This Black History Month: Why Gay Rights Can’t Wait
We can disagree in an agreeable way.
“The shape of the world will not permit us the luxury of gradualism and procrastination.” Those are the words of Martin Luther King Jr., from his book Why We Can’t Wait. He wrote those words decades ago. I wonder where he got the idea for that? Where did he get that statement? The exigency was obviously the Black Civil Rights Movement and the suffering of the black people, my people. Why We Can’t Wait. It is a thick, collection of words, full of complexities and the promise that, before that statement, there was a lack of clarity, a lump of ignorance and validated inaction that the phrase obligated. There was a reason why the Black Civil Right movement couldn’t wait and take things slow. They couldn’t wait because nothing is promised to us. The future is as tangible as dirty smoke, as just as irritable. Black people couldn’t wait then and neither can Gay people now. That same sense of urgency, that same unmoving desire to achieve equal rights now, right now, needs to spread through the Gay community like wild fire and it needs to consume, take them and cook them and hardened them and force them to fight, tooth and nail, for the rights and privileges that every single American has the born-promise of having. This isn’t debatable. And I find it amazingly interesting that this call for action is coming from me, a straight Black man born in the most racist and uncompromising regions of this country. But that is how important the Gay rights movement is. It is moving past the realm of being desirable, a dream that may come true, someday. America’s inaction is coming close to being damn-near a crime against humanity.
The Problem with Sequels
The only problem with this is that I can't have its children.
The issue is whether or not we even need a damn Bioshock 2. And, no, no we don’t. Ok, so I realize that there are some of you that don’t play video games, and the only post that came up this week was about the sequel to a brilliant video game. So, you are probably saying, Jarvis, stop lying to yourself. You are going to get Bioshock 2. I mean, you loved the first one, Jarvis. So you’ll obviously buy the second one. Well, no. No, I won’t. I have absolutely, positively no interest in Bioshock 2. The reason we don’t need another Bioshock is the same reason why we didn’t need another Matrix movie, why we really didn’t need another Pirates of the Caribbean. Sequels are not always needed. When they are, they work. But they only work by design, not by desire. You don’t get me? Let me explain.
Let’s take two movies that were the first movies a trilogy. We’ve got the aforementioned the Matrix and we’ve got Star Wars: A New Hope (We are pretending that the horror which were the prequels never happened. Ok?) Now, I don’t care who you are. The first Star Wars wasn’t that great and if you say it was, I’ll punch you in the nose. The greatness which was the first Star Wars is only evident with its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Without Strikes Back, New Hope would have been an all right film. The excellence of the second movie validated the need for the first. Sort of like Einstein being born and then we say, hey, Einstein’s mom. Thanks for pushing Einstein out your vagina. If we look at the first Matrix, we got a reversal. Since Matrix Reloaded sucked, then we can understand the greatness of the first one. We can say, the Matrix was so good it didn’t need validation. Its validation was its original greatness. Any attempts to try and add to the greatness, or to make other great things off the greatness of the original is futile and pointless. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was a great, fun flick. The series got lucky because Johnny Depp is an acting God. The other two films were completely unneeded, but the second two films were still great films because of Depp, and without the first movie, the other two would never have happened. Does that make sense? Yes? No? Let’s continue. (more…)
Mass Effect 2: Impressions
Saying that Mass Effect 2 is the best video game ever isn’t something I’m going to say. I just don’t see the point of making that statement, because a few years from now, I’ll have to explain to someone why it isn’t the best game any longer, or I have to explain why Mass Effect 2 is better than Mass Effect 1, my previous favorite video game ever. Well, I guess I can do that. So, let’s post the question: Is Mass Effect 2 better than Mass Effect 1? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Is Mass Effect 2 better than any game I’ve played in the last twenty years? Yes. Yes. Yes. Is it the best game I’ve ever played? I’m not saying that. You’re not tricking me. Nice try. I am going to talk about Mass Effect 2, however. And I am going to spoiler it. So, remember, if you don’t want to get it spoiled, don’t read after the break. Seriously. I mean seriously.
How the Apple Tablet will Screw over Poor People
For the mildly rich and super-elitist only.
