Me and my shitty mood

It's been a rough summer . I saved badly , badly meaning barely and ran into unemployment woes . I have started rapid firing five resumes a day to the point I forgot where I've sent em.

I also had " A CONVO" with my mom .

Don't you love those ? These conversations happen when something just have to give.

I'm sad.

Not in that mopey kick stones with my toes sad.

Desperately shreddingly sad. The sad you push down or drown in something else to make sure you don't spend your life consumed in wailing,drinking or other dumb activities.

It is that sadness that is deeply routed in the knowledge that you will have to ,much earlier than at all necessary for those around , for reasons you will never understand and have fuck all to do with you , take care of yourself .

It makes you envious and bitter. It makes you resentful and self loathing. It comes only with the amount of passion that could raze cities. It can make you overwhelmingly loving and capable of hate that makes the term stone hearted seem quaint.

It has to be. It gets you up in the morning when everything tells you that it's not worth it. It makes you work till your fingers are numb. It makes you reach for the next thing and the next thing in single minded sucession. This isn't the competiveness that wrings hand or the amoralnes sthat is all the rage these days.

It's fueled by the belief that there IS a right way . There IS a way that things should be done , an order a justice . It just doesn't apply to you.

I have to work. I want nothing . I desire less. I work for it. If I want it I KNOW it won't come easy . There is no soft place in the world for me . I will make it by the strength of my back ,my limbs and my character . Other people "get things" I MUST earn them.

I am the sad I hear of that produces stoics ( and martyrs ) , revolutionaries ( and blow hards) great art ( and self indulgent horseshit). So this can go either way.

I am a stoic. I haven't cried sincce 2005 and I've had much to cry about and before that 2000. I'm a 22 year old female. I'm pretty sure that puts me WAAAAAAAy outside the average

I don't believe it'll do anything. Other people get their tears taken care of . I just waste valuable working time.

Friends who don't have this sadness seem confused. I am for the most part joyful ( my personality is very much like a large golden retriver sent to college ) but I am sad.

When you love feircely , you hate fiercely , you must protect fiercely . What you love What you hate who you are. Because no one else will do it for you

WOC ,LGBT/activist blogs in one way or the other at some point we all speak of this sadness in so many ways. Our fear Our fright this unspoken drive to " work the problem" . To change things to force them into something that is safe.

Because in many ways we have never known it. We know not how to ask for things .

( Side note notice how many WOC/LGBT?progressive bloggers talk abouttheir money woes. Notice how few actually put up a donation button until SOMEONE ELSE tells em or something moves them to ie: special events. What me earn money for being fabulous and wonderful and erudite ... your joking right? To the point I 've seen bloggers recommend it to each other at different times. It was sweet and endearing and kind of funny)

I am not the gorgeous person for whom it is an academic exercise, or a desire for attention. I cdon't feed of the energy of the crowd though I love writing and the like. I do not work to be patte don my head for my industrialness, or avoid emotions for the compliment of being so " logical"

BFP ( whose back yeah!) atrtributes in one of earlier posts ( which i really can't find ) it to her Chicana identity , I blame ( and love her for it) my momma ,some call it a social conscience ,"responsibility" An unspoken magma core of "I WILL DO IT MYSELF"

Loving communities that have scared us, adoring people who try to destroy us and fighting for them inspite of there using us like dartboards if they pay attention to us at all.Desperate to make a world where somewhere you don't have to be anything but you to be fulfilled.

If only having never had it , I know how desperately it is needed. How common it is missing and how heavy it feels and how it can be the only comfort you know. being sad

Desperately, achingly sad.

And not sure you would trade it for anything in the world.
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Having Read The Fine Print......

My head is gonna explode and i havent had a break since 2004 I am gonna blow soon
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WHere did she go

BRING BACK BELLEDAME
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Whose we in becoming years

Twelve years old was one of those years. Becoming years. I became then in a lot of ways who I am now. I developed then the things I have to fight now or experienced them for that moment.

