Get on the good foot...

In honor of the eve of New Year's Eve, and with all the crappy crap that sucks, I'll take a page out of the James Brown Bible NIV: I Got You (I Feel Good) Chapter 1 Verse 2,

"I feel nice, like sugar and spice I feel nice, like sugar and spice So nice, so nice, I got you."

Okay really I still ain't got nobody, and I don't feel that got dayum nice (especially with no liquor in my system), but well it's all about optimism! And what better place to start feeling optimistic than at the start of a new year. It's the time of year when you metaphorically get to wipe your slate clean and start over.....(before you eventually fuck it up within the first few weeks, but hey it feels good for the time being!!)

So anyhow, I guess I'll share some of my resolutions with you...and see if they go uphill or downhill starting day after tomorrow.

Let's cross our fingers as I attempt these following things this year:

1. Begin a meaningful career.

• Being as how I've graduated a full 4 years ago, enough time has passed for me to have gone to school and completed a second Bachelors degree. Dandy. Yet within this time, the only time that I have actually used my degree was sort of in Japan when I taught English. (but truth be told, I didn't need my degree to excel at that job)
• And since I have allowed law firms to slowly suck the life out of me for rough 3 of those 4 years out of school, I refuse to go back!!!
• Lastly I'm a writer. I write. That's what I want to do. The degree says Creative Writing (and communications)...so dammit I'm gonna creatively write, and communicate...you hear me??

2. Apply to grad schools.

• Yeah, I have intentions of getting there, but I worry about my grades and recommendations, and my writing, and my personal statement, and hale, and Miami snow storms, and chupacabras, and everything, and nothing that has to do with the applying process.
• I'm a procrastinator and I need to just do it already.

3. Stop procrastinating.

• Yeah, this one's on my list every year. Here's hoping I don't fail on day 1.

4. Lose some poundage.

• This one's another old standard. I pretty much lost a lot of it in Japan, but I can stand to lose a few more.
• So this entails running or some sort of exercise, which I kinda loathe to do, but I've managed to do it before, I can do it again.

5. Engage myself in a successful relationship.

• This one is contingent on finding a dude that vibes with me as much as I vibe with him, and someone that I can view as my equal (and being a hottie with a brain, great conversation & sense of humor, and good skills in the sack won't hurt either...*wink*) Though it seems that a lot of guys my age aren't ready to settle down, or don't have their shit together, I can't assume that they're all that way. Something's gotta give.
• I've been single for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time. Yeah, single-SINGLE! Like, going on 3 years....tomorrow...kind of single...I kid you not. Like I said, something's gotta give!!

6. Keep this blog going.

• Yeah I get lazy. (see resolution #3) But I've been good so far.

7. See Maxwell in concert.

• Black Summer's Night besta be coming out SOON!

8. I don't know I'm trying to force this thing to ten, but I'm out of resolutions...and well, since 8's like an infinity if you turn it sideways, so let's just pretend that they go on forever and ever so I can make up some new ones as I see fit within the year!

How about y'all?? Of my dozens and dozens of readers...what resolutions do y'all have?

wah-wah-wah...

...feeling like Charlie Brown. Good grief.



I got a fricking speeding ticket today. Add it to the trash pile of bad luck for me lately. My streak is over.

I haven't had a speeding ticket since I was a junior in college, and that was off some foolishness too. I piled up my roomates (plus one) into my small, Nissan 200sx coupe. And the five of us were riding on down to the Walmart on Apalachee Parkway to suppliement our aparment on our meager college student means. And there was this car next to us looking like they wanted a race...and being as I had a sporty car, and the inability to resist a dare (much like Marty McFly), I revved up my engine........

.....and as I pulled past the sucker, this sucker was pulled over.

Damn po'-po's.

I wanna start a petition to round up all speeding ticket officers trying to make quota, and put them in a Ben Stein lectured traffic school room, for-EV-VUR....FOR-EV-UR....FOR-EV-VUR!!!

Who's with me???

In the 5th your ass goes down...

So goes my life in this moment.

I went from having "everything" to "nothing" (well, it's all relative, in more ways than one). My life in Japan, far different from my life now. If before, I said that I was entrenched in a quarterlife crises, then its current condition is critical and on life support.

And I need out.

I've always been self-reliant. Still am. But it seems that for me, life has to back me into a corner for me to move full steam forward. It's the procrastinator in me that requires that heart-pounding, bullet sweating, "oh-shit-am-I-gonna-fuck-up-or-pull-through" inertia. I thrive on it, usually, and I'm needing it now. I have these feeling of sinking, and though I need a floatie, I'd rather drown than become a charity case.

And even though Marcellus Wallace would tell me, "That's pride, fucking with ya. Fuck Pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps," in this case my pride is what'll pull me through.

It has to.

Chim Chiminey, Chim Chiminey, Chim, Chim Che-ree...

So at the club I roll with a moving, smoking chimney.

Yeah, while I was gone for almost a year and a half, my home team crew, picked up this black n' mild habbit. I'm neither pleased nor amused, but they're my friends, and I don't judge them (except when we're engaged in some hardcore clowning of each other).

