Hope y'all have been well. Still hard at work with my writing projects -- given that the longer one was primarily and obviously based on my personal experiences, I've decided to turn it into an avowed memoir. That means that (for the most part), the science fiction elements and mythological backstories are out, but there should still be room for social commentary (a la the discussion below, but peppered with my own experiences) and a bit of humor. As much humor as can be in the life story of a suicidal wackjob constantly plotting his own demise, anyway. 7K words so far and counting.

Posted the first Hot Flash in a while over on Scary-Crayon, too, so check that out if you find my drawings and comments to be amusing and don't mind minor Silent Hill spoilers, since that's the subject of the latest comic. See the attendant entry in the SC blog for my assessment of the film.

On another note, I was looking for an article/transcript from an interview with James Earl Jones that one of my commenters referenced and came across the following film quote:

But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.

That was from Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, released in 1967: and while I go even farther than that -- I think of myself as Wes, id est, myself -- I want to know what the hell happened to that progressive mentality. I listened to Cornel West's annual sermon at Howard University this morning, and while he made a few good points and employed a number of humorous analogies, I couldn't help but notice that throughout the speech he constantly and consistently referred to people with respect to the color of their skin -- except he was hardly employing the term in a purely descriptive fashion. He lavished praise upon Tavis Smiley's new book, The Covenant with Black America, but given that it obviously continues to regard individuals as being "black people" first and foremost -- or at least fails to address the issue at all -- I am convinced that its effect on the nation, if it has any lasting effect, will be decidedly negative.

In the midst of one supposedly racially motivated controversy, I once wrote to the president of the Concerned Black Students at Yale group and asked if they might better serve their aims by encouraging all students to get involved in these issues. I questioned whether a group called Concerned Students at Yale, with the right kind of direction, might have more success. She wrote back that the organization was so named because its intent was to explicitly exclude students who were not part of what she called "the Black Family." She described the actions of the group as being a "for us by us" movement. But if that's how these people think, why should anyone else care? How does that mentality encourage progress? As long as the concept of racial separatism -- which, arguably, necessarily attends the concept of race -- is championed, there will be no progress in this country.

So I want to know why so many supposedly smart and educated people are unable to grasp the simple concept that the color of one's skin should not define one's behavior, interests, or causes. If the problems in our society are to be solved, it will not be because of appeals to racial brotherhood and unity, but because all people recognize that something is wrong and needs to change. I am sick of hearing community leaders preface their speeches by stating what "we as black people" should do. I have no doubt that Smiley's book will be touted as being a book that no black home should be without, but how about it being a book that every person committed to social justice should read? Why not make an appeal to persons with compassion for their fellows and an interest in improving the nation across the board? Perhaps, like Hitler, these people feel that the concept of race is a far more powerful tool for promoting unity: but the Nazi regime didn't exactly do away with racism, did it?

I was looking for a statement that I actually think came from President Bush -- something to the effect that there shouldn't be a black or white America, just America -- but I couldn't find it. When I keyed "there should not be a black america" into Google, I didn't get a single hit. So let this be the first. People should not define themselves and others with respect to the color of their skin, nor should they let themselves be so defined, nor should they privilege shared skin color over personal interests, beliefs, etc., when grouping themselves. There should not be a black America. And while I recognize that to some extent the heavy concentrations of so-called minorities in inner-city environments encourages that mentality, the abolition of these ideological racial divisions doesn't even appear to be an intended goal of these so-called activists' progressive plans. It should be.

Hopefully that'll tide y'all over until my next post. Ja ne!

Those of you used to chatting with me on AIM may have noticed that I haven't been around too much lately. That is because I'd kind of gotten used to using the laptop as my primary computing device, and then I discovered... a stuck/dead pixel. Actually, there may be several of them in the same vicinity, but one is darker than the others and really really bugs me. Could it always have been there? I don't know, but now that I've noticed it I can't take my bloody eyes off of it. Hell, it's basically rendered the rightmost 150 pixels of my monitor useless, since I'm running all of my program windows dragged that much to the left to avoid making it show up on white backgrounds. I hate it. But as far as I've been able to discern, there's nothing that can be done about it. So I haven't been using the laptop much and have only been using the desktop for work (not much these days) and to check e-mail. It kinda sucks -- this thing cost $4K and I can hardly stand to use it now. What a waste.

