King 50: Stanky Rich

*50 Cent: Official Site I MTV I MySpace
*Rapper 50 Cent Disses President George Bush: AHH I Playahata

The Drama Builds

Rice eating Bush gaffes:
“You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 – –”

Team America’s climatic monologue comes as an apropos parodistic proffering relative Bush's geopolitical rationale:
“There’s a difference between di<%s and a$$holes. Because there are terrorists – a$$holes – you’ve got to have di<%s, people who hunt down terrorists. Di<%s are bad, and it sucks to be a di<%, but it’s way worse to be an a$$hole, and because there are a$$holes, we need di<%s. So shut the fu<% up, all you pu$$ies!”

Mull over that with a can of Diet Coke Plus...

Magic Negro: Brackish Curative Black Benevolence

Whodini: It's All In Mr. Magic's Wand (Prod. by Thomas Dolby)
From: Whodini (Jive, 1983)

Cold off the presses comes excerpts from LA Times, March 19, 2007, article: Obama the 'Magic Negro' by David Ehrenstein:
…it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."
The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro.
He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."
…most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in...
Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

If you haven't yet read the An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey by Saul Williams go get a late pass.

The Word of the Day for May 02, 2007 is:

brackish • \BRACK-ish\ • adjective
*1: somewhat salty
2a: not appealing to the taste b: repulsive

Example Sentence:
Water is often brackish and undrinkable at points where freshwater rivers flow into the sea.

Did you know?
When the word "brackish" first appeared in English in the 1500s, it simply meant "salty," as did its Dutch ancestor "brak." Then, as now, brackish water could simply be a mixture of saltwater and freshwater. Since that time, however, "brackish" has developed the additional meanings of "unpalatable" or "distasteful" - presumably because of the undrinkable quality of saltwater. "The brackish water that we drink / Creeps with a loathsome slime, / And the bitter bread they weigh in scales / Is full of chalk and lime." As this use from Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" illustrates, brackish water can also include things other than salt that make it unpleasant to drink.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

*I met John "Ecstasy" Fletcher of Whodini in Harlem years ago (~1998) at a 106 and Park outdoor concert a week after they performed at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington DC, which I also attended. While talking with Ecstasy I mentioned that I attended their last performance as mentioned in the latter. Additionally, I praised Whodini's past work and lauded Larry Smith their producer for their Back In Black (Jive, 1986) album which featured: "Funky Beat"(co-produced by Whodini & Carter, D.Hutchins - whom I know nothing about), "One Love", "I'm A Ho" (co-produced by Jalil Hutchins of Whodini) and "Echo Scratch", (my favorite Whodini non-commercial release!)", who learned to play bass by listening to the late James Brown.
During my diatribe Ecstacy eyes dilated, his head nodded and he articulated, "ok, Ok, OK!" repeatedly - paralanguage profferring expositional respect relative my Whodini-based factualness.

Rovy, Please Say The Baby!

1000 WORDS

It's called the "American Dream" because you have to be asleep to believe it.

- George Carlin

*1000 Words - A picture is worth a thousand words is a familiar proverb that refers to the idea that complex stories can be told with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text. It also aptly characterizes the goals of visualization where large amounts of data must be absorbed quickly.

It is believed that the modern use of the phrase stems from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal Printers' Ink, promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars. The December 8, 1921 issue carries an ad entitled, "One Look is Worth A Thousand Words."

Another ad by Barnard appears in the March 10, 1927 issue with the phrase "One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words," where it is labelled a Chinese proverb. The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases quotes Barnard as saying he called it "a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously." Soon after, the proverb would become popularly attributed to Confucius.

Despite this modern origin of the popular phrase, the sentiment has been expressed by earlier writers. For example the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev wrote (in Fathers and Sons in 1862), "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."

Futhermore, Napoleon Bonaparte is known to have said, word for word, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Following the old saying:"A picture is worth a thousand words", Ben Tamari added, as a combination of metaphors and fractals: 'A metaphor is worth a thousand pictures' and 'An allegory is worth a thousand metaphors', see http://www.ecometry.biz/metaphors

Turbidity

REDEYE GRAVY



Chubb Rock featuring Howie Tee 'Caught Up' From: And The Winner Is... (Select, 1989) is the GOP's leitmotif.
Now You Tell Us... by Eric Alterman discusses the role of newspapers and blogs in exposing the Bush administration's firing of eight federal attorneys.


*Turbidity
*Redeye gravy - as a vegetarian gravy made from ham and coffee (which I love) is a rather nauseating hodgepodge slurry thusly less for food and more for repointing mortar joints in historic masonry.
*John Sherffius, Colorado, Boulder Daily Camera Visit archives of John's fine work. E-mail John. Visit an archive of the artist's most recent cartoons in the drop menu at the right. Click on the cartoon to e-mail it to a friend.