I started Private school on " Scholarship" and was AWARE of that EVERYDAY.

I was finally allowed to take the subway by myself. It was the year I really discovered Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, and began my eternal flirtation with punk. Biggie Smalls was all I thought about . New York Undercover was still on and man I LOVED THE PHARCYDE It was the year i decided Nirvana wasn't all that but the Sex Pistols were on to somethings. Richard Wright and Maya Angelou were burned in my mind and Sandra Cisneros sounded like my neighborhood but with more "spanish people" and it was something else

It was also the year RENT hit.

A girl on my bus who I would act with later RAVED and RAVED and went bananas about teh "cool" life and style of these new bohemians. She even told me I'd be an awesome Joanne, she would also tell me to get over Slavery later.

Finally bored of hearing her I invested twenty bucks in the damn CD . By that time she had moved on to whatever else " in the know " theatre people loved at that moment.

I on the other hand was got. And got good. I wandered the village looking for Angel ( so what s/he died in the musical I WAS 12!!!!) because he would be nice to me. I was infuriated Collins was gay but more importantly I listened to people being what I wanted to be .

Artists .Free. In love.
Loved .
Really loved.

As much as you chalk it up to teen age awkwardness where I was was such a cold place. Glancing at my reunion pics ,the tallest,biggest,brownest, "exotic" looking thing there ... in 2006 . imagine that as a 12 year old in 96 right around BRITNEY CHRISTINA
blond small and half nekkid or at LEAST two out of three and really really overcompensating for what your not. I wasnt " HOOD" enough or more importantly I wasnt about to fake my hood in a private school. I Was the kid who wandered the East Village already the size of a full grown woman with full grown woman's problems looking for a Latin drag queen ( I WAS TWELVE) or just happy that such a person could exist and be happy here .

Which is why I wondered why I had such a viral avoidance of the film. ten years later in that same magic time. For some reason it gave me hives I wanted to use the sellout not the same bullshit but it was a Broadway show that ship had sailed and been mounted in a Bloomingdales clothing line.

I did not get excited . I saw they were using the original cast, made me happy still didn't get excited.

I finally saw it . I sang along I cried . I lusted after Collins. I Chalked it up to jealousy and sadness. I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE JOANNE DAMN IT. Everyone was gonna share in my special specail........

Nope that wasn't it .

It caught me as I searched for a job I knew I wouldn't love to make money so Acs could get off my back for now

La Vie Boheme is dead

Ten years ago I didn't know that. I know that now.

I didn't care if the Backlot of wherever looked like the East Village when THE WIZ was still around.

In my chest in my gut I didn't want a celebration.

I wanted a memorial. I wanted for all my fury a full out grit stirring fuck you's to somebody.

In that ten years I have learned that there NO ROOM for me . To fuck up . To feel really free to dream.

I owe over 40 G's . The minimum wage DOESN'T match the minimum wage in 1960. Fuck walking a tightrope I'm walking on fishing line.

There is little to no affordable place for me to live away from my mom and it's getting worse.

That's if I'm not killed in the next ten years by global warming,terrorism,poverty of depression.

IN the early nineties for that one moment it looked like people may have actually gave a fuck. By 2000 We knew better.

If me in 1995-1996 was using Rent( the musical) as the idea of what I could make with my poor little brown life.

Me in 2006 watching the movie was watching my 12 year old self go through ten years of beatings and being asked to remember them fondly

The eighties all six years of them I happen to remember were frightening times when even I got that everybody who wasn't mainstream and/or rich was gonnna suffer.

We were the welfare queens reborn pickaninnys,dirty illegals,faggot queers,invisible leeches ,commies, bastard refuse, stupid artists,lefty students,dirty gum other on the bottom of America. We were gonna pay for fucking up what should have been an easy 60's and corrupting the good little white kids in the disco 70's . The ME ME ME 80's had a subtitle . FUCK FUCK FUCK US!

Black women who wanted to raise their kids the same way white women did were welfare queens.