Anyway, since my laptop looks almost exactly like Foamy's laptop and is (also) a Dell, I found the latest Ill Will Press cartoon (Tech-Support III) to be especially relevant (and fairly humorous, especially given that I have had similarly infuriating experiences with outsourced Dell tech support since getting the laptop). Unfortunately, the creator isn't taking e-mails so I can't ask him if Dell actually gave him a working solution.

Don't buy a Dell.

Couldn't let the month go by without commenting at length on the subject, could we? Actually, I'd very much intended to, but then I happened to catch the latter half of this "That's So Raven" episode. If you get around to reading it, lemme know what you think of the article. Later!

Been a while since I wrote something of a more substantial nature.

I'd heard that people were anticipating LA riots following the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams III, and in thinking about some of the folks I know in California, it popped into my head to see if anything had happened. Upon finding an article that addressed my concern -- it was all quiet on the Western front -- I went on to read the numerous comments that readers had posted regarding this turn of events. And I haven't been this disgusted in a long time. Which is saying something, since I find myself thoroughly disgusted on a daily basis.

Now, I don't go in for the death penalty. Even if a person has done unspeakable things, once that person is caught and incarcerated, that person can do no further damage. Killing the convict neither serves to protect society -- if they're that worried about the person doing further damage, they should probably beef up the prison security -- and numerous studies have shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent for violent crime. In the thread attached to that article, posters gloated over the execution, condemning the deceased as a "merderous thug" (so either they can't spell or were referring to the French word for crap) and asserting that now young would-be gang members will look at the fatal consequences and be frightened away from that path. But look: if the threat of being beaten, stabbed, or shot to death by rival gang members isn't enough to dissuade them, why should the death of an apparently repentant man, 25 years later, by lethal injection, have any effect on their mindsets whatsoever?

Yes, I do think it was a glaring flaw on Tookie's part to claim innocence for the murders -- unless he actually didn't commit them. I think he probably did. However, when the state executed him, it didn't kill a violent, 28-year-old multiple murderer. It killed a harmless 51-year-old author of children's books that spoke out against gangs. Tookie never claimed that he didn't co-found the Crips, and during his time in prison he renounced his former activities and wrote books to dissuade others from following in his footsteps. I'm not saying that's tantamount to achieving "redemption" or atoning for murdering four people and starting a gang that's been responsible for the deaths of thousands. But the impact that he might have had in the future does constitute a compelling reason to spare his life.

Was Tookie genuinely sorry? There's no way to know. However, one in his position only needs to appear sincere to make an impact. Had Tookie been spared, the media buzz surrounding the case might have helped to spread his anti-gang message to a number of different people who wouldn't otherwise have been reached. Maybe that'll still happen. Maybe it never would have, given the fickle nature of the media. Maybe Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should realize that they do their causes no favors by getting involved.

Maybe people who claim to have such respect for life shouldn't derive such satisfaction from the deaths of others.

"When dealing with other people, one should temper everything one says and does so as not to risk making them even the slightest bit angry -- because if one does, those others may be moved to retaliate by contacting the authorities and tell unbelievably vicious lies in order to ruin one's life and damage one's reputation beyond repair."

This is not a belief that anyone should hold, nor should an individual's experiences consistently force this thought into one's consciousness. Yet because I have been blamed for every instance in which I have been made to suffer these attacks, it is a code by which I am obviously expected to live.

And the very same people who condemn me criticize me for being "antisocial" -- as if, knowing what I know and having experienced what I have experienced -- entering into healthy relationships with other people is even a remote possibility.