Version 2.0

Culture, healing, politics and bullshit - Not necessarily in that order

The general, socio-political and very personal rantings and ravings of a hip hop head from the hood hustling for change... Of himself.

You all know me and are aware that I am unable to remain silent. At times to be silent is to lie. For silence can be interpreted as acquiescence.
—Miguel de Unamuno



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Friday, October 30, 2009

I'd Rather Have Waffles... Unless You're Waffling

Yesterday I had a series of meetings, a couple were during the day, the other one happened late evening and lasted well into the night.

Business opportunities, you know.

These gatherings were with folks I work with in an aspect that I as well as they are 1099 people. Interesting things come out of the mouths of self-employed folks. No one was arrogant or over the top with opinion, it's just amazing to hear from a contingent of people that are truly this country's backbone.

I must disclose that I met with two different types of folk from different cultural backgrounds.

One group was amazed with my learned-ness, and asked more questions than being in the position to give answers due to a particular belief and a series of conditioning. The other group was amazed in what came out of my mouth as well, but more than anything wanted to partner with me to tap into what they felt was a market or community untapped because of cultural conditioning.

One group repeated what the talking heads have been spouting off on TV and radio for most of the year regarding the shift, scope and 'look' of politics. The other group countered the spin by offering ideas as to why we are here now culturally.

I didn't bring a thing up politically (as most of you probably cannot believe). I was there to learn about a new venture I'm involving myself with and to teach what I had learned over the past year about some new stuff about to launch...

Leads me to ask you guys a question:

Where in the hell do you get your news?

I mean real news because corporate-owned cable network news doesn't count. All of that stuff regardless of where it comes from is listed as entertainment, a part of a prime time personality line up or as an opinionated radio talk format, and none of these folk are journalists. I find it funny that some people actually think that Keith, Glenn, Rush, Rachel, Sean, Bill, Ed, Anderson, Randi, Wolf, Stephanie, Rev Al, Warren and a host of others from either left or right of center actually report news when they continually preface their opinion by saying that they don't.

Because that ain't news.

You might learn something about what happened today but... That ain't the news kid. I don't watch them cats and kittens for news. I get my stuff from the source, and as of right now I ain't telling because I wanna know where you guys get yours from. A lot of opinion and action has been placed in what other people tell us. Most folks take personal opinion as the news of the day and take the spin and spin it some more.

That angers me because I met with two millionaires and a countless number of business owners yesterday. Their influence thru the products they sell based on their account of the news (from both groups I met with) scares the hell out of me.

You can put syrup on shit, but it doesn't make it pancakes...

1 comment:

Big Mark 243 said...

I repeat it in my journal (and this will be my last utterance of it, digitally or with the spoken word) about how Huey of the comic strip, 'The Boondocks' frames the news on television agaist the reality of what he percieves.

"I must not be watching the same news everyone else is."

Or something to that effect. Whatever you want to owe it to, we all have the ablility to find out on our own and fit what we learn from our experiences and surroundings, into a concept that makes sense to us. But it is so hard to for many to do that, because thinking for oneself is not encouraged on any level.

So you have people giving away that power to make their own decisions to others, who may or may not have our best interests at heart. Especially when all they want to do is make sure that an individual goal is attainable.

Gotta get mine ...

Besides, thinking of others as three dimesional images as opposed to the caricatures that has created a new industry, and as long as you can get away with selling blindfolds, people are going to be willing to manufacture them.