Little Gay Boys were receiving god's wrath.

Fucking up entire continents was the way of saving life.

They were gonna nuke these bastards, fix these bitches, teach these mothafuckas to a soundtrack of synth pop ,hard rock, and new wave clad in our best shoulder pads and pastels.

and if you weren't with them well you'd join.

or die

And then something happened . Something scary and unexpected and fucking brillant.

We did become an US instead of a Them.

We ACTED UP.

We found Kool Herc and Public Enemy and Urban Bush Women and Museo Del Barrio and Nuyoricans . We Vogued,and painted and synth popped and deep housed. We were Upown downtoan,down bottom.

We made having to fuck with gallons of lube have a crate a condoms and the constant fear of death sexier than Hollywood could ever dream of.

We came to America ANYWAY and learned and grew and did well.

We stopped the violence and started some too. We Vogued and loved and pulled magic out of thin air while watching it be bought and sold and corrupted WHILE MOTHERFUCKERS STILL DIDN'T CARE ABOUT our lives.

And while they mourned the slackers and ennui of Generation X and the boomers and whatever code word they had for you white and middle class. We made shit happen

Our joys, our neighboorhoods our fear , our fuck it we may die but WE WILL NOT DIE places that never felt SAFE but were ours

and we were willing to share it and sell it and give and take it because what ever we created was always one step deeper than the pounding bass, cool rhymes, merengue rhythims, or iconic posters and funky looking neon dogs .

The laughing at sell outs wasn't about betrayal it was about the stupid.

The stupid was the idea that you can actually buy and sell us. That for all your money all your shit at the end of the day no matter what you took you'd still miss it .

What we didn't counton was how far you'd go
Drowning it out and letting it rot
Bottling it up selling it as raunch
Trying desperately to erase it's history making it dirty words dirty images and guilty pleasures.
Even declaring yourselves authorities on US.

It was funny to watch our sad you'd get when you couldn't force being on of us.
That one day you woke up and realized you couldn't buy it
That people just like you were US and happy
and just when you got thisclose
You'd grab it and kill it and we'd mourn it like New Orleans

That no matter what we kept dividing and multiplying so much so WE DIDN"T EVEN LIKE ALL OF US

I wanted a funeral because I wanted to see the proof that we had lived and are living gloriously shittily

that even killing the emblem of a generation could kill us at all. We are stronger than Atlas

That we had bleed and fucked and shat and spoke and crafted and shaped and sung something new into formlessness anda form it every day in languages you can't hear let alone speak

I wanted a funeral to watch us rise from the dead like Lazarus extending rotten fingers forward

Whose we? And who are we now?
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Having Read The Fine Print......

Saw when the levees break

I need to pray on this


I have a n idea


I think may change the world


" The problem of the 21st century....."
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OUt in THE streets

TOday in teh fuck you files I lost my health insurance by


83 dollars because making 9000 a year is considered to rich for the state
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For my 100th post I Guess I am a sex positive feminist

Cause the alternative seems to be being a classist ass

I made it to 100 posts. There is a good chance I may not make it much farther.

One because I am about to go out an seek two more jobs and fulfill the West Indian stereotype.

Two because frankly way to many of the people I actually read and engage with are running for the hills and questioning the blogosphere.

And Three because right now the entitlement and bullshit rolling off the feminist blogosphere reeks to high heaven.

Realising that I submitted to the COF right before I read and got to this .

Now go there and youll be filled in and blah blah blee.

I really have no desire to be civil about this one and as aI write this I know it may be changed yadyada.

Why is it so hard to believe that people don't want to be like you. For all the " questioning the status quo" that supposedly goes on in this blogosphere. Time and Time again a new staus quo is erected in it's place .

Now When BL makes he r point about the fact that whenever she blogs about peopel or critiques something she is doing something that for all the trumped horseshit that gets passed of as sisterhood to many women want to ussy willow around

Admitting we blog to change and coerce.

