MONDAY RAMBLE PART 5 “MY COMBO LIFE”

All this talk about the decade ending really makes me think about Busta Rhymes yelling that we only had 3 years left in 1997. Back then I was reading that Pale Horse book, chatting with Israelites, analyzing the back of dollar bills, but the world didn’t end. In fact, everything just came together and merged, exposing our human thirst to become the laziest species ever.

I went into a Pizza Hut the other day that used to be a sit-down restaurant 10 years ago. Now, not only is it mainly a carryout spot, but it has KFC and Taco Bell as well. I don’t know what genius decided customers may want pizza…then maybe some fried chicken and a taco too…and then they decided to make ‘em all name brand, but now our world has become a reflection of these fast-food conjunctions.

There used to be hardware stores that specialized in hardware, electronics stores where the employees knew a thing or 2 about the products, record stores that…well you get the idea…now we have supercenters where you get everything in one building.

The 1st time I went into a Wal-Mart was in Iowa in 1996, I was writing physical letters to my kinfolk about this magical land as if it wasn’t real: furniture, groceries, clothing, medicine, it was like a village within a city. And this is not complaining, this is contemplation, I didn’t know, we as mankind wanted this sort of combo-life.

I didn’t see this coming when I was thumbing thru encyclopedias as a child, or using a payphone to return a page on my beeper as I flipped the tape in my walkman, or when I used my disposable camera to take pictures and waited weeks to go to a store that would develop them.

I couldn’t foresee my phone being able to get online, take pictures, store mp3s, shoot videos, have TV, a speakerphone, GPS, be able to talk to me and dial without me knowing. My phone is smarter than a 5^th grader. My 1st cellular didn’t even have call-waiting, or caller ID…then it roamed when I left my neighborhood, and that was this decade.
Internet, phone service and cable are all together, pretty soon they’ll throw in electricity, heating and cooling, then it’ll be one bill for everything.

I know you’ve read rants about technological advancement before but think about what this says about us as people. Are we lazy? Are we intelligent because we want everything together? Our lives have become universal remote controls.

I’m not afraid of the future, I’m just noticing how many products are advertised as 3-in-1 nowadays, toothpaste is a whitener and a mouthwash…shampoos have conditioners and moisturizers. Hotels have restaurants so you can sleep and eat, pretty soon, eateries will have beds so you can eat and sleep. Where will it end? If you can get anything online delivered to you, wouldn’t it make sense to merge appliances as well? One day we might have a washer/dryer/oven/microwave/refrigerator/television/DVD player/stereo/computer thingy.

Which isn’t bad, but it is interesting.

There’s a reason I call this a ramble but if you’re searching for a point: all this oneness, all this unifying, and you have to take a second to think if the threats of a one world government are real, and this could be just preparation.

And how is it that we embrace the concept of a power strip to plug in 5 things at once; and a printer that faxes, scans and copies but when it comes to people we still enjoy separating each other by race, religion, nationality, gang, block, skin color and whatever else we can find?

Jerry Seinfeld pointed out that movies that have alien life form from the future or Mars or something, always seem to look very similar to each other (Avatar, The Smurfs, etc.). All of them wear uniforms and look the same…green or blue skin…silver shiny suits. I’m sure Martians are just Martians while New Yorkers can’t even find unity once they claim a borough. But maybe the writers of these sci-fi flicks are planting togetherness images in our brains. Or maybe we secretly want to be unified, and in a thousand years, with all the race mixing, it will happen…or not.

You made it this far, might as well leave a comment, it makes a difference…

MONDAY RAMBLE PART 4 “DECEMBER 09”

I just realized that if every one of my Facebook friends bought my album, my life would change overnight. On the contrary, if every one of my real life friends bought my album, well let’s just say I’d wake up in the same tax bracket as the night before.

I remember when I had a bunch of friends, people I played ball with, talked to on the phone, shared kooky handshakes with, and so on and so forth. I had a whole crew of homies that were on a yellow brick road to help me get a record deal, then I got it and it was like we met the Wizard of Oz and discovered he was a fraud. And I’m still in Oz…contemplating heel-clicking…my point is nowadays I can’t even answer the phone or call someone without a purpose.

