a lil something for omni

As one of Oneonta's archrivals (our primary nemesis i believe may be appropriate) in the poetry slam scene, Omni likes to to talk alot of shit, example here- listen to omni rant....
He coached the New Paltz team (his alma mater, at least i think he graduated, and wasnt told to leave) to a victory in regionals over oneonta last week. This has of course been followed with much gloating and ridiculousness, including him 'going nuclear' on Oneonta, via some weird website (maybe thats the only way he can be certain to win every time...........)

we have always had a james bond/villain-esque relationship. mortal enemies, yet civil and resectful of each other. we can sit down for dinner together, comment on each others skill with flattery, and then try to throw the other one into a tank full of piranahhs. but in this instance, he appears to believe that he won regionals......... not four other fantastic poets who he 'coached', by most likely telling them how to rant like a homeless man with a carboard sign proclaiming the second coming of christ. and honestly, the last time i competed against omni, it looked something like the picture posted here.

Omni, i love you. i cover your poems more than anyone else in our collaborative, and not just beause they are whimsical rants that dont take much range to pull off.

and if anyone wants a good satirical commenting on todays society, i strongly recommend you read his blog.

Hip Hop and Academia- what the "fuck" pt 1: vocabulary an the quotation fetish

i have been reading a lot of academic writing on hip hop recently in order to help with my thesis. Since there is not such a sizeable body of literature on poetry slams and spoken word, i am turning to hip hop to look at how it is viewed and analyzed by academia, too see if i can find any parallels or major divisions betweeen slam and hip hop. The emphasis will be placed on the educational aspects of each, and how they can be utilized by teachers (or just mentors in general) as effective tools to engage students, whether this be for opening dialouge into racism, poverty, oppression, alienation, rebellion, history, and even poetry itself. What i have found so far in the hip hop literature is astounding to me.

As i read an article by Derek Pardue, i cringed. a lot. lets start by his choice of vocabulary, in refering to members of hip hop culture as "hip hoppers". seriously? now i know a lot of MC's personally, i've been listening to hip hop for better or worse for close to 20 years and this term has never been uttered as part of the ingroup lexicon that i know of. and i'm a language geek, i love new vocabulary and slang, so i probably would have noticed.

Most of the articles i am reading are written by anthropologists. Cultural anthropologists tend to name things within other cultures using an emic viewpoint; this simply means that the words, ideas and understandings are represented from that cultures point of view. There should not be invented names by observers for culture specific practices, ideas, and in group identifications. Yet here we are.

Secondly, there seems to be a fetish for "quotations" in the works i have read. Hip Hop tends to be on the front edge of cultural euphamisms and slang, things that are not highly accepted in an academic sense for writing. This results in the authors saying things like this:

.......organized themselves into groups called "posses". (Pardue 2004, p.414)

Hip Hoppers usually refer to all this as "b-boy" or "b-girl" activities ("B" refers to "Break", as break became the umbrella term to refer to all forms of street dance). (Pardue 2004, p.413)

and one of the most ridiculous ones from Pardue would have to be:

To change the system requires a kind of violence that disrupts, or, in common talk "revolutionizes" normal social relations. Hip-Hoppers articulate this sentiment by taking on individual or group names with "crime" or "violence". More commonly, rap groups and hip-hop cultural posses mark their "criminality" nominally in opposition or relation to "the system" (Pardue 2004, p. 417).

unfortunately, Pardue is not the only one caught up in this strange way of elucidating hip hop culture in a what comes across as a condescending paternality. "look at the cute way they pronouce words, awwwww". A book by Russell Potter titled Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism, has a great title and showed some promise. Until i read the table of contents. Chapter one is called "Gettin' Present as an Art: A Signifyin(g) Hipstory of Hip-hop". If i were to write an article about the Hopi tribe in the southwest U.S., and called it a brief Hopistory of the southwest, i would be laughed out of the department.

So now it seems this blog is going to become my sounding board for trying to figure out why this happens to hip hop when academics try to understand it. Also, could it be that anthropologists really misunderstand many cultures in this same way, and no one really notices beacuse those culture groups may not have representatives in the academic community? Stay tuned for part two... Hip Hop and Academia- what the "fuck" pt.2: Hip Hop and its 4 "elements", no wait 5, er 7, no its 9



In this Post:
-Pardue, Derek (2004). "Writing in the Margins": Brazilian Hip-Hop as an Educational Project. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 35(4):pp 411-432

-Potter, Russell (1995). Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Cynicism rules!

let no man speak for themselves
let no one stand up for what they believe in
sarcasm is what we need, not action!!!
as long as we are equipped with cyncism then no one can touch us!
while i'm typing this blog.....
im gonna smoke a bowl,
eat a ham sandwich,
smoke a cigarette,
and talk about how we need to save things....
you know, like dolphins, or the earth, or time...

i mean seriously, i only played video games for 4 hours today!
we need to have more time to do nothing.
to kill nazi's and fight virtual terrorists, or zombies!

