Thursday, October 27, 2016

NO SEXY HITLER, and Other Halloween Tips

Dear white people,
Halloween is only days away, which means it’s time for my letter to you, imploring that you take serious consideration when choosing your costumes. Most of you are just going to go as David Pumpkins or “sexy” David Pumpkins, but for those of you who want to think outside the box, here are some tips that will make your Halloween as pleasant as possible:
  1. NO HARAMBE. Just…come on, bro. So played.
  2. DO YOU NEED BLACK FACE PAINT FOR YOUR COSTUME? ARE YOU GOING AS THE APPLE iPOD SHADOW? THEN YOU DON’T NEED BLACK FACE PAINT FOR THAT COSTUME.
    1. This goes for brown face paint as well. You’d better damn well be 1987-2009 Michael Jackson. We’ll handle the 1958-1986 Michael Jackson.
    2. “But what about authenticity of the character? It’s an homage!” Motherfucker, if you and your friends go as the original Ghostbusters, and you are wearing a small afro, we’ll figure out that you’re supposed to be Winston Zeddemore. What you should REALLY be asking yourself is why don’t you have any black friends to pick up the mantel?
    3. “How do I explain to my kid that he can’t put on brown makeup to flesh out his Mr. T costume?” First of all, how does your dumb kid know who Mr. T is? Are you dressing him for him or for your 1980s nostalgia? Second, I had to learn the hard way about the perils of racism before I was 5 years old. Your kid is overdue for a nice controlled lesson, and that is YOUR fault, Harold.
  3. AVOID THE BAGS O’ RACISM.
    1. When you go to the pop-up strip mall Halloween stores, when you get past the “sexy” ironing boards and the officially licensed Disney/Marvel costumes, There are the “south of the border” and the “sexy squaw” and the “yellow fever” costumes. They’re usually mixed bags of multiple cultures who “look alike”. Avoid these bags of racism like the plague. Unless, of course, you’re an oblivious asshole. Harold.
  4. IF YOUR ANCESTORS TOOK PART IN OCCUPYING/COLONIZING A COUNTRY, DON’T WHERE THE GARB OF THE COLONIZED COUNTRY AS A COSTUME.
    1. If you are a descendant of The United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Brandenburg, Sweden, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Switzerland, or the United States, maybe don’t dress like the people they brought to, or the indigenous peoples of, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, St. Thomas, Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti, Antigua, Dominica, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Panama, Saint Croix, Grenada, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Tobago, Trinidad, Guadeloupe, Guiana, Brazil, Suriname, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Congo, Swaziland, Egypt, Sudan, Cameroon, Somalia, Togo, Madagascar, Gambia, Nigeria, Sierre Leone, South Africa, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Djibouti, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea, Senegal, Angola, Mombasa, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Liberia, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Brunei, Fiji, Singapore, Tonga, Hong Kong, Samoa, Borneo, China, Indochina, Vietnam, Japan, Laos, Taiwan, or the Philippines….man, your ancestors were busy as fuck.
    2. You CAN still dress as the indigenous folk of Antarctica, because fuck penguins. However, if your friend says he’s from Antarctica and dresses as a Polar Bear, he’s racist as fuck. Polar bears are in the ARCTIC, Harold.
  5. DON’T DRESS LIKE A DOMESTICALLY VIOLENT SEXUAL PREDATOR
    1. Your Bill Cosby with a jigger, Ray Rice, Ben Roethlisberger, Woody Allen with an Asian doll, Donald Trump grabbing a cat, etc. costumes are fucking stupid.
  6. DON’T SLUT SHAME THE SEXY COSTUMES
    1. America’s absurd ability to sexualize ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING comes to fruition on Halloween. I lost all chill when I saw a “sexy Elmo” costume. Why? Just…Why????? However, I think Americans take sex too seriously at times, which leads to things taboo that are not and things excessive shaming of people who don’t deserve it. Treat Halloween like “Straight Pride Day”. Who cares if your Batwoman costume is just a black corset and bat pasties? Ignore the shamers, and do whatever the hell you like…but NO SEXY HITLER. Please refer to Tips 2, 3, and 4.
Hopefully, this will help you have a good night. If you don’t heed my advice, and someone leads a bar-wide chant of, “FUCK THIS DUDE”, while pointing at your busted costume until you leave, or if someone throws their beer in your face, please don’t get too mad. I’ll claim I have a nervous twitch. If you have any questions, my door is open. I’ll be dressed as Samuel L. Jackson this year, as with every year. If you come up to someone dressed as Morpheus, not only will I not help you, I will flip you off for not knowing your black people. We don’t all look alike. Harold.
Love,
Your Friends of Color
#FOCLife


Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Rochester: Open your Relationship with Wegmans

Dear Rochester,
Once again, you have chosen Wegmans as the Best Place to Take an Out-of-Towner in the City Newspaper. Once again, I am confounded that you would make that decision, considering absolutely everything else in Rochester that would impress an out-of-towner that would not make you look like the ominous homicidal local in the beginning of a teen horror flick who would think that the best hangout in in his town is the local gas station. I have tried incredulity, I have tried tough love, and now I think I know what the issue is. Rochester…is Wegmans hurting you?
I ask, because I also noticed that “downtown Rochester” was a runner-up for “Best Local Eyesore”. Rochester, who told you that you were so unattractive? Sure, you’re going through some changes, but you are NOT an eyesore. My home town is under construction all the time. This is how cities exist and thrive. Is Wegmans telling you that you’re ugly? Don’t listen to him. He has no place to speak, especially with that giant robot rooster that crows on the hour at the East Avenue location or the death trap parking lots at East Avenue and Monroe Avenue. You tell Wegmans that you ARE beautiful...though I am not sure why they don’t turn those hills of dirt in the inner loop into an adult slide park. THAT would be a place to take an out-of-towner.
Wegmans has been around for 100 years in Rochester. I’ll bet Wegmans told you that this is a big deal. You know what’s a bigger deal, though? The home of America’s premiere Suffragist. It’s been here since 1866. Susan B. Anthony was arrested in the front parlor in 1872 for voting. That is much deeper than selling fruits and vegetables. People’s freedoms were in the balance. Speaking of people’s freedom, do you not realize that Frederick Douglass resided here since 1843, and you can trace his movements and activism all over town? Sure, he can’t give you day-old sushi, but you can definitely see everything from where his former residences were to where he’s spoken against slavery to where he is buried. Both of these things predate a grocery store, and they are way cooler. Don’t let Wegmans tell you different.
Wegmans probably boasts about how stacked he is. His newest buildings are always touted as major architectural feats. Are they “Frank Lloyd Wright” feats, though? Because the Edward T. Boynton House is designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the world’s greatest modern age architects, and it is a stone’s throw away from a Wegmans, and simply its façade is more enthralling than the cookie cutter design of all of the Wegmans strewn about the city. Also, I am sure that Mr. Wright didn’t have to force smaller businesses out to make way for construction of the House.
Perhaps if Wegmans were only in Rochester, I might see why you would think that he’s the best place to take an out-of-towner. But here is the thing, Roc: Wegmans has been seeing other cities for years. There’s a Wegmans in my hometown of Baltimore, and he keeps creeping farther south. Perhaps you think that Wegmans is all for you, Roc, but Wegmans does not feel the same way. Why would you stay in such a lopsided dynamic? Also, it is just a grocery store.
The bottom line, Rochester, is that Wegmans may not love you as much as you love him. Don’t chase waterfalls. Speaking of waterfalls, while you were wrapped in Wegman’s hypnotic gaze, you may not have noticed that THERE IS A WATERFALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY. How often does that happen? Thus far, I can only think of perhaps Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Dinotopia. You are magic, Rochester. Stop short-selling yourself to your guests. You should see other things, Rochester. Wegmans definitely is.
When I first moved to Rochester 8 years ago, no one suggested that a grocery store was the best thing that Rochester has to offer. If they did, I would have immediately packed my bags and left. Wegmans is a very nice place to get food, but the best place to take an out-of-towner? Yes, but only if the out-of-towner is starving to death, and even then, the hospital should probably be the first stop you make. You can tell me if Wegmans is hurting you and forcing you to say it’s the best. Let me show you what else Rochester has to offer.
Love and Concerns,

A Baltimore expat.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Birth of a Nation’s Box Office Flop & the Need for Black Men to Take Responsibility For Their Actions Instead of Blaming Black Women for their Failures All the Goddamn Time