Gone are the days of speaking on the jack just to “shoot the shit.” Did email do this? Was it the music business that scorned me from having minor, meaningless convos with people? Is it my low tolerance for relationships with no purpose? Who knows?

I speak to people on Facebook and I can flip through some photos, read a status or 2 and feel like we just caught up and small talked.

I’m using twitter more and more…and every time I do, I want to stab myself in the neck because the next site to takeover the world is right there waiting to be created and I’m here giving this Twitter inventor man more money. I couldn’t even come up with übertwitter or tweetdeck? Nope, but here I am thinking that I’m benefiting of off this invention.

I swear I’m getting the word out to all 12 of my followers, yup, promoting my little heart out. “Look at me, I’m in the bathroom…now I’m wiping…now I’m flushing…oh yea buy my CD.

Why am I so cynical near Christmas? No I’m not complaining about insincere mass “Happy holiday” text msgs this year, or the “Happy new years” with the ‘S’ greetings that will go on past King day. I am a lil pissed that I won’t be opening GI Joes, Transformers or video games on xmas morning; I’m slightly irked that I just finished a 650 pg Harry Potter book in 2 days and it was waaay better than the movie; and most of all, every time I have a show, no matter how well I plan on performing, someone will be in that crowd thinking ‘who the hell is this guy?’
Ok maybe I’m not that bothered by these things but I do sit back and analyze how the holidays throughout the year dictate our spending habits, how we keep Hallmark in business and the malls are flooded and even though I feel like I shouldn’t have to wait for some calendar to tell me when to give a gift or celebrate love or appreciate what I have…I do it. Maybe because it’s nostalgic, maybe I need those “holidays” to remind me or maybe tradition, becomes just that, and it’s nice to see families and what’s left of my friends. I know you can’t spell families without lies (thanks Vince Vaughn) but I can’t spell anyway. I lost my father 6 years ago around this time…hold on to your loved ones, reach out, let your friends know when they mean something to you, even if you don’t call ‘em to say absolutely nothing any more, you’d be surprised how far words can go.

You made it this far, might as well leave a comment, it makes a difference…

MONDAY RAMBLE PART 3 “NOT FOR NOTHING”

Since I wrote that whole spill about grammar, people assume that I’m a geek that they have to use spell-check to email messages to. Let me tell you, there are a bunch of things that I don’t know and I used to be afraid to ask to find out the answer because I didn’t want to look stupid. But now I have gotten up the courage to make these things known.

For instance, The Super Mario Brothers are named Mario and Luigi, yet they are the Super Mario brothers. I never knew if they were named after Mario’s 1st name or if their last name was Mario…and yet this may be common knowledge or too trivial to even have an answer. Yet it has plagued me throughout my childhood years.

I don’t eat breakfast at McDonald’s as much as I used to, but when I did they stopped serving it at 11am from what I can remember. It may even be 10:30 at some spots but all I can envision is arriving at a Mickey D’s and going inside at approximately 10:47 or 10:51 and having the worker person say, “We’re serving lunch now” with a funky attitude. As if it’s my fault that I wanted hotcakes instead of French fries before 12pm. I always looked behind her/him to see if there were any breakfast remnants that I could point out and ask for. But they would just look at me crazily like they knew there was no breakfast evidence visible. I would be looking all puzzled and they would have the face that says, ‘I told you breakfast was over stupid.’ All I would see was burgers, Big Macs, maaaad fries but no hash browns, McSwine samiches or anything. And back then I loved me some pig. What do they have against breakfast?

It’s supposedly the most important meal of the day and McDonald’s shuts it down at the 1st chance they get. Does the morning menu not make as much money? Is it a hassle to warm up those frozen cakes? Or maybe it’s too challenging to the employees to have the lunch stuff and the breakfast stuff at the same time. And since when does Mickey D’s serve lunch anyway? Is there a dinner menu at 6pm with value meal entrees that I don’t know about? Call it what it is…laziness.