And for those that dont know,
facebook makes us better people
my lil greenhouse alone produces enough oxygen
to supply us for years with delicious air..........
facebook is like the new bumper sticker.........
look at my activism!!!!
LOOK AT IT!!!!
while i sit here and comment on everyone's status
because my friends are so intriguing
that we all need to know if they are drinking coffee
or waiting for warmer weather.
or binge drinking.

now if youll excuse me, i have to get back to being
'big brother' to all my friends (and some who arent),
and being the emperor of a virtual world.

one of the best drugs in this entire floating blue spec of rock swirling around the milky way would have to be the first few days of nice weather after winter. it's a natural aphrodisiac, an airy bouyancy seems to fill the spirits of all the living creatures you would experience in your encounters outdoors. and you have to be outdoors. after getting cabin fever for a few months of bitter cold and nasty precipitation, how can you not want to run around outside? It's funny that both carmen and corin told me about (while celebrating) Imbole just days before i actually feel the effects of this pagan holiday. Its a celebration for the awakening of the earth from the slumber of winter, and its glorious. its something that should be celebrated.

i could never live in a place with no seasons. winters can suck, but that feeling of the first few weeks of spring is just so amazing that it makes the horrid weather bearable. every woman looks so much more attractive (whether its the less clothes and more skin thing is a possibility, but i'm not sure how much of a factor), the trees are starting to bud and bloom, and that electric energy of warmth really permeates everything. so i am going to stop typing here and go outside to celebrate. most likely with some herb and my dog and a frisbee (he rocks at frisbee). you should be doing the same (unless of course you are currently residing in a place where winters grip holds on just a little bit longer, but fret not, soon it's frigid fingers will relax and recede for a few months).

i'll walk you home

running marathons are no joke.

the true symbol of determination and strength

the ability to transcend past the point when the body says stop
and just keep moving.

but what happens when you reach the finish and collapse?
spent, sweating, aching, mentally letting go for a moment
unable to pick yourself up until there is rest

what if no one can give you a ride home at the end of the race?
and youre forced to drag yourself back to comfort
well i too have just finished one of these marathons........
and ill Walk With you as long as you need me to.

a brief word on evolution

as an anthropologist, even the cultural/linguistic variety i deal a lot with evolution and evolutionary theory. I recently saw somewhere that roughly half of the american population when asked, believed that the human race in modern form is only around 10,000 years old. solid evidence indicates that the americas were beginning to have human habitation at least 14,000 years ago. Modern humans have been around for at least 150,000 years- and that is a safe estimate.

       one thing that any biologist will tell you though is that its not that cut and dry. how we go about defining a species alone is incredibly complex, and heated debates still go on to this day. Just the science alone is a headache, and takes lots of effort to sort through. But this is not the only issue that arises. the things i have the hardest time with in evolutionary theory are very similar to the problems i have with organized religion. its not the concepts, or the data, or a refusal to believe, but being aware of individual biases and what certain goals are, and the shortcuts and underhanded manipulation of data to support oneself for personal gain. there was a find once in africa i believe, that was claimed to be a new type of early hominoid- the bone that was found was actually discovered to be a whale clavicle!!! personal attacks through academic papers are not uncommon, and in some instances the norm. Individual prestige and the quest to keep finding money in order to do research becomes so predominant that the actual science itself is placed in the background sometimes.

This of course happens everywhere. Joseph Smith, the founder of the mormon religion not only believed that Native Americans were a lost tribe of Israel, but him and many others (including archaeologists) actually planted tablets of hebrew writing in burial sites to be 'discovered' as evidence of their claims. 

i guess the lesson here is to go learn for yourself. Data does not tell us anything in its raw form. It is only through diligent observation, synthesizing many fields of research, understanding ones motivations and biases (or the researcher you are looking at, including me), and slowly building up interpretations that we can begin to piece things together. we also have to be ready accept and defend the truth we have today, but be prepared to call it falsehood tomorrow in light of new evidence (i believe that was a Clarence Darrow quote).

and go watch chimpanzees. they are funny. and as my roommate corin suggested, we should just label them another species of homo sapiens, thats how human they act sometimes.

