Talking To Ten People That Don't Know I'm Talking To Them

1. Yo, it’s extra gloomy outside today. Why you got on those sunglasses? Is the rain bouncing off the pavenment hurting your eyes?


2. My dude. It’s not a good idea to run up on someone at the gas station at 2:30 in the morning. You don’t know what I’m packing. Lucky for you , it was nothing. But that dude next to me looks like he got a glock. Stop begging.

3. I thought I told you about this before. Can you please stop tooting that thang up? It’s not a good thing to see, especially today when you are wearing a skirt. Cut it out.

4. Why are you speaking in Spanish, but switching to English for the curse words? You don’t know how to be vulgar en Espanol?

5. I can find a lot of things to be upset about with us changing managers, but moving your stuff is NOT really that big of a deal. If you are outraged about everything, then when you need to be outraged, no one will take you seriously.

6. #$*$* #*#*$(# $*#&#* (*@&^&$ *#*#$&*^#$9 - STUPID MOTHER TRUCKER!!! STOP RUNNING ME OFF THE ROAD!!!!

7. Yeah, let me tell you a little something about me. You aren’t going to make me do something that I don’t want to do. You can save your breath on that one. You’ll only end up frustrated.

8. I’m glad you think it’s funny… we’ll see how funny it is when the shoe is on the other foot. I.WILL.NOT.LOSE!!! It’s insulting that you think that just because you are a pushover, I’m going to be one too.

9. Hey, you… Ms. Control Freak… calm that down. You don’t run everything. You may have some pull, but you aren’t going to control whether or not I have napkins in my desk. Get back in your lane.

10. Dude, what is that on your face? Is that blood? Why you have a bloody nose? What are you like 7? Get it together Rashan (Yep, I talk to myself sometimes too.)

Thursday Thirteen: Things I Used To Do As A Teenager

A followup to last week's post: These are things I did when I was growing up in Savannah.

1. Play Nerf basketball in my grandma’s hot garage – It would get to be like 100 degrees in the summer, and seemed even hotter in the garage, but that was my escape from the rest of the house. I would emerge sweaty and disgusting and then go do the next thing on this list.


2. Take hourlong showers - Again, I had no privacy in the house, so I spent as much time as possible in the shower. My grandma had the gangsta water heater. It never got cold. I would lay down and go to sleep in there. I still do that sometimes when I have a headache, but my water heater doesn’t let me stay in there nearly as long as I used to.

3. Play with a stop watch – I had this watch that had a digital stopwatch on it. I was obsessed with stopping it on the zeros… you know. Like 12.00 seconds, as opposed to 12.34 seconds. I could do that for hours.

4. Cut my grandma’s grass – My job was to mow the lawn, and I hated it. The front wasn’t that bad, but by the time I got to the backyard, I was so hot and dirty that I usually did a half job. I also was lazy and only picked up the pine cones when someone made me. And raking the pinestraw up? That’ll be a no.

5. Writhe in pain from migraines – Around age 14, I started getting migraines. I thought I had a tumor or something. They tried everything to make me better. I had a bunch of different medications I was supposed to take when I got a migraine. Then they put me on something that I had to take every day to prevent them. I got shots, they even tried this new age sounding thing called Biofeedback. It was basically calming sounds like the ocean, or nature that were supposed to put the pain out of my mind. I actually felt like they were trying to hypnotize me, and it rarely worked. My only solution was to go to sleep with a pillow over my head and hope I woke up okay. Luckily, I grew out of it, as long as I avoid caffeine.

6. Play football with the boys – That used to be the highlight of my weekend. We would go on campus and play on this big grass field behind the school. I couldn’t tackle, but I was also really hard to tackle.

7. Listen to rap music with headphones – Yeah, at first I could listen without headphones. Then people started cursing all the time, and that wouldn’t fly in that Christian household. Or with my great grandmother, grandmother and mother in the house. So I took my little walkman headphones and plugged them in my boom box. Every 6 months I would upgrade to better earphones. By the time I graduated high school, I had these huge Sony DJ earphones, that I loved and made everything sound crisp like it was live.

8. Sleep anywhere but a bed – I alluded to the fact that I had no privacy. That’s because we lived with my grandma in a 3 bedroom house and there were 6 of us. My great grandma got one room, my grandma got one room, and my mom (and little brother for awhile) had the other. That meant me and my sister had to get in where we fit in. I had the family room for awhile, then switched to the living room. I slept on a cot, a sofa bed, a couch, or the floor. I did this from age 11 until 22. This is probably why I don’t sleep in my bed now, and a couch is just as comfortable to me.

9. Hide from my grandma’s prayer meetings – Imagine the scene… Summer vacation, Monday morning, you are sleeping on the couch. You smell coffee and cinnamon rolls in the kitchen. Sounds like a good way to wake up, right? WRONG. That meant that it was time to gather your crap, fold up your bedding and run to the back of the house before a gaggle of little old ladies started rubbing oil on you, praying in tongues and making small talk about “how big you have gotten.” I used to hide out until it was over, but if I needed water or something, I got sucked in.

10. Watch TBS movies at 1:05 – Remember when TBS used to have that crazy schedule that started all their shows 5 minutes after the hour? During the summer, I used to watch all the C level movies that they showed in the afternoon. Things like “Escape From The Bermuda Triangle.” “Revenge of the Ant People” or my personal favorite “Day of the Triffids” about plants that came to life and killed people. There was also one about giant rabbits killing people, but I can’t remember the title.

