Random thought #2

Hey, guess what? I was thinking about when it became necessary for so many articles of clothing to have big ass logos emblazoned on it and when did that start? Well, I think I found the answer.

The first item of clothing with some sort of big logo was The Poodle Skirt, created in the 1950s by a woman named Juli Lynne Charlot. Originally, the skirt was meant to be made at home with a sewing pattern if a person was unable to buy it at whatever boutique was carrying them at the time.

I find that very interesting, since the idea of living in the suburbs in a brand new house with new appliances, and flashy new car was the new"thing" to do.


Does anybody know of any older brands with a big logo of sorts on it? The only one I can come up with is Lacoste, but I can't find any sources that show any pictures of the earlier clothes that existed in the 30s. I don't think the Lacoste alligator logo was ever big in the past, It may be likely that the alligator was added to the left breast of the shirt later, and maybe the tag had the brand in it.

Anyway, that's my random thought.

Tell Em Why You Mad.

The title of this blog is self explanatory. As you can see (assuming you haven't already), I am pissed. Off. Why, you ask?  Well, I thought things would be better by now. Older generations often speak about the so called "good ol' days," and about how all the generations after theirs are garbage, and no matter who I talk to, they all say the exact same thing. They say things like "(insert scapegoat here) is causing kids to be violent. Music these days is hypersexualised and over the top. Kids don't dress respectable anymore. TV is crap, etc..." They do this from up high, as if their generations have poop that smells like sun shine and lemon blossoms, and they couldn't have possibly done any wrong. And yet, all of this mess came from somewhere and it didn't just drop out of the sky one day and smite one generation. No one wants to really look at where all of this so called "filth" came from and how it got here.  Could it be that so called filth came from their generations and prior? Let's just take a look at some of it:

1. The youth today are so violent because of violent tv and video games.

People have been fighting for eons and centuries. The kids from prior generations played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and Army Men, etc with toy guns that their parents bought them. If the parents decided to go all out, the kid had a cap gun to simulate the actual shooting sound. They had toy tanks, and costumes complete with bandoliers. TV and radio programs depicted these games or stories that often contained violence. Before that, there were horror stories, and tall tales being told by family members. So for them to sit there and say that the kids are violent because of TV and video games is very hypocritical and shortsighted at best. They conveniently forgot that when they were kids, they were outside either acting out the violence, or talking about it whenever they had the time. Throughout several points in history regardless of the country of origin, events were marked and shaped by violence. I guess using their logic, the Civil Rights Movement was a result of some of them playing the LynchaN!gger video game series by Mattel  while growing up or something because where else would that violence have come from.  They never ever hurt anybody because they were the best and greatest generation, right?<< Get The Fuck Outta Here With That Mess.

2. The kids dress so horribly these days.(Fair warning, I don't share any sentiments mentioned against the people who wore the types of clothing mentioned, I'm just combining a lot of the crap I've heard spoken about those who wore or wear said attire.)

 Back in the day, greasers existed. Nobody really liked the greasers, and they were seen as thugs with their fast cars, greasy hair, wearing their underwear (white t-shirt) on display for everybody to see, and wearing sneakers outside of gym class.  Nobody liked the hippies, with their lack of proper support wear (bras), those guys who "look like girls" and won't cut their hair, and all that "free spirit shit" they were into, and how some of them smelled and looked like they rolled out of bed solely for the purpose of doing "whatever dope they're into at the moment." And let's not forget the punk rockers of the 80s' with their gravity defying hair all gelled up, and their raggedy clothes, how they disgraced the military uniform by wearing the camouflage pants with Chuck Taylor's, and the leather motorcycle jackets with all of the writing on them. And we have to mention the 70s with the bell bottoms, the platform shoes with the goldfish in them, the butterfly collars, the afros (Don't front, Blacks and Whites wore them ). Before all of that there was the Zoot Suit movement, and before that women were shortening their skirts, and some of them had the nerve to wear (gasp) pants! Hide your kids, hide your wife folks, all hell fina break lose because people are sagging their pants right now as I type this. <<Get The Fuck Outta Here. They can't be serious. Trends for the better or worse have come and gone. Every so often, the style gets recycled, resulting in another generations chance to wear the previous styles with a twist. They aren't hurting anybody. They may look funny, but it's just a fad regardless of what time era the kids belong to.

