"Just became self-aware. So much to figure out."

Still watching last night "Launch Party" episode of The Office. My favorite part so far:

Ryan: Yeah, I created a website. Look, at the end of the day, Apple's Apple is flying at 30,000 feet. This is a paper company. And I don't want us to get lost in the weeds, or into a beauty contest.

Ryan's boss, Thomas Dean: I told you, I don't want you doing these things in here. You can use your own office or do it in the hall.

Ryan (now crammed into his own tiny office): Convergence. Viral marketing. We're going guerrilla. We're taking it to the streets, while keeping an eye on the street--Wall Street. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. In other words, it is what it is. Buying paper just became fun.

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Next topic: Nobel Spurs Gore Supporters to Urge Presidential Bid, by Jim Malone, VOA News.

Hooray for Al Gore!

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Time to delve into the Yahoo dating advice files! by zuzu at Feministe. Clickety-click on the link, and note that I was First! in the comments. I'm so cool.

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Read my comment here, too: Color adjustment: The return of The Boondocks, by Todd VanDerWerff at The House Next Door, via South Dakota Dark. So far no one has responded to my brilliance under the post, but that's okay.

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From Defamer: Hollywood Women On Working In A Schlong-Obsessed Industry. My favorite comment:

By TheHMSBeagle:

I'm so, so, so tired of this retardo argument about how wah wah wah women should buy tickets to change the world.

Maybe if they gave us some movies that didn't

a) Suck
b) Treat women as disposable backdrops to the hero's journey of some dude
c) Act like Vera Farmiga's role in THE DEPARTED was "A fucking awesome part for a woman" (WHAT.)
d) Pretend that women die en masse at 29
e) Approach the world solely from a male perspective
f) Treat women as, at best, humorless authority figures out to force you to change and generally fuck with your good time, and at worst as sexual objects who exist only to strut across the screen once or twice and then service the hero after he defeats the giant robots

WOMEN WOULD BUY TICKETS.

And Lynda Obst is such a hypocrite. I know for a fact that she's been rejecting female-lead scripts because they have female leads for at least the past year.

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More sad news: Mychal Bell Of 'Jena Six' Ordered Back To Jail, by Kurt Orzeck, MTV.com.

"He's locked up again," Bell's father, Marcus Jones, told AP. "No bail has been set or nothing. He's a young man who's been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it."

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To brighten your mood: Your feminist cute for the day, by Jessica at Feministing.



I'd move to New York to get my daughter into that school. Or, I could use the relocation money to put in her into a good girls' school here in LA. Ha! Like I have money.

Look how far we've come?

On HBO tonight: Little Rock Central High: 50 Years Later, by Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious, originally from HBO.com.

Desegregation ripped through the American South in 1957 when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered National Guard troops to prevent nine black teenagers (dubbed the “Little Rock Nine”) from entering Little Rock’s Central High School while President Dwight Eisenhower sent military troops to guard them from an angry mob of whites outside the school. Today, Little Rock Central High, though 60% black and 40% white, still struggles with educational equity.

Natives of Little Rock, filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud explore the mark of the 50th anniversary of the famous “Integration Crisis of 1957,” in Little Rock Central High: 50 Years Later premiering Tuesday, September 25 at 8 p.m. by following present-day Central High students and faculty both in and out of school, along with community leaders and one of the original “Little Rock Nine,” who reflects on how much – and how little – has evolved since she courageously crossed the school’s steps nearly half a century ago.

Even more troubling:

Um, wow. by Samhita at Feministing, originally at the Chicago Tribune.

No sooner did tens of thousands of African-American demonstrators depart the racially tense town of Jena, La., last week after protesting perceived injustices than white supremacists flooded in behind them.

First a neo-Nazi Web site posted the names, addresses and phone numbers of some of the six black teenagers and their families at the center of the Jena 6 case and urged followers to find them and "drag them out of the house," prompting an investigation by the FBI.

Then the leader of a white supremacist group in Mississippi published interviews that he conducted with the mayor of Jena and the white teenager who was attacked and beaten, allegedly by the six black youths. In those interviews, the mayor, Murphy McMillin, praised efforts by pro-white groups to organize counterdemonstrations; the teenager, Justin Barker, urged white readers to "realize what is going on, speak up and speak their mind."

Well, I certainly feel safer. Thank goodness the terrorists didn't take away our traditional American values.

Visual Semantics, or, Why I don't listen to KTLK on weekdays from 3 to 7 pm

I got stressed out this afternoon when heard this bleepity-bleep on "Progressive Talk" radio, Mark "Mr. K" Germain, pictured above. He doesn't understand why black people (and sane people) are so upset over the situation in Jena. He feels that hanging nooses on a "white tree" in the South is freedom of speech, and not an actionable crime.

You know I had to call in. Apparently, everyone else listening in the Los Angeles area shared my passion, because the phone line was busy for at least an hour. So I choose to yell my radio between dialing attempts.

I am so tired of this fool talking wrong and strong on his self-titled program. Mr. Germain had no idea what was really going on in Jena. He read one small article on the situation and thought the entire rally and march was about three nooses and a school fight. People actually had to call in and tell him to read the Newsweek article that gives more details on the situation. He actually had the nerve to state that he had the right to walk through Inglewood with a noose since it's not a crime; it's free speech. In the words of Cedric the Entertainer in The Original Kings of Comedy, I wish that bleepity-bleep would. I doubt he'd be welcomed with flowers and candy. Then we Angelenos could get a replacement for the 3-7 slot on KTLK. Someone who does real research on topics and speak with understanding and sensitivity, instead of filling his four hours with ignorance and misinformation.