Image: Mandalay Pictures
You done messed up, hoteps! Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation flopped hard on its opening weekend. This is despite stellar promotion and critical reviews across the board. Perhaps it was an off week, or maybe Girl on the Train was just that on point that you couldn’t compete. Or maybe PEOPLE DIDN’T WANT TO SEE A FILM PRODUCED BY AN UNREPENTANT (alleged) SEXUAL PREDATOR. Fact is, it did not do that well, and most people would see these factors and think that any combination of these reasons makes sense. But you have outdone yourselves this time, hoteps. You ignored all of the possible reasons and decided that there was one insidious culprit responsible for The Birth’s abysmal first weekend: the black feminist.
On 9th October, a hotep named “Special Cloth” penned an article called “Birth of a Nation’s Box Office Flop and the Unrepentant Pettiness of the Black Feminist”. She directly placed the blame on black feminists and their “male minions”. Hoteps just HATE men who respect women. She placed the source of the immense shade that black feminists threw that destroyed The Birth on the fact that he has a white wife. She then accused black feminists of putting out a hit job on Nate Parker based on his homophobic statements regarding considering roles. Finally she summed up by saying that the “Black Girl Goodfellas” kept bringing up the rape allegation and subsequent acquittal, and THAT is why the movie tanked! Because black feminists be petty, yo!
The article is the online equivalent of a news article, mugshot and string-laden corkboard in the basement of a bitter, obsessed ex-cop in a gritty conspiracy crime drama. I imagine that Ms. Cloth was in the middle of the article and in a gravel voice yelled, “It’s not in my head! It’s you! And you! AND YOU! We’ll all go down if you don’t listen to me!” And then she flipped a table and stormed out of the room.
Something the article DOESN’T do is consider a few things. Perhaps, after years and years of people telling them to go with their conscious in making decisions on who they wish to support, they finally did, but it is not what hoteps expected. Perhaps the reason people didn’t want to see it because of Nate Parkers homophobic comments, AND his shameful shadow of an explanation for the sexual assault allegations years ago. Perhaps people were put off by the reports of him bullying the victim while in college, or that the one conviction in the case was overturned. Perhaps they were not impressed with his statements when he found out that the victim killed herself, and he made a statement expressing sorrow by saying how terrible HIS ordeal was, with no concern for the woman or her family. Perhaps black women are sick of falling in line and defending black men who HAVE done abusive things to women, all because the mostly white show business industry has told us that this new black man is the new positive black icon that we are supposed to worship. Perhaps, in the 21st Century, black women AND men are tired of being told that they have to like someone based solely on the fact that they’re black, and they are sick of excusing erstwhile egregious crimes committed. Bottom line, maybe black women don’t want to get Cosby’ed again.
Here’s a better title for the article: called “Birth of a Nation’s Box Office Flop and the Need for Black Men to Take Responsibility for Their Actions Instead of Blaming Black Women for their Failures All the Goddamn Time”.
I’ve said it again and again…and again: hoteps love perpetuating white supremacy, and blaming black women for every goddamn thing is a staple of white supremacy. From white supremacists’ mouths, black women are sex crazed jezebels who do nothing but pop out babies and live high on the hog on government provided dollars. From hotep mouths, black women are being “controlled” by The Man®, who use feminism to convince them to be women are sex crazed jezebels who do nothing but pop out babies and live high on the hog on government provided dollars, with no NEED for a man! Also, somehow, Planned Parenthood is tricking black women into getting abortions or some stupid shit. So they’re popping out babies, yet they’re always getting abortions. Another subset of Schroedinger’s Negro, I guess.
It is highly likely that people made decisions to not see it because of Nate Parker’s callousness in talking about the rape case, and more callousness in not showing any real remorse when finding out his accuser is dead. He was acquitted, fine. However, given the way he conducted himself immediately after and years after the incident, even if what he did was not a definition of rape, he could have at least admitted that he had an immense lack of judgment that night, or that he was sorry for the pain that the accuser had been suffering all that time to the point that she couldn’t take it. You can throw 1000 Gabrielle Unions into your press package to mitigate the scandal, if the main suspected perpetrator doesn’t look remorseful, there’s no point.
The real reason that The Birth flopped is that not enough seats were sold to make profit. The majority of this country is white, and the majority of moviegoers are white. White bodies did not occupy the seats. You see hoteps? This was your ONE opportunity to blame The Man® for something legitimate, instead of for homosexuality or birth control, and you blew it! The Man® didn’t see the movie, and you didn’t pounce! You were too busy hating black women to straight up blame white public for not going to see The Birth! You messed up! Now we know your secret. You didn’t blame The Man®, partially because The Man® helped fund the movie, and partially because hoteps are just white supremacists in blackface. Now the truth is out there, and nobody cares, just like your hotep Roots. Now go on and don’t vote so that you can blame more things on stuff over which you had some modicum of control.
…Too soon?

