ROFL!

not really. but this is funny and i've never actually typed "rofl" before, so i thought i'd try it out. newayz...cue "birth control as period control video":

smile on my face

leave it to colbert to produce the first smile on my face in a few days.

colbert vs. rain. dance-off. i just have to say, rain is not that good-- he's kind of like michael jackson with a ponytail. weird. his feet seem too big, or something.

i need to read more colson whitehead

i enjoyed his poke at margaret jones' memoir "love and consequences" in new york magazine this week. i ran across it on the train this morning, and being me, i of course did not understand it was a joke until i was way too far in. then i had a good 25 laughs in the last, like, quarter of the article. :) great! short excerpt, right around where i started to doubt the veracity of the piece:

Back in the states, when I recount my visit with Misha, I think I see something of the predator in Margaret, too. In the cruel intelligence of her gaze, her long silky mane. I ask her: Can Native Americans talk to wolves, or is that buffalo? At any rate, I think I can see that half of her heritage expressing itself as she listens. “Misha loves her wolves,” she tells me. “But fighting over squirrel carcass with her pack made her competitive, for reals. You write a memoir these days, and someone’s always trying to outdo you. It’s an arms race. Just when you outrun the tsunami, cradling a baby under each arm, you look back and some joker is surfing on that mother, with a whole bandolier of babies across her chest, and she’s juggling flaming torches and a chainsaw to boot. It’s mad crazy on these streets.”

ah, colson. so funny you are. "surfing on that mother, with a whole bandolier of babies..." i like you, are you single? ;)

anyway, then tonight as i browsed my google reader, i ran across this on postbourgie- he also wrote an op-ed in the times. yay!

readup!

this is funny but long, so take a look after the jump

thanks to postbourgie for "the definitive list of stuff all black people should boycott"! list after the jump.

note: i don't think all the links came with, so if you want the full experience head over to their site.

i'm trying to think of gainful additions to the list, but it may be too good. maybe i'd add tavis smiley, but that may just be because i'm a little hurt that people have been finding my blog by googling "tavis smiley's white girlfriend." ouch.


The Definitive List of Stuff All Black People Should Be Boycotting Right Now.

As determined by the Secret Council of American Negroes.

(A little problematic? Yup. But funny as hayl.)

From the editor’s desk:

As always the Secret Council of American Negroes keeps a boycott list ready and updated. While our resources are vast even we sometimes miss out on things black people really should be boycotting. Feel free to e-mail our site’s editor with people, places, things, organizations, businesses, religions, countries, government officials, deities and other offending bodies you think we should add to the SCAN Boycott List of Shame.

Boycotts can be called for just about anything that offends or even looks like it might offend blackness. Believe me, there is no issue too small for SCAN not to boycott. We get high off boycotting things.

Really. We do. Just thinking about Rosa Parks makes us want to go Starbucks and threaten a boycott over white chocolate macchiatos.

Chocolate is brown, Starbucks! It doesn’t need to be white! It’s happy the way it is!

Chocolate Power!

BOYCOTT!

1. Viacom. (For owning BET)

2. BET. (For sucking)

3. The CW. (For canceling “Girlfriends,” the black woman can’t have a non-ignorant show on the TV?)

4. Lace-front wigs.

5. T-Pain.

6. Telemundo. (Because there are black Latinos, you know.)

7. NASCAR

8. Vogue Magazine.

9. Terry McMillan novels.

10. FOX’s “24″ and ABC’s “Lost.” (For real, stop killing the black characters. You’re turning them into that extemporaneous Star Fleet officer Kirk watches die gruesomely after every teleport.)

11. R. Kelly. (Pervert)

12. The NAACP (That’s right! We’re boycotting YOU! Didn’t see that one coming, huh?)

13. OJ Simpson trials. (You’re on your own.)

14. Spain. (How would you like it if we jeered your athletes dressed like Franco and Hitler in whiteface, feeling up an effigy of the Pope while chanting “Where the dollahs at?” along to a Lil’ Jon remix of La Marcha Real. We’d all be dressed like soccer hooligans too, hoisting glasses of sangria and slurring our Spanish with a Castillian accent because we like to keep it real.)

15. Trifling people.

16. The McRib. (It’s condescending.)

17. Saturday Night Live. (Fred Armisen does a sucky Obama. We’re not saying that because he’s not black. We’re saying it because his Obama really does suck.)

18. Pants that reveal your ass crack. (Let’s be real. Black folks have a lot of ass, so that leads to a lot of crack.)

19. The Oscars.

20. Fried chicken. (For being so delicious.)

21. Naming children after name brand goods.

22. Cristal. (because Jay said so.)

23. Jay-Z. (because Nas said so.)

24. Nas. (because this shirt said so.)

25. Pushy church folk and “gangsta” rappers. (Enough with the homophobia and misogyny. Grow the fuck up. The gays and the women aren’t going anywhere.)

26. Russell Simmons.

27. Build-A-Bear Workshop. (This is a pre-boycott, just in case they start only offering white cloth for bears.)

28. Clothing designers. (Because these pants don’t fit.)

29. Actor Adrien Brody. (For ramming his tongue down Halle Berry’s throat after winning the Oscar for “The Pianist” in 2003. We get that he was happy, but we didn’t appreciate the misdemeanor sexual assault you committed on the stage. Never mind wondering if you would have pulled the same crap on Julia Roberts. SCAN wants you to love our sisters, but love them respectfully, please!)