3. Music and television is so bad, and back in my day they had quality programming.

Here's a short list of shows from "back in the day" that depicted some questionable stuff:

The Honeymooners- (1957) This show is routinely centered around verbal abuse in a relationship. The main character would threaten his wife by saying, "One of these days, POW! Right in the kisser!", while shaking his fist at her, or "BANG, ZOOM! Straight to the moon!", This  basically means, "One of these days I'm going to punch you in the face. And I might punch you so hard you fly to the moon" < So they are encouraging domestic abuse now?!

The Three Stooges (1921)- This show was a slap stick comedy act that consisted of nothing but violence. People would get hit in the head with hammers, wood saws used on their heads, pliers used to pull someone's nose, objects thrown at each other, and a whole host of things that could be very easily emulated by children, and all done in the name of 'good fun'. I used to watch this same show when I was a kid. That means this show was displayed in various forms from 1921 until the mid 80s, and I think it's still shown to this day. < That's a lot of generations watching that show. How many kids from how many generations ended up injured because of that show?

Amos 'n' Andy- If you are reading this blog and you have read it in the past, then you may already know about this show. If not, I'll just say that it was a minstrel show that stayed popular from the 1920s to the 1950s,and was once a radio show before TV had become widely available.

There were also countless good guy vs bad guy shows on TV, a lot of them included a healthy dose of bullets flying, gun slinging, car chases, a death or two, etc. Again, this goes back to the kids imitating the shows. How many kids grew up wanting to be a policeman who caught and or shot the bad guy? How many wanted to be cowboys so they can kill  Native Americans? How many wanted to go in the armed forces for the chance to kill a "Kr@ut", "J@p", "G00k", or (insert the current 'fashionable' racial slur of the day here)?

Let's take a look at music and songs

Rock and Roll- The name for this music was also a slang term for sex, and people said the music sounded like it. Some even went as far as to call it "Devil Music" (which resurfaced during the 70s' when somebody said that if you play a rock album backwards, the artists say demonic or drug related things.

Elvis Presley- Those famous hips caused parents to lose their minds because it looked like sex to them (o_0 I don't know what kind of sex they were doing...buuut ummm okaaay), and they didn't want the television programs to show all of that gyrating. My guess they must  be some horny mofos to get that impression out of Elvis and old school Rock and roll in general, but I digress. 

Son Of A Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield<< That song is not about Jesus and going to church (shakes pointed index finger). It's about a girl losing her virginity to the preacher's son when nobody was looking. Don't believe me? Listen to it closely.

Teach Me Tonight by Dinah Washington(1950s)<< This song is not about studying or  late night cram sessions. Well, maybe not the kind that require books, but I'm sure you see where I'm coming from ...umm, wait (no pun intended).

"Jelly Roll" Morton   was a jazz pianist in the 1900s who started to get big in the 1910s. His name was slang for female genitalia. << Yes, you read that right. There was a dude who played piano in the early nineteen hundreds who went by today's stage name equivalent of "Punani" (for lack of a better word) "Morton", and he was famous!  With. That. Name.  And you know what else? He got his start by playing in brothels, and his lyrics were "questionable." 

 "Frankie and Johnny"  was a song about a man who cheated on his significant other. She heard he was with another girl, so she found him at the tavern and killed him. << Are they advocating murder? 

Ring Around The Rosie - This is a song that many kids grew up singing, and dates back to the 1700s. It's about The Plague and how everybody was dying so fast that bodies were in the streets. People had to stuff the pockets of the corpses with posies to prevent the towns from smelling so bad. << Kids have been merrily singing this song in circles for years and years, but no one has complained about the meaning of it or how it may warp young minds. London Bridge is another one of those songs. In fact, I think this may have been one of the songs that came with the Fisher Price cassette player.

