Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Sitting On My Porch - Part II

I have been trying to think what to write about the last few days. I have read about 100 blog posts trying to be inspired. I’ll share those later. I had something in mind when I got home but that all went out the window. While I was in my bedroom getting my clothes ready for work tomorrow the phone rang. I was alerted that a car was slowly making it’s way up the street headed for our Nissan. Some kids jumped out of it while it was running when the police got behind them and the car kept rolling. If it wasn’t for the work of the good police officer that was able to slow it down it could have been a catastrophe. Thankfully it wasn’t wrecked. Have you ever tried to console a person when there car gets wrecked and it wasn’t their fault? It would have been a long night. While I was out there looking around to make sure the guys weren’t hiding in the back of my truck, the sight of that stolen car made me think about my dad. I thought about the night of my grandpa’s 88th birthday party when my jeep got stolen and me and my dad turned into the black Starsky and Hutch to go find it. How much street cred do you get for tracking down your own stolen car? If you have never drove through the Lower Ninth Ward after midnight with your daddy hunting down car thieves, you have missed something in life.

If anyone out there wants to see an example of friendship and the positive side of black men at it’s best I advise you to find out when Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel is coming on HBO again and check out the story on Ron Springs and Everson Walls. Any guy regardless of race who has a friend that they truly love should watch this story. If you want to see the worst in men watch I Love New York.

I heard on the Tom Joyner show this morning that there was a study done that showed black men’s wages over the last 30 years have went down and that our women are doing far better than we are. While I don’t dispute the accuracy of this report, I do have some questions.

How do these studies keep getting funded? Is there a bill signed into law that keeps money flowing in order to find more information to lower my self esteem?

Are they counting all the brothers that cut hair, make tattoos and cut grass? I know a cat who makes 100,000 a year doing piercing in his FEMA trailer. We might be able to close the gap with his information.

When sisters hear stuff like this does it make them feel good? If that’s true, shouldn’t they feel bad about feeling good ? We are proof divide and conquer works.

I have been hearing reports like this since I was a little boy that told me how I wasn’t going to live long, be healthy, have money or take care of my kids. Let this be an example of why when you meet most successful black men they are egotistical and arrogant assholes. They have to be to get through all of the low expectations society has for them.

I would like to ask the asshole that feels free to come to my desk and take stuff to use when I go home to at least have the decency to put everything back the way it was. I turned my fan on this morning and papers flew everywhere because someone took it, turned it on oscillating at their desk and then put it back on mine without changing it back. This is what happens when you don’t show your ignorant side at work and people get too comfortable. Tomorrow I am going to dumb my paper shredder bag all over the kitchen table if the person who keeps using it doesn’t change it.

I want to send a shot out to G and say sorry for missing the book signing. I was on vacation learning that it’s not a good idea to grow a Suge Knight beard when taking kids to a theme park. It just attracts strange attention especially when you dancing with little girls and singing the Winnie the Pooh song. I also learned I’m about 20 lbs away from the rollercoaster bars not fitting on me. I am going get the book this weekend.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

" I also learned I’m about 20 lbs away from the rollercoaster bars not fitting on me." -- and that's a nasty feeling.

Another Conflict Theorist said...

Peace Cliff,

Fuggin' hilarious! Funny thing, I wrote another freestyle today also and I also mentioned that study. These studies become more and more obvious and/or ridiculous each year. Next they'll release one that finds that women with larger breasts tend to go on more dates. Pointless.

Leigh C. said...

My ex-boss, on seeing that her truck was stolen, immediately took some of her tenants and traveled the whole city until she found the truck up on blocks outside the C.J. Peete houses not far from her house. Anybody who goes out and does their own police work oughta be deputized immediately.

As for those damned studies, I think of the phrase "ignorance is bliss" and I then KNOW that whoever coined it must have been barraged by waaaay too many of those kinds of stats. It almost makes you want to stay in bed permanently, but then I think of how great it would be to bust a bell curve somewhere and blow somebody's numbers all to hell.

But that's just me.

mominem said...

The studies you criticize generally neglect the black and grey markets, which charactize much of the small scale service economy in New Orleans.

Does anyone really believe the guy I pay to cut my grass reports his Income?

Do any of the drug dealers report theirs?

Anonymous said...

Black and white men have lost ground salary-wise and that makes it look like women have gained some ground. OK, a little but in the scheme of things, it'll still be 50+ years before women's real wages catch up to men's and that may be just from men losing ground thanks to the erosion of working-class/manufacturing/union jobs that used to support a family and send a kid or 2 to college. Thank capitalism.