Not for nothing, I don’t know what I’m saying when I say “not for nothing.” What does that mean? It sounds like 2 negatives, which I know makes a positive, which sounds like I just negated what I was saying. So maybe not for nothing is like saying, “Something” but with more words. The funny thing is saying “not for nothing” with a long pause really gets people’s attention. Try it, folks will look at you intensely waiting for some profound statement, but instead you say something like this:

Not for nothing, why do people tell me they are giving 110 percent then others give 200 or 210 percent? I don’t know about you but I swore that 100 was the most percentage possible. I didn’t know you could go over. But I see ingredients on the back of products and it’ll contain 140 percent of vitamin C or A so I’m sure someone can argue me down but still there should be some consistency. Don’t give me 110 when there’s 111 right there. How am I supposed to know how much effort you’ve really put in? 220 percent sounds like a lot but an odd number may get me to thinking that you’ve not only given energy but you gave your percentage claim a thought or two as well. There are really no boundaries, and if you give infinite percent to something then you’re probably focusing too much percentage on your percentages.

How come when a book turns into a movie and I say the movie was good, some nerdy bookworm says the book was better? Of course it was, it had much more story but did it have pictures that moved, did it talk? Could you hear anything? Did you see cleavage? No! No you did not. Take your words on pages and go sit down somewhere, go watch a movie.

I think that’s enough of the things that puzzle me on the earth. My website is done. Shastimuli.com, which I did myself so if it sucks don’t tell me, just pretend you like it until I get someone to do a better one.

You made it this far, might as well leave a comment, it makes a difference…

MONDAY RAMBLE PART 2 “GRAMMAR AND GRANDPA”

This entry is stolen from my book:

Before you read this, please understand that I do not claim to know everything. I am not a grammar guru or a spelling bee sultan but I do know that laptops fit on your lap, and labtops…well I don’t know what labtops are but I think that they’re fancy shirts worn by female scientists.

I hate when people correct my grammar. Every time I say something like “conversate” or “irregardless,” or “where you been at?” or “what you hit me for?” I don’t need some smarty art telling me I made up a word or used it incorrectly, or added an unnecessary preposition. Most people don’t even know what a preposition is.

I’ve been using the English language for quite some time, I don’t know every word and how to use it but you know what I mean most of the time. Nowadays, in this email era, thee extent of people’s education is exposed more and more.

But wait, don’t worry about it, I’m on your side. I used to get annoyed by misspelled words, misplaced punctuation and sometimes typos but now I realize how much of a snob I was. Everyone didn’t go to school, and even the ones who did, didn’t pay attention in English class, and even if you paid attention, how are you supposed to remember when to use “your” or “you’re” when your in a rush? See! Even I get it wrong. Wrong or write though. It doesn’t matter.

Sure, I definitely feel like saying something when folks use words they may not know how to spell.

“Sha is definately a prick, weather you believe it or not.”

“Stop being so phacecious and synical yo.”

“Their always seperating us, do you here what I’m saying?”

Yes I here you, and I hear you too, the squiggly red line doesn’t always pop up, and it’s not your fault anyway. I no what there trying too do man. Its two much too right down.

If no one ever told you the correct way that a word is spelled, how wood you know? They sound alike.

But then there are the terms that maybe you should stay away from, if you haven’t done the proper research:

-Labtops??

-I’ve never seen a statue of limitations, but I’m sure it’s a small statue compared to the statute of limitation.

-I don’t know what lip singing is, I’ve heard of lip syncing where your mouth is synchronized with audio. But if lip singing is singing with just your lips, then that must be tough.

-I’ve never “harpered” on something and I’m not sure that I want to.

-If you’re animate about an occurrence at work, but you mean to be adamant, don’t get mad at me and start to get all cartoon crazy.

-“Embarrassed” and “harassed” are tricky. Just use “ashamed” and “bothered.”

-If you think you’re better “then” me and “than” you want to prove it…well you just did.

-If you want to listen to your inner conscious and I’m boring you to a point where you become unconscience then that’s find with me.

-I like benefits, and although I would rather that they are fringe benefits over French ones, I’ll take what I can get.