I'm sure there are quite a few shows, and songs that are a bit "inappropriate," but I can't list them all because there are waaay too many to do so. I'm just wondering where did people get the idea that all of a sudden (insert every generation after them) is so messed up. I guess as long as they get home from work in time to eat dinner, slap their wives and rape her sister, all Streetcar Named Desire like, wait for their kids to come home from screwing their dates at "Look out" Point, then go out with the guys to kill some "other"s all to the soundtrack of fake laughing, while wearing their smartest threads,everything is alright.  Just be sure to grab your smoking jacket, light up a cigarette and pour yourself a glass of  fine brown liquor at the end of the day and everything will be A-Okay.<< Rest assured, now that's the stuff that'll prepare us for generations of winners. << How come nobody told them to Get the Fuck Outta Here With That Bullshit?  My hunch is that some were either too busy not giving a damn, or too busy being afraid of their elders; you know...respect and all, I guess. 

Juicy J Scholarship Update<< It's For Real

I thought this mess was over, but it looks like it is for real. Check the site and the video submissions:

In case you haven't seen my original blog on this subject, here it is.

Some of the video submissions surprise me. There are girls who blatantly say that they aren't interested in shaking their ass for money, and they shouldn't lower their standards to do so.

I really hope he gives the money to a truly deserving person.

Juicy J Scholarship Update<< It's For Real

I thought this mess was over, but it looks like it is for real. Check the site and the video submissions:

In case you haven't seen my original blog on this subject, here it is.

Some of the video submissions surprise me. There are girls who blatantly say that they aren't interested in shaking their ass for money, and they shouldn't lower their standards to do so.

I really hope he gives the money to a truly deserving person.

The Hate That Hate Produced- My attempt on taking a 'stab' at Black on Black Crime

Lately, I've been reading a lot more than I have in the past. I average on reading and completing four or five books a month. My latest book is Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children. I was reading the chapter called "Big Boy Leaves Home", which follows four young boys that skipped school to swim in a local lake. They took their clothes off for a quick dip, then all of a sudden, a White woman appears. They were startled, and wanted to get their clothes. They were debating on whether they should stay still and try to hide or grab their clothes and get out of there. The main character who goes by the nickname of "Big Boy" decides to grab his clothes, and he is spotted by the woman. Big Boy tries to calm her down by saying that he was just trying to get his clothes. She screams and a man appears (later mentioned to be her husband). The man has a gun, the boy and the man wrestle, which results in two out of four of the Black boys getting killed by the White man. The boy involved in the struggle manages to kill the White man with his own rifle. Panic ensues, and the two remaining boys run home. The boy involved in the scuffle ran home and explained the issue to his parents. The boy's father is initially upset because the boys were supposed to be in school. The parents enlist in the help of the preacher and a neighbor. They devise a plan to hide the boy so he doesn't get lynched later. The family gives the boy in distress some cornbread to take with him, and the boy hides. The sun sets, and he hears some noise. His friend is in the distance, however the boy in hiding hears voices. It's the White mob. The mob discusses their hatred for Blacks and how all of them in "this country" should be killed. A White man bragged about how they thought they found "one" and how they burned a shack and drove a "nigger woman" out of it, how they set it on fire, and that one particular mob member should have been there to hear her "holler". They discuss in detail about what they will contribute to the hunt. One person brought a pillow for feathers, another person offered gasoline, if needed. They start singing a song that starts with "We'll hang ever nigger t' a sour apple tree." They discover the hidden boy's friend who happened to be lurking in the darkness, and they proceed to tar, and feather him. Once that was complete, they cut up the body for souvenirs, and then burned the body.


I had to stop reading for a while.


I thought about what drives people to do these things. I began to get enraged, I made up my mind that some of these people are empathy-less monsters incapable of having human emotions, and a rational thought process. I also thought of Black on Black crime, and how every so often, I get the joy of hearing the following paraphrased mantra, "We no longer need the KKK to kill Blacks. They do all of the work for us."


Let that marinate for a bit.