WOW someone writes and admits that there not just using this as an overhyped philosphical exercise and gets threatened with being outed.

I love that that nice insidious use of power and oppression.

Shut up be a good girl or I will fuck your life up.

You had the never to be stronginyour opinion nad use big words and may have made somebody feel bad so rather than approach your ideas I'm gonna make you a liar. Because you have the nerve to claim an education but won't claim accumulation of media.

This had to do with college and college parties and now were threatening someones anonymity. I went to college I was young I don't know about mainstream college raunch partying

CAUSE I DIDN'T FUCKING GO!

My god . I think that's what gets me most this really undercurrented belief that somewhere in there if youre not one of this you're one of those. That if you're not my kind of woman youre a tool of the patriarchy or a liar who must be crushed.

Also can I adress a comment made by John Jasper , while I disagree with teh so how we gonna fix it mode that does distract from what Tekanji posited . I do agre eiwth something that ALWAYS only half comes up and is ALWAYS beaten down by people who want to damn raunch culture and " ina ppropriate " corporate sexuality without you know thinking.

Raunch culture ( whatever it is I have no real idea now) if its a culture does NOT JUST APPLY TO DRUNKEN MIDDLE CLASS WHITE GIRLS and their young progeny . As such one most actually think about how " raunch" displays CHANGE in certain context AND MAY NOT EVEN BE RAUNCH.

SO if two gay young men make out for kicks in public is that raunch? Does it become less raunch if it's the only place where they can do so with out catching a baseball bat to the dome ? Does it change if the women who make out are women who do IT FOR THEM SELVES GOD DAMN IT ? Does it matter if she likes exhibitionism , does it matter if she doesnt does it matter if she's coerced...

Why yes Virginia it does.

And yes everytime someone goes can we discuss this without be called sex negative or sexual repressed ( when their the first person to throw out the term look it STRAWMAN) they are SHUTTING DOWN a discussion and being annoying heteronormative.

If we are talking about raunch CULTURE we are discussing much more than just some clothes and some consumerism.

We have to talk about why does it catch on? ( my controversial opinion , a certain class kind of interfemale relationships helped this along more than Francis could and did so WILLINGLY! While Joe Francis still a person in a need of a ole Cripstyle beat down)

Culture's don't spring from nothingness and whats emblematic in one culture is very different in another shit it doesn;t mean teh same thing forom one time period to another ( ask any hip hophead )

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IN MY BATHTUB please stop confusing packaging with Culture.

Call it me refusing to accept the premise call it m e being young and cranky but I now and forever call HORSESHIT on Raunch culture.

We are watching a COUPLE OF DIFFERENT THINGS happen that as long as theyre packaged as part of "raunch culture" people get away with tutting as the fall of society while sitting on tehir holier tahn thou or hipper than thou behinds.

1) " Lower class" culture is part of the general lexicon and not jsut tobe discarded upon entrance into " polite" society. Mind you lowerclass was everything ot WASP and middle class and up so as teh contry gets more diverse and rich people richer and more hungry to stay that way theywell DUH.

2) HIp hop hit hip hop hit big and was marketed big and PEOPLE STILL MISSED MOST OF THE MESSAGE .

3) Kids are getting more information earlier while being given little to no REAL repsonsibilities and expectations except be rich popular or whatever. Being famous is the new making it

4) Sociopathy is on the rise while interpersonal ties are on the decline.


Naro at Ghetto Gold has an awesome post on this which at some point I will talk about les sin out and out RANt mode but here's teh gist of my response.


EVERYTIME someone mistakes the package aka maxim ,raunch culture,shit BET for the culture even in REJECTION of it the support the premise. Everytime someone assumes that commercial processing and exportation of something equals actual cultural cachet and preformance we get shit like the asshole Naro encounters ( and I'm sorry as long as anybody from Beastie Boys or 3rd Bass can draw air EM ain't the best white rapper and I KIND OF LIKE EM)

So when Raunch culture becomes Joe Francis and drunk girls rather than actual people . YOU REINFORCE THE TACIT STEREOTYPES. Raunch and modesty are more than terms and they of course have multiple influences and avenues and expressions in a homogenous culture let alone a pseudo heterogeneous one as the US.