All Mr. Germain had to do was watch this video. It's not that hard! Seriously.

Where will you be on Thursday?

Click on the above video, The Jena Six, by Collateral News on YouTube. Then click on MichaelBaisden.com to find out more about the RALLY & MARCH FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE on Thursday, September 20, 2007, in Jena, Louisiana. Thousands of people will be there. I'm hoping it will be on C-SPAN so I can tape it.

What He Said, too.

Somewhat more important than High School Musical nudie pictures:

“Do you understand where you are?” by Lower Manhattanite on The Group News Blog, via Feministing.

...The tale of [the Jena 6] reminded me of an incident that took place in my family some 14 years ago. It was a simple family reunion...in a small southern town. A tiny place in the extreme southernmost end of North Carolina...

...one thing in the information packet began to start a buzz among the present.

There was a note about the local nightspots. Namely, that there were none. Save for the juke joint down the road a piece across from the “Fish Shack”, and of course, the few spots some 35 minutes away in Wilmington. But one of the note's points of interest got some of the young people going. It stated, that after 8:00 P.M., NO ONE WAS TO GO DOWN ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACKS, PAST THE GREEN HOUSE (an actual green-colored house), AS THAT WAS THE DEMARCATION LINE BETWEEN FREE-GOING COUNTRY, AND KLAN TERRITORY.

Doing so was, according to the note, “tempting fate” and “taking your life into your own hands.”

Many of the assembled—particularly the younger ones, were agog at this special note, thinking it was a.) a joke, b.) a silly wive's tale, and worst of all, c.) an open provocation to their God-given right to flex their northern-bred muscle and “rights”. After much clamor, older relatives prevailed upon the upset youngers, and implored them to please observe the warning. It was not a frivolous one...

Of course, you can guess what would happen that night. While many of us went into Wilmington to celebrate...a clutch of the set opted to cross those tracks—to saunter past that “green house”...

My Uncle A. rushed into the Wilmington club, got on the mic, and requested that all family members leave immediately to get back to the main homestead.

As we left, we were told that shots had been fired at the brazen revelers who had line-stepped that aforementioned threshold...

...a large family meeting was called in the high school's lunchroom...

“We can't tolerate this!”

“This ain't 1920! What are we gonna do about this?”

“Fuck this!” (much grumbling and “Heys!” from the crowd) “Sorry. Sorry about my language. But, this is 1993! How does something like this happen?”

And then my Uncle R. The supposedly “crazy” Uncle R. (mentioned in comments in Jesse's “Genius” post) stood up, towering in his crisp overalls and bright red work shirt—and brought his frying pan-sized hand down suddenly on a table, and it boomed like a grenade in the lunchroom, stopping us all dead in our tracks.

He thundered, “Ya'll have no clue do you? No clue at all! I read the papers—I hear about what goes on up north. Cops shootin' you down every God-blessed day, but that's okay! That's fine! And then you all come down here, thinkin' everything is fine and mellow. You haven't a care in the world. And you leave your brains at home and forget the simplest things. Do you have the common sense that God gave a gnat? Do you understand where-you-are?”

The room fell silent. He looked around at the assembled and repeated it.

“Do you understand...where-you-are?” He took a breath. “Where we are?”

Further down in the post:

You see, being Black in America, is not just about one's skin, and the big boogeyman of racism roaring in your face all day long. It's about the little things. Subtle shit (LM checks around to see if anyone heard him curse). You will often find yourself questioning your place. Your presence. “Should I be here?” It's a sad, and pathological spectacle too many of us do—but do it we do, for good reason. There are large numbers of White folk who visibly blanch at our very proximity. Understanding though, that The Black Star Line is no longer taking passengers “Back to Africa”, a lot of these folks have learned that they grudgingly must live with us. However, they have chosen to dictate the terms of how that “living with us” will go—thanks to majority status, White Skin Privilege, and control of the courts and government in large part.

We walk on eggshells still, many of us—gauging our effect on the surrounding environment, even the most bodacious of us, internally faltering for a moment when we enter certain surroundings. Letting that painful question be heard for the briefest second—“Is it okay for me to be here?”—before plodding forward defiantly...and sometimes with great trepidation.

That is the damage of institutionalized racism. Its “mark”, if you will. That hesitation. How does the old saying go?

“He who hesitates is lost.”

And sooooooooo many Black folks have hesitated over the years, decades and soon it will be centuries, that they—we—have become lost.

When I was growing up in St. Thomas, I rarely thought to myself, “Should I be here?” or “Is it okay for me to be here?” Now that I live in LA, I think about it all the time. It is a huge difference. It's not as bad as it could be, but when I walk around in certain areas--actually, in most of the areas I frequent--I feel like a freak show. I imagine other black USVI-to-US-mainland transplants feel the same way. I don't know if other colors of people--like white people, or people of Middle Eastern, Indian, or Puerto Rican descent--who grew up in the US Virgin Islands but now live on the mainland United States, feel the same way.

If you are reading this blog and you have experienced a similar Caribbean-to-US culture shock situation, please weigh in!