I also hear people constantly holding up Black on Black crime in order to excuse killings of Blacks by Whites. I have asked people why it happens, and I always get this as an answer: Hate is taught in the homes of Blacks, and they are the most racist people in this country (North America).


I ask, Why is hate taught in the homes of Blacks, and why are they the most racist in the country? I either get no response, or I get something to the affect of, "They don't know any better." or "That's just how they are."


Think about that for a second.


Here you have a race of people who were treated like shit for many many years in various ways based on skin color, by another group of people who have their minds made up that they are the superior people out of all of the groups. They were denied jobs, spat on, fed scraps, paid close to nothing for their hard work while working for that so called superior group (and that's when it was no longer fashionable to not pay them at all), referred to as "beasts" at a certain point in time, they have been denied the opportunities to get loans with decent rates to start businesses, or buy houses, they have been told to die for a country that treats them like second class citizens, they have been killed or beaten to teach others who look like them to not "step out of bounds", which could mean looking at a "superior" person in the eye, not using Mr. or Ms when greeting them, not taking off their caps in elevators, and not kowtowing to them in general. They have been basically told that their life isn't nor will it ever be worth anything unless they kowtow well "enough", and "enough" is used subjectively. Needless to say, those people are going to have a major inferiority complex and will take it wherever they go, and they will pass it down from generation to generation regardless of where they choose to take up residence. In laymen's terms, "that shit will follow them wherever they go, no matter what they do." And folks have the nerve to be angry with them for that?! << GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE?! ARE THEY REALLY THAT DENSE?!


Some Whites want to be mad, dismayed and hurt because they can't walk in the Black neighborhoods because they are White. They want to dismiss the feelings of Blacks because "That was a long time ago, and that you should get over it already, because we gave you jobs, and food stamps." They want to say that, "Some people just can't appreciate what they were given, and they don't want to thrive and grow because they are lazy."


They want to blame Black on Black crime because they fail to see where it came from. Where did the idea that a Black life wasn't worth anything come from? How did that idea get there? Blacks have made strides to do better, but people will commit crimes against each other no matter where they live. Add poverty in the mix and it's a recipe for disaster regardless of said ethnicity. Do a google search on "Appalachian hollers" or visit any trailer park in North America for instance. You'd find the same things, but no one is attacking these people in these areas. The media only attacks Black people. Why is that?


I suspect some pretty strong denial, cognitive dissonance, willful ignorance, and who knows what may be to blame. Now before you sit up and say that I hate White people, and call me racist, you have it all wrong. I hate what the hate produced. I am aware of where it came from and why it exists amongst Black people. I hate seeing Black people kill each other. I hate the fact that a person can't just come home from work without worrying about getting hit by a stray bullet from some kids who managed to get their hands on some guns because they were spoon fed by the media on glorifying guns based on good ol' American culture enjoying its God given right to bear arms again. I hate that some Black people treat those who look like them like crap (especially in majority White states) based on skin color as if they never saw a mirror or their own reflection in their lives. Stockholm syndrome is in full effect, y'all. I want to know what we are going to do about it and how we are going to help each other understand the who, what, when, where, why, how, and the which-es, regarding it.


I think that's my blog for the week. We'll see what happens next.

The Hate That Hate Produced- My attempt on taking a 'stab' at Black on Black Crime

