of blogging. It has most definitely been a while and once again, I have to apologize for that.

I figured I should bring everyone up-to-date with the happenings of my life and quite frankly, I didn't do shit for Halloween, I didn't want to deal with all the drunk people on campus causing a scene. My boyfriend spent the weekend with me and he left today to return to NY. (I'm wearing a sad face in case you couldn't hear my disappointed). I have come to the conclusion that my roommate is just plain shady.

Now before you start hitting me with the, she's white, give her a break, it's not easy to be living with a bunch of black girls, I have to say RACE DOESN'T HAVE SHIT TO DO WITH IT. Honestly, I know shady and she's been acting very shady and she's starting to push buttons that no one should be pushing.
Can someone please explain to me her constant need to lie? Yesterday, I had to leave our room cause she needed complete silence as she had a phone interview, which sounded a hell a lot like yelling at her mother from where I was sitting at in the living room. Next, I was playing music today and she asked me if I could turn it off cause she had to make a phone call. I said sure and stepped out the room momentarily. No phone call was ever made.
I seriously can't live with someone who won't allow me to play my music. That's just ridiculous. But it's also besides the point. My other reasons for believing this girl is just downright shady for no apparent reason.
She never pulls her weight around her, unless it's removing the things we have carefully placed in the apartment for our comfort (i.e. the curtains, the seat covers). If she didn't like them, that's all she had to say. She waits until no one is around before she removes all of them. Secondly, her behavior last night was completely uncalled for. Chick did not need to be slamming things around and stomping while people are trying to be sleeping. My boyfriend said it was because she thought he would have left already rather than spend another night. Honestly, her behavior was uncalled for. But, I guess I should have picked up the fact that she was tired of him being here considering how she kept asking if he left when he was just in another room.
Can someone say childish?

But, I'm I have other issues as well, such as the jackass that is my boss.
I just have one question for you, does it make sense to work a 10am shift if no one gets there to open up until 11:30am? I don't think it is, but apparently my boss does and has me working this shift. So I'm stuck dragging my ass over there at 10 in the morning to walk back to my room for 11:30. And then, he doesn't even know how to talk to people without being a jerk.
Seriously, if you don't train someone how are they suppose to know how to do a void? In his words of explanation, "I'm driving, just keep hitting the void button something should happen". Just to let you know, nothing happened and I was quite screwed. Oh and so the mere fact that I have been working with Human Resources about getting my paychecks, being information isn't correct and him telling me if I didn't get it straightened out that I need to look for another job, just pissed me off more. Seriously? As if I don't want to get paid.
Honestly, I've had it up to here and I can't take much more of the stress he's giving me. As if I don't have so many other things to juggle as well, and the fact that I apparently wasn't registered for one of my classes and now have to get these forms signed to have it re-added to my schedule just blew me off the edge.

It's quite safe to say that my weekend/week was a pretty bad one considering what occurred. But as my boyfriend has quite clearly told me, I just have to keep moving because no one is gonna jump in and help me out. No one is ever that nice.