#HypotheticalLivesMatter and #SchroedingersNegro

This weekend, hell froze over. The Donald Trump apologized for something! He finally felt the pressure to do a mea culpa for something he said into a hot mic in 2005. The told Billy bush that he scheming on sleeping with a married woman. He also said that because one is rich and famous that he can pretty much act the way he likes toward women. He can even, “grab them in the pussy”.
Fuck whoever made this meme, but with
their consent.
Many defended his talk, saying that this is “just how guys talk”. So needless to say, I purged a LOT of Facebook friends over the weekend. What The described is the textbook definition of sexual assault. If your guy friends talk like that, then they should be on a sex offender registry. During the second presidential debate, Anderson Cooper asked if that is how he carries himself around women, and The negated his own apology by saying that it was just “locker room talk”. It WOULD be “just” locker room talk, if the only people in the locker room were Brock Turner, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Cee-Lo Green, Ben Roethlisberger, Jerry Sandusky, and Bill Cosby. Also, when the hell was the last time The has been in a locker room? He thinks exercise is unhealthy! Sean Hannity defended his best buddy by stating that even King David had 500 concubines, neglecting to state that another word for concubine is SEX SLAVE. There is also an idiotic meme going around with the cover of 50 Shades of Grey on it, stating, “If women are so outraged at Trump’s use of naughty words, who in the hell bought 80 million copies of 50 Shades of Grey?” It’s funny, because the person who made the meme doesn’t know the difference between CONSENT and ASSAULT.
Many finally condemned the fuck out of The, though. Sen. John McCain pulled his endorsement of The, as did Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Rep. Bradley Byrne, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Jeff Flake, US Chamber of Congress Chair Rob Engstrom, Carly Fiorina, and Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, among many others. You KNOW you done messed up when ALABAMA says, “Whoa, too far, bro!” Even Paul Ryan cancelled The’s appearance at a campaign event, and he refuses to defend him...though he won’t unendorse him. Even the Republican National Convention has cut all funds to The’s campaign! His own party doesn’t have his back! So though he still has some support, many are not having any more of The.
I see your point, but...
Of course, there was a backlash to the backlash. People pointed out how The disparaged Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, disabled people, black people, military veterans and their families, but all of a sudden, Republicans are incensed because he disparaged a white woman??? How typical!...One problem with this meme: The has disparaged MANY white women. Ask Rosie O’Donnell and Megyn Kelly. You can even refer to the women who explicitly accused The of sexual assault including Ivana Trump, incidentally the more the amount of women than The brought to the second debate to attempt to attack Hillary Clinton. So it wasn’t white women that was the line. It was HYPOTHETICAL white women.
Republicans have been using hypothetical people to justify everything from loosening gun laws to excusing campus rape, from banning refugees to disenfranchising black people. The ever threatening “bad guy with a gun” can only be stopped by the ever vigilant “good guy with a gun”. Maybe there’s rape on campuses, but what about the women who lie about rape? The black community is devastated by absent dads and drugs, so we NEED to stop and frisk them! Maybe if their single mothers would get a job and get off of welfare, they wouldn’t be “queens” of welfare! And what about those sneaky “radical Islamic terrorists” who will sneak in with the refugees? Is MOOslims want to be trusted, they need to report the bad ones! Also, Skittles or something. We NEED to stop those who would commit voter fraud! The opioid epidemic is because “D-Money” keeps coming to our suburbs and selling heroin and then fucks our white women when on the way out of town! We need shut down Planned Parenthood, because what if we abort the baby who will cure cancer?
And Let’s not forget the ever ominous Obama. He’s a secret gay Kenyan MOOslim. He’s going to take away our guns. He stepped on our civil liberties. He is inciting race riots. But he’s ALWAYS on vacation.
Thanks, Cafe.com. Frog sipping tea, indeed.