So, apparently, the amazing and most important company that was ever created by human beings is releasing the often rumored and much desired Apple Tablet! It is the Apple Tablet! It is made by Apple and, uh, it is a Tablet! I mean, think of it like the iPhone, but, you know, bigger and more 3Ging and, I don’t know, it floats and it will diagnose and cure strange STDs, I guess. I mean, what do you want from me?
I don’t care about the Apple Tablet, or the Nook, or the Kindle. Why, you ask? Why don’t I, Jarvis Slacks, the guy who buys USB drives based on looks rather than function, the guy who bought $100 dollar earbuds because they “Felt better”, the guy who will walk two miles just to buy Mass Effect 2, why don’t I care about the cool and futuristic ability to read my favorite novels, magazines and newspapers on a tablet like device just like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation? Why don’t I care about the future?
Because this part of the future is stupid. And we are hurting the majority of the world, not helping them. And I’ll explain exactly why that is after this short commercial break.
Public Transportation Works can Create jobs?
And, yeah, there is sometimes a guy being a douche bag, talking on his cellphone...
Yeah, Public Transportation sometimes sucks. You have to find out what time the bus runs before you go anywhere, the bus sometimes smells like an armpit, and it isn’t as comfortable as sitting in an expensive car and sitting in traffic for four hours a day. But I don’t mind it for a number of reasons. I don’t pay car insurance just in case I bump into some idiot. I don’t have to get my oil changed just because a little sticker tells me to. And I don’t have to hear a mechanic try and tell me that my car will explode if I don’t change out my headlights. And, hey, look at that! If money is given to more public transportation jobs, we might some more jobs. Neato! From the Wired:
By splitting public transportation and highway funding equally, Schroeer said, the bill could provide 71,415 more job-months of work than it would by favoring highway spending. That is enough work to give 6,000 more people full-time year-round employment. According to SGA, public transportation spending leads more directly to job growth than highway spending for several reasons. First, less money is spent acquiring land, which means more money is spent actually building something. Second, all those buses, trains and subways need people to operate them and maintain the infrastructure. And third, public transit requires a workforce with more diverse skills than highway construction. Even better, Schroeer said, public transit can help save jobs because it allows people to get to work — and those are jobs Smart Growth America didn’t include in its analysis. When transit programs are cut or don’t exist to begin with, “there’s a negative impact on folks’ mobility to get to work, to get to education,” Schroeer said. “It’s part of the fabric of communities, whether you use it or not.”
The article doesn’t mention how it can help the environment, but it can. Cities are greener because more people take buses or subways or, and I know this might be crazy talk, but people WALK places. I know! So weird! Hopefully, articles like this one can generate support for a greener, and more economic, way of life.
Mass Effect 2 is next week. Also, I lose both my jobs and have to live on the streets because I’m going to play it too much. Haha! Joking! Maybe….
Next week, Mass Effect 2 comes out. Also next week, I won’t be sleeping much and I think I might lose eight or nine pounds. I have survived for the past six-months by only watching one trailer. Just one. I am spoiler-free and that feeling is a good feeling.The original Mass Effect had a number, an almost unreal host of problems. The cut scenes were great, but the in-game animations were always a bit stiff and dry. The Mako drove like a brink being pulled by a piece of string except not as fun. And I can’t tell you how many times I died simply because my team-mates refused to even pretend like they wanted to think. But besides all those glaring problems, there was an experience there that no other game before it gave me. It was half way through the game. My character (Royal Shepherd) had to make a decision: Go and save Ashely or go and save Hayden. One of them was going to die. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t save them both. So I let Hayden get blown up. But that wasn’t what got me. Later in the game, Ashely shot Rex! She shot Rex! And I couldn’t stop her! It was the way the game knew it was a game, and the way the game always thought one step ahead of me that got me hooked. I loved that game. And unlike some other games, Mass Effect 2 will be a sequel that will absorb my soul like a sponge sucking up water.