So yes Virginia you can be PROUDLY lower class and have a colleged education. You can have a diploma and completely miss college culture . ANd you don't have to believe what you're told

People can question you in your happy enclave about the unsaid presuppositions you make and no they don't have to stop to please you

SOme people don't blindly accept tthe premise about everything and want to do shit and arent content with just being holier than thou. And of course why as k a question when you cna start a nasty fight.

Also its fun to leave those attacked swinging in the wind we love that be civil follows AFTER people call us names confuse identities questiono ur intellect say we should die suffer all through the indignities on EMAIL ( I LOOVE YOU BFP) and when we speak about it and get destroyed we get " sorry hope no hard feelings" . Hard try diamond hard ( whoops that was me and my shit)



HAppy 100th to me I'm now more evil than when I started
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ARE WE REALLYS ERIOUS

You know what I love.

I love the fact that people can't care about anything ANYTHING without it being about them.

I love that the braintrust who came up with this made being African about jewelry and paint.

I LOVE EVEN MORE THAT THESE PEOPLE STILL CAN'T FIGURE OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CONTINENT AND A COUNTRY!


What I love most is the presentation of a cause as glamour shot focused on people who need more attention like we need hotter summers, rather than the stark reality of the place there representing.

( Their I keep _______ Alive campaign was great and gorgeous which makes this shit even more annoying ooh and had you know actual kids)

SHIT SHOOT THEM IN THE SERENGETI. HAVE SOMEONE INFORNT OF A PYRAMID.

I'd mind that less

You know the idea that saving AFRICA would be about AFRICA or AFRICAN PEOPLE


But lookit pretty blonde savior
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Generation ... ME ?@!#

I don't like people my age. When people attack the youth of America I often go well I hate em too. The malla ttending over privileged bastards piss me off to.

I want to say this upfront. Or more directly I don't like the people being represented as people my age.

I just finished a book called Generation ME by Judith M Twenge and it is supposed to be a response to the ideas that this generation which she hyper extends ( I talked about this with Belledame who I met YEAH) and contends that we are lazy entitled blah blah blee.

Well considering the scope of the folks they are talking about middle to increasingly high income college educated white kids and their assimilating cohorts. We are more likely to cheat,lie, expect random shit to be given to us.....

Oh wait they ain't talking bout me . I'll be over here with with those of us who aren't that and also aren't eager to assimilate to that . Shit their not even talking about those of us who arent that politically incline but just don't expect the world handed to us on a platter.

EL 's post on The View got me thinking about the effect of generational identification ( She's young and BW was a dotty old condescening woman because she was young) versus the personal ( OH MY GOD I WANT HER SHUT UP).

I agree with EL's asessment that some feminist bloggers and this is not isolated to youth but sex,sexuality,race, and other criteria say women and mean women like me .

The generational studies and female studies and theory discussions however consistently highlight my NON membership ( and of tacit EXCLUSION) from any kind of debate on these issues. When Hasselbeck went shakey crying ab out the rights of the baby she flaunted a couple privileges ( class race, belief of some security from sexual harm,use of a public forum , and yes her youth and inexperience ) that allow her to make these statements. SO to me it was watching two very privileged idiots have the conversations that usually results when privbiliged people get together.

When Politt says "featherheads" in regards to young women and many young women don;t run out to agree , I think it's not jut the " women like me" complex talking.

Sitting in a class having watched our survey results compiled I found out some disturbing shit . Sixty seven percent of these women believed abortion was bad and should be stringently regulated that number fell to 33 percent when it became THEIR problem. In essence one third of my highly educated class didn't give a damn about the rights part of the equation as much as about the " saving my own ass'. The same girls that gave shit a bout TAKE BACK THE NIGHT and choice bake sales and sat on their hands wanted and expected that right available to them should they deign it necessary.