How video games got me good grades and saved my life

     ok, so aside from the already pronounced literature on the advantages that video game players have over non-players have with regards to peripheral attention, deciphering complex visual cues, increased logic and problem solving abilites, as well as better hand to eye coordination (as documented by Green and Bavelier for example), there are other advantages. These conditions have directly benefited myself.

      i did well on a test last week on human prehistory (the times before written records), because of Sid Meir's Civilization series. i know much of the intuitive scientific progress of cultures, as well as specific cities in some sort of chronological order due to this game. Two questions on my quiz...... what is considered the first major city, and what is the largest settlement we know about in north america,  were both things i knew from the game (oh, and for the record... question 1- the sumerian city of Urok, and question 2- Cahokia, a settlement right here in southern illinois), and benefited my grade.

       Also,  the game Gran Tourismo, a very detailed driving game taught me how to drive rear wheel drive cars. my Jeep Wrangler was a rear wheel drive, and my first experience actually driving one. Anyone who has experienced this knows that how you handle sliding, and in general control the vehicle are markedly different between front and rear wheel drive. On a snowy mountain pass in Pennsylvania, i was in between a guardrail, which overlooked a very steep ravine, and a tractor trailer when i lost control of the jeep ( i know this could have been avoided if i was in 4-wheel drive at the time, but we are not dealing in hypotheticals here). I knew how to counter-turn the slide (which is the opposite way of handling a slide in a front wheel drive) because of this video game. i had used rear wheel drive in it, and for the life of me couldnt keep control of the car. When i finally figured it out, it was no real problem. I implemented this video game experience while driving and managed to control the slide safely in between the two obstacles that could have resulted in death (ask Joseph LMS, one of the possible fatalities had i not played video games).

so never knock video games people. they save lives and entertain. 

the Natoleon Effect

having lunch with a friend and photographer yesterday and discussing my poetry album, i had an epiphany (or she did i suppose, i just rode the thought process all the way through to the other end). The idea, title, and all that associated biz of the CD comes down to a phrase i would like to coin here..... the Natoleon Effect:

              A conscious effort to organize and intersect the creative and enlightened energies of a particular temporal-spatial location. With the end result being a greater center of concentrated artistic energy whose ripples are felt both in space and time long past the point of conception.

This is essentially the foundation of the slam fam, the intangibles, the just poets, MetaLingua Franca, and the other creative endeavors that i have tried to cultivate since my later undergraduate days. it may not have been conscious at first, but has now become so. So this is the idea behind my spoken word cd. meaning it wont be a lot of just me. because really, who wants to listen only to me? i usually dont most of the time.

This is how people starting buying pet rocks.....

so after years of wondering why in the hell people invest so much time in blogs, i will stop. The overwhelming cynicism that filled my cerebral cavity upon hearing 'yea, i wrote about that in my blog today' will be quelled and quieted now. Originally, i used to think, why the fuck would someone read your blog? To be honest i feel the same way about starting mine now. Sure i have a few friends that would delight about hearing my whimsical rants about daily nonsense sprinkled with the occasional gem of poetic displays (and i do mean occasional), but really? an online journal (i've never liked the word diary- one its too close in appearance to dairy (not that i have a problem with dairy, i love cheese), and two, it sounds like something a 12 year old school girl secretly writes about her crushes in until the asshole of her class finds it and spreads it around the school, crushing her already fragile hold on the goodwill and kindness of humanity) just seems to embody the dementia of this cultures current state........ mainly that we all want to be famous. like Chuck Pahalnuik said in fight club (the author of the book, yes i know brad pitt was great, but it was chucks writing)-- we are just starting to realize that the most of us will never be famous, and we're pretty pissed off about it (or something to that effect).
so here we all are trying to cling to something in the hopes that it lasts longer than we do. still indulging in that minuscule possibility that someone will read this and say 'wow, we need to give that person money to do this'. And then there is me. i embody these mentionings above as well, but i also succumbed to peer pressure from the all poets, writers, musicians, and artists i work with to have one. so like my title suggests, this is why people starting buying pet rocks. everyone else was, we (by 'we', i refer to 'I' in the present case) felt it was silly to do so, but still got conned into it, and then actually got into it.
so to the few people who actually will read this, couldnt you just go read some already established classic literature? i mean if you read this and didnt know that fight club was a book, i highly suggest you read that instead. or if you did know it was a book (insert back-patting here), go read the rest of his stuff, he is phenomenal. and if you really are that cool that you have read all his books, go read vonnegut, or nietzsche, lovecraft, kerouac, bowles- something that has substance. because this blog probably wont always succeed in that. if you do keep reading- thanks i suppose. i hope i can entertain and.... well lets just start there for now shall we?