30. Sub-prime loans.

31. CBS News. (Did you ask Russ Mitchell if he wanted to anchor the news because Katie is funking up the place?)

32. Leather pants. (very unflattering)

33. Michael Jackson jokes. (Try Jermaine jokes. They’re the new Michael Jackson jokes)

34. Nike. (too expensive)

35. Foxy Brown. (too cheap)

36. States that have never had black governors. (all 47 of you)

37. Will Smith. (not angry enough)

38. Cuba Gooding Jr. (not angry enough)

39. JC Watts. (not angry enough)

40. Bill Cosby. (too angry)

41. Any film where the black sidekick is “wise-cracking.”

42. Vanity Fair Magazine. (What? We’re not vain enough for your magazine? I’ll have you know that black celebrities are every bit as vain as white celebrities and in some cases - Beyonce - vainer!)

43. Vince Vaughn. (You crashed a Punjabi wedding in “Wedding Crashers” but not a black wedding?)

44. Kwanzaa.

45. ABC’s “The Bachelor.” (We didn’t want the damn ring anyway.)

46. The weasley guy on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” (Stop making excuses for Phil Mickelson and accept the fact that Tiger Woods is the greatest athlete of all time!)

47. Nancy Grace. (Because , um … we don’t know if you’ve noticed, but black women go missing too. Some are even young and attractive and missing. But that would be shallow, you know? To only care about people’s age and outward appearance when they go missing.)

48. Music videos. (Why no girls darker than a paper bag? Are you trying to convince me that black people will pay to see Gabrielle Union in a movie, but won’t watch a video with a girl who’s her color or darker?)

49. John McCain. (When the conservative wing of SCAN hosts presidential debates we expect someone a bit more substantive to show up besides Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Negroes of North America “gold club” member Alan Keyes)

50. Blondes. (There is no empirical evidence that they do, in fact, have more fun.)

just in case you're wondering what my saturday will be like...

it will involve "the brother from another planet."

just fyi.

okay, for another direction entirely

i'm REALLY EXCITED about the black comedy experiment. i love funny people, but i get tired of the def comedy jam circuit. i also like black people. i am also black.

anyway, the festival looks awesome, and i'm buying a weekend pass. if you're cool you'll consider purchasing a pass as well.

i only hope the dude for whom i left a drunken message a few weeks ago 1) isn't in the festival, and 2) hasn't worked me into his act... :D

VDay/ my sister is fucking awesome

i got one valentine's gift today, and i have to say that it's better and more unexpected than any other gift i've received.

a little background: i, being a complete and utter idiot, managed to deafen myself early last fall by misusing q-tips. i had a wax blockage, people! i couldn't hear! i had to go to the clinic and the doctor banned me from using q-tips ever again! pathetic, yes?

anyway, now you will understand my awesome gift...

siblings rock. :) happy valentine's day, my friends.

this is one of those moments

when i could really use a boyfriend/best friend/acquaintance/guardian angel who is a major hip-hop head.

i am not a hip-hop head. far from it, i was raised in a household presided over by two very well-meaning african-americans hell-bent on making their children successes in the most textbook definition of the term. that meant we played string instruments, worked our asses off to get transfers and scholarships to schools in better neighborhoods, and spent the majority of our free time in church and/or church-sponsored events. my father didn't allow us to listen to normal radio stations, and once, upon hearing billy joel or someone say "damn" in a song on the lite station, i was no longer allowed to listen to that either, which was my last-ditch effort to stay in touch with the world outside of faith vision bible fellowship and our house on 175th terrace. while i am a hip-hop fan, those 14 years lost have hurt my knowledge quite a bit. there's only so much you can learn at dances at college and by hanging out with the "right" people and pretending to mouth the words they're all singing at the top of their lungs. :/

(hopefully you got a chuckle out of that last paragraph, i know i'm laughing my ass off at the pitifulness of my life. god, what a mess i am.)

anyway, now i'm working on a hip-hop curriculum, and my lack of actual hip-hop knowledge is coming back to haunt. i haven't felt this uncool since the freshman year office of black student affairs retreat! (sagehens, holler if you hear me!)

well, off to some hip-hop websites to find some street cred...

naked dudes making jokes, pushups

so i went to a naked comedy show last night. notable moments:

1. when the kinda funny-looking dude in the picture made about 50 tiny penis jokes. the jokes brought on chuckles, nausea and pity. his penis is tiny. and he knows it. and then he did a yoga handstand and opened his legs, and my eyes began to ache.
2. when the nerdy black dude on stage third started to seem a lot like my ex, except with ugly glasses and a need for a razor around the special parts. and then he made a joke about "uppity" homeless people who "have more friends that he does on myspace," and my eyes again began to ache.*
3. most notably, perhaps, when i noticed the hot dude with really nice locks working the front desk for whom i later, somewhat sillily (is that a word?), left a message on the p.i.t. answering machine. my eyes are still aching from that one.

as for the second part of the title, it simply refers to my new fave exercise! pushups make me feel powerful. the end. :)

*note: i get the sense that the joke was based on actual lived experience, which makes the whole situation almost sadder than the tiny penis...