Their inaction and entitlement is narcisitic and disrespectful . It's not a function of lack of acess or knowledge . They are selfish assholes and said as much. This kind of thing makes me think featherhead is one of thekinder things they could be called.

When Twenge talks about selfesteem she makes apoint I can identify with that many kids are being taught that you are great no matter what you do.

My contention is that while ALL of the generation was TOLD this not all of us receive the reenforcement. The girls in my class aren't once challenged for their inherent contradiction in terms. When Hasselbeck throws a damn fit even if it's condescending she gets addressed.

Class privilege and recognition of play space ( space where you can be incomplete or off an not receive soul crushing or legal response) is parsed out very differently. Those girls got to have the space of both being morally superior but scientifically protected.

They are granted all the space in the world to fuck do dumb shit and WITHOUT FAIL someone will regard their mistakes as " youthful folly" or "young indiscretion. That same person will take basically the SAME ANTICS from a person of lower class/ or different race and pathologize the ever living fuck out of them.

The fact that their young suddenly become moot to the fact that their poor/black/latina/indigenous /LGBT/orphaned/Underserved by social services.

And frankly yes some of this is straight up jealousy and bitterness. I like biterness it lets me know when I'm being poisoned.

Why does the loss of a middle class white girl receive multiple days of Front page coverage , while the loss of a black girl only become above the fold if attached to the story. So they can drum up an epidemic of young disappearances ?

Why does Oprah have to partner with Time before somebody investigates why a whole lot of kids ( mostly poor white and rural) arent graduating?

We're not good enough for concern?

However the fact that the middle and upperclass have made a career of cross genrational consumption suddenly wont be able to suck up as much resources as the generation befor e them is the cause for national hand wringing?

Especially since they themselves cant be bothered to deselect from an IPOD to figureout why?

Meanwhile an entire section of the population who are being factored out of the college equation or must attend doing damn near feats of magic to survive is okay and has been okay for YEARS NOW?!

That same population meanwhile is making huge strides in taking care of our own shit . Ignoring the dire predictions of doom and gloom , and rather than ask why is it that we suceed its more important to find out why Suzy and them are failing despite having everything.

Frankly callit my bad mood but I don't give a shit.

This made sense to me but it also pissed me the fuck off. Why because of this and I wiill say it and quote me.

NO MOVEMENT WILL GET OFF THE GROUND NONE WITHOUT THE PARTICIPATION AND ACTIVE RECRUITMENT OF AFRICAN/AFRO CARRIBEAN/LATINO/ASIAN AMERICAN YOUTH.

IT WILL NOT MAKE IT PAST THE GATE IF IT DOESNT OPENLY CONTACT THE POOR.

And for the most part we're no longer apathetic as is being bemoaned about the Great White Hypes of my generation.

WE ACTIVELY AVOID YOU.

Years of cultural appropriation and benevolent condescnsion and dismissial have resulted in an attitude of we'll do this shit ourselves thank you.

I protested in college and there is little chance you'll get me to do it again.

We gave up , when we want to save the kids we go teach,we volunteer. We go to the soup kitchens and the churches, the blogs and the writings and the documentation.

We've been doing it ourselves and while people keep playing wring the hands at random crap we continue.

What you are watching is not the fall of movements as much as they'd like to call it that. What you're watching is the fact that the historically strong voices that received no credit ,Women of color, the poor, the cross class identifiers are faling away from mainstream movements . We don't fucking care anymore and whoops you'renot as strong as you thought youd be without us.

But hey we matter less than liars cheats and out right assholes lkong as they fit the right demographic.
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BEcause if youre still alive in Ny after this shit

I WANNA MEET YOU


For no other reason than screw it life is short and getting shorter. I'm inviting folks to my Park Gathering

ON the fifth I will be in the park with ( hopefully propabably not) folks hoping to play games celebrate and mostly enjoy the lazy saturday afternoon


If you are interested let me know
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