Lately, I've been reading a lot more than I have in the past. I average on reading and completing four or five books a month. My latest book is Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children. I was reading the chapter called "Big Boy Leaves Home", which follows four young boys that skipped school to swim in a local lake. They took their clothes off for a quick dip, then all of a sudden, a White woman appears. They were startled, and wanted to get their clothes. They were debating on whether they should stay still and try to hide or grab their clothes and get out of there. The main character who goes by the nickname of "Big Boy" decides to grab his clothes, and he is spotted by the woman. Big Boy tries to calm her down by saying that he was just trying to get his clothes. She screams and a man appears (later mentioned to be her husband). The man has a gun, the boy and the man wrestle, which results in two out of four of the Black boys getting killed by the White man. The boy involved in the struggle manages to kill the White man with his own rifle. Panic ensues, and the two remaining boys run home. The boy involved in the scuffle ran home and explained the issue to his parents. The boy's father is initially upset because the boys were supposed to be in school. The parents enlist in the help of the preacher and a neighbor. They devise a plan to hide the boy so he doesn't get lynched later. The family gives the boy in distress some cornbread to take with him, and the boy hides. The sun sets, and he hears some noise. His friend is in the distance, however the boy in hiding hears voices. It's the White mob. The mob discusses their hatred for Blacks and how all of them in "this country" should be killed. A White man bragged about how they thought they found "one" and how they burned a shack and drove a "nigger woman" out of it, how they set it on fire, and that one particular mob member should have been there to hear her "holler". They discuss in detail about what they will contribute to the hunt. One person brought a pillow for feathers, another person offered gasoline, if needed. They start singing a song that starts with "We'll hang ever nigger t' a sour apple tree." They discover the hidden boy's friend who happened to be lurking in the darkness, and they proceed to tar, and feather him. Once that was complete, they cut up the body for souvenirs, and then burned the body.


I had to stop reading for a while.


I thought about what drives people to do these things. I began to get enraged, I made up my mind that some of these people are empathy-less monsters incapable of having human emotions, and a rational thought process. I also thought of Black on Black crime, and how every so often, I get the joy of hearing the following paraphrased mantra, "We no longer need the KKK to kill Blacks. They do all of the work for us."


Let that marinate for a bit.


I also hear people constantly holding up Black on Black crime in order to excuse killings of Blacks by Whites. I have asked people why it happens, and I always get this as an answer: Hate is taught in the homes of Blacks, and they are the most racist people in this country (North America).


I ask, Why is hate taught in the homes of Blacks, and why are they the most racist in the country? I either get no response, or I get something to the affect of, "They don't know any better." or "That's just how they are."


Think about that for a second.


Here you have a race of people who were treated like shit for many many years in various ways based on skin color, by another group of people who have their minds made up that they are the superior people out of all of the groups. They were denied jobs, spat on, fed scraps, paid close to nothing for their hard work while working for that so called superior group (and that's when it was no longer fashionable to not pay them at all), referred to as "beasts" at a certain point in time, they have been denied the opportunities to get loans with decent rates to start businesses, or buy houses, they have been told to die for a country that treats them like second class citizens, they have been killed or beaten to teach others who look like them to not "step out of bounds", which could mean looking at a "superior" person in the eye, not using Mr. or Ms when greeting them, not taking off their caps in elevators, and not kowtowing to them in general. They have been basically told that their life isn't nor will it ever be worth anything unless they kowtow well "enough", and "enough" is used subjectively. Needless to say, those people are going to have a major inferiority complex and will take it wherever they go, and they will pass it down from generation to generation regardless of where they choose to take up residence. In laymen's terms, "that shit will follow them wherever they go, no matter what they do." And folks have the nerve to be angry with them for that?! << GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE?! ARE THEY REALLY THAT DENSE?!


Some Whites want to be mad, dismayed and hurt because they can't walk in the Black neighborhoods because they are White. They want to dismiss the feelings of Blacks because "That was a long time ago, and that you should get over it already, because we gave you jobs, and food stamps." They want to say that, "Some people just can't appreciate what they were given, and they don't want to thrive and grow because they are lazy."


They want to blame Black on Black crime because they fail to see where it came from. Where did the idea that a Black life wasn't worth anything come from? How did that idea get there? Blacks have made strides to do better, but people will commit crimes against each other no matter where they live. Add poverty in the mix and it's a recipe for disaster regardless of said ethnicity. Do a google search on "Appalachian hollers" or visit any trailer park in North America for instance. You'd find the same things, but no one is attacking these people in these areas. The media only attacks Black people. Why is that?