-No matter how many different artsistes you like, I hope I’m one of them. Well I know I’m not anymore.

You made it this far, might as well leave a comment, it makes a difference…

MONDAY RAMBLE PART 1 “MY CALLING”

So I went to church for the 2nd time this year last Sunday. Small congregation, friendly atmosphere in ATL, preacher man remembered me, so when he called me up towards the end of the service I wasn’t too nervy. When he said someone in my family was praying for me while others in my circle were keeping me down, I wasn’t surprised. But when he asked if I ever thought about becoming a minister… I was umm…flattered.

I don’t know why, but if I gave off that type of reverendish aura then I think that’s kind of cool. I chuckled a little and said yes, he asks, “What’s the hold up?” I say, “Well my album entitled My Soul To Keep just dropped, the title may sound gospelly but you wouldn’t really dig most of it. I curse out God and speak on feminine hygiene, oh but I do admit to believing in The Almighty, although I’m not a Christian, yea I kinda gotta pee soooo…”

I didn’t really say any of that, I just let out a shrug and thought to myself, if he only knew my day job. I don’t do religion, which is why it’s ok for me to have a song called “Blasphemy” and one called “I Believe” on the same disc.

People ask me about that and I say it represents growth and enlightenment throughout the album but then I think maybe I should just do more songs about nothing. There are so many religions with rules and guidelines, I wouldn’t know which one to choose and who’s right or wrong. I don’t want to get to the gates and find out I had the wrong praise going on.

Anyway the preacher convo got me to thinking about my calling. You know the moment where you realize why you’re placed on the earth. Some of us sit at our workplaces and wonder if we’re doing enough, if we’ve reached our potential, is it ok to still dream? Some of us are in school, living check to check, looking outside ourselves waiting for happiness or waiting for that sign to hit us.

I used to wake up with a passion for music, now I can’t tell if it’s bruised my ego and I’m bored with it or if I really have reached a point where I’ve done all I wanted to do. Maybe if I was just on the American Music Awards or if my LP was gold or I was on radio all day, I would feel different. Maybe I wouldn’t be searching for a greater cause or some worldly purpose.

Now that I think about it, pastor guys are like entertainers, trying to get buzz to get more followers, they have Facebook and Twitter pages, they get reputations for being great performers and all of a sudden they become Joel Osteen and have TV shows, millions of viewers, selling out stadiums, books and Creflo type dollars.

I just wish I could pass around a collection plate near the end of my show. And I could just say, this isn’t for me, this is your offering to God. Am I the only one that thinks briefly before reaching in my pocket if God is really getting this bread? Because a direct deposit would be better than a middleman.

Not that I don’t understand the business of the church and it’s cool to have place of worship so tithing and all that makes sense.

Sometimes I just think it’s funny because it’s like getting the bill at the end of a free buffet…but really all your paying is the tip…because it truthfully is optional…but how do you tip the Lord? I don’t even know but prepare for me to speak on some more life questioning crap in the next few weeks because I’ve hit a crossroad where I’ve given a bunch of music and haven’t gotten the correct offering for the sermons I’ve delivered so far. Or maybe I have and I don’t know it.

WEIRD STORY ABOUT A TRAIN RIDE…

I am not the biggest fan of NYC public transportation but the train isn’t all that bad during the day traveling into Manhattan. “People watching” is sort of fun and there’s always someone to laugh at begging for money or some person nodding off and waking up in between stops almost breaking their necks.
I thought I’d break up the monotony of running down my thoughts with just a story about an experience on public transpo one day as I ventured into the city.

Let me preface this by saying I don’t believe in colds or sickness. I view the sniffles, sneezing and sore throats as things that warn you to take some vitamin C, Theraflu or some type of immune system booster if need be. So the day I was on the train and a sneeze came out I thought nothing of it.
My earphones were in, aviator shades were on, 3 chains hanging outside of my jacket, just a typical day you know?