You, see if it's one thing I hate, other than dudes ripping my arms out of their sockets the minute I get into the club, and dudes who wanna be your club boyfriend for the night because you danced with them for a song, that NEVER ONCE ask to buy you a drink (NO NEGRO you don't get to roll with me), it's coming home smelling like smoke.

But yeah, yeah...I know it's part of the territory. People smoke in clubs.

Question #1. Clubs : Smoke ::

a) Weed : Marijuana
b) Winn Dixie : Shoplift
c) Fucking : Your Parent's Room
d) dogs : cats
e) Fuck you : I don't do SAT analogy test questions anymore!

If you, picked any answer other than b) then you're not the dork that I am...(anyhoo, I digress).

Yeah, so as I was saying, my girls are now club smokers. What they've explained to me is that they get a buzz from the nicotine, and that it in fact enhances the buzz felt by the liquor. And while the thought of enhancing anything that feels good sounds appealing, the image that smoking (black n' milds, especially) portrays, is not.

I've become like this prissy "white girl" (<----hence my nickname amongst my crew) who can't just have fun, with the perpetual stankface because I can't breathe. And, it sort of feels like the classy crew that I roll with, has now been in fact TARnished by tobacco.

Anyhoo, they're my girls, and I'll just accept my chimney sweep position in the rank and file, and keep it moving. And as my boy Dick Van Dyke once sang:

"Though I'm covered with soot
From me 'ead to me toes
A sweep knows 'e's welcome
Wherever 'e goes."

What'chu readin' Palin??

Everything.

So hopefully that includes this blog right cheeeere! (But of course that's just wishful thinking...."wishful" in assuming anyone reads this.)

Actually, in having a conversation with one of my best friends yesterday I've come to a kind of sad realization....for me. With the exception of my professors, who got paid to do so, NOT ONE PERSON (family or friends) has ever read most of anything that I've written. I've heard them spout (brag??) to others about my "talent", and how great of a writer I am, but ask one to recall a story, a poem, a blog...they'd lose that final jeopardy question.

So says my girl (paraphrasing): "But you're so guarded, that maybe people don't want to seem like they're intruding. And you never know if they want to read, it if you don't ask them to read it."

And I say, yes that's true, but no I won't buy that with a food stamp card.

Chew on this pipe for a second: If a family member or friend was in a movie, would you not want to go see that movie? If they were painting a wall would you not want to steal a glance?? Hell, if they were in a 10 second clip on the news, would you not wait up for the 11 o'clock update?

And then answer me this: Would they have to ask you to do so?? My guess is maybe, but probably not.

I get it...reading is boring. It's difficult. It's the kind of art (yes ART), that doesn't come to you easily; in fact, it must be saught to be truly enjoyed. If it doesn't come with pictures, half the time, even I think twice about whether or not I want to bother. But it doesn't make it less important, or even less enjoyed.

So that's what makes gets me discouraged, when it comes to pursuing this career. It's not that I don't feel needed...Barnes & Nobles (for the time being) ain't going no where...it's that I don't feel WANTED.

Big difference...and maybe Sarah Palin, in trying to have been the first woman vp, knows a thing or two about that.

Guess who's back!?!

yawn...as if anyone cares...but well I do this for me I guess...

I've been "back" in more ways than one: Back in the states, back on the sceen, back to the wall with my gangsta lean....

Yeah, I'm back. And broke, and in need of finding some sort of employment. I left Japan, thinking things would be cake, but yet that was over a month ago, and I've only gotten ONE (Yesssir, count 'em O-N-E!) interview request. And I'm kinda like, "What the fux?" But then again, I'm trying to do this writing thing, and being as how no one's really read my shit (more on that later) I can't really expect them to be banging down my door, like groupie hoes backstage at a rap concert. Ya know?

But, I'm fully entrenched in a mini quarter-life crisis...having turned 25 (the Remix) and being 4 more years to 30, I'm more than aware that I have to get on the ball before I end up one of those people that are still confused about life when they hit that all important era of their lives.
(30 is the new 20 my eye!)

1) At thirty you ain't supposed to be allowed to sleep until 1:00 pm, just 'cause you're to tired to get up from a night of tequila shots, smoke-filled rooms, and grindin' up on men/women.

2) At thirty you can't be living up under your mama's roof, still working at Walmart, and only paying your car note, cell phone bill, and maybe the cable bill...y'know to "help out".

3) At thirty you can go off about your bid-naaz, without alerting the child(ren) you have that you're gonna get missin' for a few...

Frankly, there's shit you can get away with at 20-something, than at 30-something...by then you're just an irresponsible, fuck up beyond repair...as opposed to a plain ol' irresponsible fuck up who needs to get their shit together.

Granted, I'm not there...nor to I plan to ever fall into that former OR latter category, but the thought of that scares me. But I still have a few things on my side.

1) I already have my Bachelor's Degree.
2) I have no kids.
3) I have no family/relationship drama to deal with.
4) I'm cute....(right???) *wink*
5) I have goals and drive and talent.

That should put me where I need to be, me thinks so that in the next four years I'll be sittin' pretty, making that cheddar, and laugh about how scary and fun my 20s were.