I suspect some pretty strong denial, cognitive dissonance, willful ignorance, and who knows what may be to blame. Now before you sit up and say that I hate White people, and call me racist, you have it all wrong. I hate what the hate produced. I am aware of where it came from and why it exists amongst Black people. I hate seeing Black people kill each other. I hate the fact that a person can't just come home from work without worrying about getting hit by a stray bullet from some kids who managed to get their hands on some guns because they were spoon fed by the media on glorifying guns based on good ol' American culture enjoying its God given right to bear arms again. I hate that some Black people treat those who look like them like crap (especially in majority White states) based on skin color as if they never saw a mirror or their own reflection in their lives. Stockholm syndrome is in full effect, y'all. I want to know what we are going to do about it and how we are going to help each other understand the who, what, when, where, why, how, and the which-es, regarding it.


I think that's my blog for the week. We'll see what happens next.

Is Hip Hop Destroying Black America? - Sure, let's go over that one more time.

I had the opportunity to get behind the scenes look at my local college radio station. I noticed they played the same songs each week, but in a different order each day. They would rotate a new song or two in the regular playlist from time to time. As a result, the listener gets pummeled with the same message over and over and over, which desensitizes them. As a result,some people seek out the life depicted in the songs, and some don't. This same effect could be seen with Rock and Roll. For a while "sex, drugs, and rock & roll" was the mantra for the genre, and may still be. Some people succumb to it, and some don't. People use music as an escape, and as a result, they are listening to the radio and wishing they were in that life (just like watching TV sitcoms did for a lot of people). It gets perceived as how life should be, and so it's imitated. Since Blacks make up a small percentage of the population, a larger section of that group will appear to succumb to it more often than others. Other ethnicities will display a broader selection of people who have bowed to certain ideals presented to them because there are more of them to draw from. I feel that is why it looks like American Blacks in general are doing far worse than other ethnicities in this country. Thanks to the media, we have seen the American Dream being shoveled into our faces through various outlets, and as a result, people are bragging about getting: money, sex (in various ways and methods), drugs,material possessions... you get the point. People desire these things, and will stop at nothing to get them. So before we accuse hip hop of doing this to a select group of people, we must recognize that America has been doing this to the WHOLE. WORLD., for quite some time, and this is just a cog in the machine, so to speak. The poorest of the poor come to North America in search for some of these things. They flock here because in some way, shape or form, media has told them that America is the place to be if you want to be somebody, meanwhile America's poor (and not so poor) people are seeking this out as well. The American Dream does not help Blacks at all because the same media that touted riches for everybody who entered, is the same media that systematically and continuously crapped on that particular ethnicity for so many years, in various ways and told them to shut up about it at the same time. Could you blame them for screaming for the American Dream, since it seems like everyone has it and they don't, especially when statistics are routinely made in order to drive the message home ? We have kids and adults from poor to upper middle class backgrounds that want to be "bad bitches", and want to be associated with BIG MONEY, and if they can't get there, they can at least look the part. As a result, you have people all across the board, regardless of race facing foreclosures, people going to college expecting to make BIG dollars straight away after they just put themselves so far into debt they have to live with their parents, we have for profit colleges, people with ATV's, Boats, RV's, cars, and stuff like that they can't pay for, broke folks with six hundred dollar cell phones, and really high cable bills. People are reading Better Homes and Gardens, entering the Publishers Clearing House (if that still exists),and scratching lottery tickets in hopes to "make it big" right now because if "so and so can do it, then I can too, because that's the American Dream, right?"

 People like to point to hip hop and say, "Look at what those people are saying with their music, that's destructive! :o ". but it's just a cog in the whole machine. The whole culture it represents is destructive, and no matter how it is spun, that is NORTH AMERICAN culture. Who decided that was American culture? You can't lay baited mouse traps in a room with mice, then turn around to pontificate why those particular mice got snared up, then collect data about it while shaming the mice for "being so self destructive". People must recognize the what, when, where, why, which, and how a situation got to where it is at the moment before they make accusations regardless if it is about self degrading music, or whether issue you may feel strongly about. Once the issue or issues are turned over and looked at from as many angles as possible, then and only then will a solution be found and things will be able to change.

From my standpoint, the image of the snake eating its tail comes to mind. I feel that hip hop is not the culprit here, it's this gangster ass pyramid scheme of a culture that belongs to North America.