These are all part of the Republicans’ imaginary rogues gallery. None of these magical imps are real. Every statistic shows that more guns freely distributed means more gun deaths, and it has nothing to do with who is “good or bad”. The “absent black father” is a damn myth, assumably astride a paisley unicorn. White people have always been the majority of welfare recipients, so the black “welfare queen” is a myth as well. Most of people receiving food stamps are working multiple jobs, as well, so the idea of a lazy black woman popping out babies and living in the lap of luxury on YOUR taxpayer dime is as existent as good reason to fly a confederate flag if you’re truly not racist or ignorant. Poverty and drugs DO exist in the black community, but at not much higher a rate as in the “white” community. Black poverty is at about 25%, which means 75% are NOT living in poverty. Let’s also point out that there is NO SUCH THING AS BLACK ON BLACK CRIME. It’s just crime. STFU. The National Review, a CONSERVATIVE site, admitted that the rate of false rape allegations is 2 to 8%. Most refugees, especially ones from Syria, are women and children. Regardless, most Muslim refugees are looking for a better life, not a better blast radius. American Muslims REPORT suspicious activity ALL THE TIME, so acting like they are not is either oblivious or racist, or obliviously racist. A higher percentage of Muslims won the Nobel Peace Prize than have committed terrorist acts. If Republicans cared so much about domestic terrorism, they would be profiling straight white men. Voter Fraud has never been a problem, and when it was, it was committed by Republican operatives, not people in the “hood” or illegal immigrants. There have been no reports of trans women assaulting women or children in bathrooms. There have been PLENTY of reports of straight men assaulting women and children, though, and they don’t even need to go into bathrooms! And the only way the opioiod epidemic was because of a guy named “D-Money” is if it was a Dr. Money who prescribed it, and if he fucked all the white women and she got an abortion, maybe that fetus was the next Rembrandt, or maybe it was the next Jeffrey Dahmer. Speculating on what a clump of cells could have been is futile, and is no reason to defund Planned Parenthood for 3% of their business, so stop pretending this was about the health of the woman or child, and admit that it is strictly about control and unhealthy obsession with creating windmills to fight.
And finally, Barack Obama. There is President Barack Hussein Obama, and then there is the Schroedinger’s Negro that Republicans have concocted named Barack HUSSEIN Obama. How is he this sinister founder of ISIS, closet gay Kenyan Muslim married to a homocidal transwoman, whose every action is a subversive attempt to take away guns and force people into FEMA camps or establish a socialist caliphate or incite a race war, yet he is always on vacation ALL THE TIME? Barack HUSSEIN Obama doesn’t exist. I don’t even need to put a reference to tell you that Barack hussein Obama was born in motherfucking Hawaii, and even if he wasn’t, His mother was an American citizen, so it doesn’t matter, or it would have mattered for McCain and Romney as well. He’s said a million times that he is a Christian, and before that agnostic, but even if he WERE Muslim, IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER BECAUSE WE LIVE IN A SECULAR GOVERNMENT. Not one restrictive gun law has been signed by Obama. Keep in mind that a gun BILL would have to be written and passed by both houses of Congress, and that has not happened, even AFTER 20 children were murdered in Connecticut. Again, more proof that Republicans don’t give a fuck about real people, just hypothetical ones. Obama has been somewhat silent on race matters. I can recall only a few times when he addressed race, so if he is trying to incite a race war, is by being the one big dude right before a bar brawl who silently folds his arms while his boys are wildin’ out behind him. Regarding his caliphate, I'm not sure if killing bin Laden and done bombing targets all over the Middle East is a good way to start one. There is a short list of everything Barack Hussein Obama actually has done while in office. There are top [number] lists everywhere that highlight major things like the Lily Ledbetter Act, Affordable Care Act, nationwide LGBT marriage, but he has been busy. He is in no way perfect, but saying that Obama hasn’t done anything is flat out lying to yourself at this point. He likely was able to do this because he has taken fewer vacation days than GW Bush. In fact, as of 2014, he’s taken fewer vacation days than every president since Jimmy Carter. So the Schroedinger’s Negro Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a wanton tyrant who is destroying society yet lazy as fuck. The real Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t seem to stop working much, and all he’s doing is his damn job.

None of the bogeymen that the Republicans have been warning us about are actual people, so it makes sense that they had no problems with everything The said, up until now, when he assaulted a hypothetical target that doesn’t exist! That poor mystical woman! No one can know her ethereal suffering. Not even the ACTUAL WOMEN THAT THE HAS INSULTED AND/OR ASSAULTED. So let’s applaud the RNC and the “brave” Republicans who cut ties with The Donald Trump, but let’s keep throwing shade at them because the breaking straw was a hypothetical human being, as are all of the “people” on which they base their platform.

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