Impressions: The Book of Eli
The book of Eli is pretty much exactly how you think it is going to be. So, there isn’t a way I can really spoil it. Just watch the previews and then fill in a few blanks. Denzel Washington has a book and he is taking the book somewhere. Bad people with big guns and rotten teeth want the book and Denzel Washington has the skills to cut off a few half-dozen heads in the time it takes for you to yell, “Damn!” I mean, it is the Hughes Brothers. Yeah, they did Menace to Society, but they also made Dead Presidents and that movie was re-Dunk-ulous. So, the action and violence is there, but there is another thing that sneaks in. A moral message, maybe? An idea of the different concepts that keep society in check? The politics of power dynamics? What is the importance of books? Of words? Is it the information inside these books, or the notion that these books do contain information and that the containment of information is possible, that the movement of information is our right, that the giving of information is what makes us human? Is this movie talking about that? Half way through the flick, I started to wonder if the movie had the answers, or was just hurling awesome images at me. And, oh, Mila Kunis. Yes, her too. Spoilers ahead. I’ll be completely ruining this movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.
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Life After The MFA: The Imperfect Art of Revision
The worst part about being a writer is telling people that you’re a writer AND that you work two jobs and you are, currently, thirty-two and living with roommates, car-less, and that you have no real 401K or retirement plan to speak of. It is the constant struggle of all writers to justify calling themselves a writer. It is like a construction worker calling himself a construction worker yet working at a diner and driving a bus. In his heart, he knows what he wants to do with his life. But the practical needs for food, shelter, and the proper American amount of stuff result in working and doing things you’d rather not do in order to facilitate the waiting game until you can do what you want to do.
Writing takes time. And it takes multiple drafts. There are plenty of wrong ways to write, and an unending list of right-ways to do it. In the interests of trying to spark a creative conversation (and avoid all that CHEERY Haiti news) I thought I would detail my revision of a draft, and the three major changes that I’ve worked into it. If you don’t read novels, or don’t know what a Fray-Tag Diagram is, you are welcome to go ahead and sit this one out. I promise I’ll make some Sarah Palin jokes the next time around.
No. It isn’t OK to call us, “Negros”. Thanks for asking…
Ok, this isn't fun anymore.
I want to explain this whole “Negro” thing.
I am from the South, a place where the Racism conversation has gone on for longer than the Earth has been formed. The good thing about living in the South is that the Race conversation is done. We’ve talked it out and we’ve concluded that some people are racists, some are not. Yes, Black people can be racist. Yes, there are certain words that have a racist undertone. “Nigger” is a perfect example. “Colored People” is a good one as well. And, yep, “Negro” fits into that category. White people have some words as well. “Red-neck”. “White-trash”. “Dirty-White-People” is one that was created in the 1990s, but didn’t last long. The point is that words matter. They do. Words always matter.
This all stems from something that Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the Democrats in the Senate, MAYBE said in a book, Game Change. He supposedly said that then Senator Obama had a good chance of becoming President because the brother was “Light-skinned” and that he spoke “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”. I use the words “Maybe” and “Supposedly” because the book sources no one in it, which is sad because I fail papers from Freshmen college kids for not having sources, but these douche-sacks get off Scott-free? But that is a whole other thing. Harry Reid has apologized, which means he said it, which means there is a problem. But, it is increasingly hard for me to articulate that problem. Think of it this way. We are in the City pound, looking for dogs. There are two dogs in front of us. You point at one and the clerk says, that’s a pure breed Pitbull. You point at the other one and the clerk says, oh, that’s a Mutt. There. Done. One dog is pure-breed, and the breed deserves a respectable title. The other dog is a Mutt and deserves absolutely nothing. In fact, it being a Mutt means that it has had some misfortune. Somebody let that dog exist! So sad. Who is that? Oh, that is an African American Male. Hell, that is a Black Male. That’s fine. But Negro? Really?
Black people, collectively, would like for people not to call us Negroes. This is not 1953. We’ve decided that. If we change our minds, we will send out emails. We promise.
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The New A-Team Trailer shows, of course, stuff blowing up.
To be honest, I can count on my fingers how many times I’ve watched the A-Team. I have the sneaky suspicion that the same can be said for most of society. Did we really like this show? A group of dudes that were wrongfully accused of something have to drive in a big van and body-slam people. Did we like that? Or did we just think we liked it? The concept that the A-team was good television is a meme, and I am happy to kick that meme in the head so it stops reproducing. However, judging from the number of people that went to see Avatar (over my explicit objections), it really doesn’t matter what a movie is about, what is happening and who is in it. You will see anything. And, because there is a tank with parachutes floating through the air and a guy is shooting a predator drone with the tank, I guess I’ll be right there with you. New A-Team trailer. Enjoy.
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Jarvis Slacks
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