Anyway I got a seat, and it was a two-seater seat for the old or handicapped but I was all to myself. I was riding in comfort AND style then all of a sudden I felt a slight tickle in my nostril region and what do you know?
A big ass sneeze hits me. There was no discharge and I covered my mouth in time. Then I heard a “bless you” from a kind lady that looked like somebody’s sweet auntie. I throw back a “thank you” she says “you’re welcome” and we’re both feeling polite and New Yorker friendly although we’re hoping that the sneeze cycle is over.

Until…I feel another one coming on. This must be an allergic reaction to someone’s fragrance or fabric, ‘I can’t be catching a cold,’ I think to myself.
Next thing I know 2 sneezes in succession and the 2 “bless you’s” from Auntie Lady are a little louder as if to say ‘that’s the last one you’re getting buddy.’ Now we’re both uncomfortable because I don’t want to put anymore blessing pressure on her and I’m sure she’s not in the mood to be dishing ‘em out for the next 12 stops when clearly there are others around that can add some healing words.
That’s the bad thing about saying “bless you” because you never know how long that person will be sneezing and if you discontinue sending them God’s graces then it’s actually worse than never saying it at all.

So I’m thinking maybe I should just go to another train car or better yet I’ll just mind control these attacks and stop ’em. Yea! That’s what I’ll do, I got this. I’m not going to bug her and spread germs and be one of those annoying people that just….wait….oh my goodness, another “achoo!” right in mid-sentence thought.

Auntie Lady has abandoned her blessing duty and pretended she’s looking for something in her purse. Everyone else is looking but really not looking and hoping I’m getting off soon. As I search every pocket on me for tissue in panic mode because I feel moisture forming above my lip, I use the back of my hand to slightly pat my nose area hoping I find something to stop the disaster ahead of me. Right front pocket…left back pocket…right back pocket…left front pocket…jacket pocket…inside pocket, maybe I can use my sleeve. Repeat process, this can’t be happening!

I thought about using a dollar bill and then throwing it on the ground to help my situation and look rich simultaneously. But I didn’t even have any cash on me and wiping my nose with a dead president isn’t exactly making it rain. One last sneeze erupts loudly and now we have a problem. The mucus meant to remain inside the nose has somehow leaked and landed on the outside with nothing to remove it in a sanitary or proper manner. All I can do is cover that area with the back of my hand and search all pockets again with the hopes some caring citizen donates a napkin.
Should I ask someone? They’re all busy. No eye contact. Not even this guy with the subway sandwich eating sloppily with 83 napkins in his hand as if he just grabbed extra so he could store them in his pocket for a day like the one I’m having. Now he just dropped a stack…and stepped on them. He’s doing this on purpose isn’t he? That bastard. Damn you Subway guy! Auntie Lady might have tissue but she’s reading like she’s deep into that Danielle Steele book and when did she put her Ipod on? What the hell could she be listening to? Now she’s leaving. Damn. I can ride like this for 25 minutes can’t I? Man as long as I don’t see anyone I know I’m good.

2 stops passed and I was seemingly clear until I saw someone that halfway looked like some girl I might have maybe known in the 8th grade. ‘I’m not taking any chances.’ I jumped off the train and asked the Arabic man at the newsstand for a tissue or 2. He said no and said he only had packs of tissues for sale. They were like $2 and I asked him to just take 2 out for 50cents(in my Chris Rock voice) but he was firm with his decision to get the full price. He didn’t take debit and I started to beg sort of as more customers walked up.
So now I’m Snotty Pippen still covering my nose with my hand with people behind me waiting in line and pointing, no cash to remedy the problem and no good Samaritans around.
Then the newsstand man asked me to move my hand so he could see. I obliged and the sight of the mucus seemed to warm the Grinch’s heart as he laughed, said some Arabic phrase that I don’t think was a blessing then handed me a pack of tissue to keep for free and I wiped away my sorrows.

Ironically I didn’t sneeze again for 4 years. That’s when that story took place and yesterday I reached in my jacket and felt a pack of tiny Kleenex tissues and wondered what I was doing with these girly things in my pocket…I don’t use tissues I use rough paper towels, party fliers, sandpaper even…then I remembered, the train!
You made it this far, might as well leave a comment, it makes a difference… -The Present