11. Stay up all night/Eat once a day – Age 14 or 15 is when I started this horrible path that I’ve been on ever since. I had a dream about someone getting killed that came true the next day, so I stopped sleeping for awhile. Since then, my natural night owl tendencies were amplified, and haven’t slept normally since. And somehow I stopped eating lunch at school, and my mom stopped making me eat breakfast before school, so I started just eating once a day. I haven’t been able to break out of that habit yet, much to Jameil’s dismay.

12. Study my history – Rashan X was in full effect. After reading Malcolm X’s autobiography, and then watching “Eyes on the Prize”, my eyes were opened. I wanted to know everything about the Civil Rights struggle. And what was still being done to improve the Black condition (Black with a capital B is one of the things that I got from my teenage years. I know it’s supposed to be lowercase, but not in my mind.) I learned all about Marcus Garvey, H Rap Brown, etc, and about Africa, and African religions. I just had an insatiable lust for learning about the subject. I NEVER studied for school, but for myself, I immersed myself into Black issues.

13. Watch scrambled PopcORN - If you are slow, take out the lower case “opc” and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Really no need to elaborate on this one. I may seem like a nice guy, but I’m still a guy. And I did all the same things that healthy redblooded American young boys did at that age.

Using Quotations To Say I Don't Like Quotations

“I do not like quotations.” – Rashan Jamal Weldon 2010

For real, I really don’t. With very few exceptions, I’m not inspired by someone’s words that I’ve never met. Or in some cases, I never even heard of. What makes you qualified to be quoted? What makes me want to follow your words of wisdom? For all I know you owned slaves, or beat your wife, or I don’t know, didn’t pay your taxes. Maybe you are a ruthless business man who spouts these so called inspirational phrases to make your employees give up their personal lives. Maybe you like to kick small animals and steal lollipops from little children in your spare time. Maybe, you eat the last piece of chicken and put the orange juice back in the fridge with just a swallow. Maybe you don’t hold the elevator when you see people coming. Maybe, you just plain don’t wash your butt. How I look being inspired by a foul smelling, unclean slave owner???

Nah, but for real, you can get a quote for any occasion. In the history of the world, pretty much anything you can think of has already been thought and said. No idea is completely original. Just because someone else said what you needed to hear doesn’t make it especially poignant, it just makes it a coincidence. And most of the time, it’s common sense. Like that Rev Run and his “wise” tweets. That’s a whole ‘nother post. That dude says the most simplistic things and people eat up like he’s Martin Luther King or something. My face is scrunching up just thinking about it. His “simple words just don’t move me.” – Mobb Deep 1995

As much as I quote hip hop lyrics, you may think that I would like quotations. You would be wrong. I like the way they sound. I’m not advocating that others follow them as life lessons. And I’m sure not taking anything from it other than good music. I was listening to Ice Cube earlier today. He has a line that says “Don’t mess with a chick from the projects.” Maybe I like project chicks, maybe I like hood rat chicks.. One that don’t give a ….and say she take da… Wait, that’s another quote.- Big Tymers 2000 The point being I’m not going to live my life by someone else’s words. You know, unless it’s Jesus. And I’m still working on that.

It’s probably just me being different again, but I could care less what other people have to say about life. My biggest problem is that SOME of the people that post these quotes, are the exact opposite of what they advocate. For instance, someone at work has a quote that says ‘ if better is possible, good is not enough.’ Cool, but she’s mediocre at her job. Another one has the Emerson quote “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”. Word, then why are you so lethargic and sullen all the time. I know I sound like a hater, and “I’ll be dat” – Redman 1998, but “It is what it is” - Some guy that likes pissing people off by using that phrase. LOL

Thursday Thirteen: Things I Used To Do As A Kid

 These are things I used to do when I a kid. These are from before I moved to Savannah at age 11.

1. Drink Strawberry Milk - That was my fav drink ever. I used to guzzle that like it was nobody's business. This one time, however, my mom had some liquid dish detergent in a cup (I think she borrowed it from our neighbor.) I made a cup of strawberry milk, left the room for some reason, then came back and picked up the wrong glass. Yep, I drank the dish detergent. I still remember the nasty aftertaste in my mouth.

2. Fight with my sister - We've been cool for like 20 yrs, but she used to terrorize me. Once she hit me in the head with a can of soup. Other times she would randomly hit me or unplug the Atari when I was playing. The worst thing she did though was rip my "Whodini" poster of the wall and rip it in half just to be evil. I was so mad..

3. Be a DJ - My father was a DJ and it ran in the family. He would let me pick the records when I was like 4 or 5. I remember I sent an 8-Track to my grandparents that was in my grandma's garage as recently as 2000. Don't know where it is now. I wrote a post about one party I did with my pops.

4. Flip baseball cards - Me and my friends used to collect baseball cards. A quarter would get a pack of cards and some nasty bubble gum. We played a game called flipping. It was basically a way to gamble. I can't remember all the rules, but it has something to do with matching the colors of the team logos. Whoever won got to keep all the cards. I'm sure I lost many valuable cards playing this game, but it doesn't really matter since I don't know where any of the ones I won are anymore. I'm sure they were lost when I moved to Savannah.

5. Play Atari - I had tons of Atari games and I was a master in all of them, at least that's how I remember it. I can't even pick my favorite games, but if I had to I would say "River Raid", "Baseball" and "Pitfall." Looking back the graphics were terrible, but mind-blowing to me back in the day.

6. Play "Baseball" - Even though I had tons of friends, one of my favorite games was a solo game of baseball. I would bounce a tennis ball of the steps of my apartment and depending how far it went, it would be a single, double or triple. If it went into the street, that was a home run. I also played defense against myself, so if I caught the ball it was an out. What a strange little kid I was.

7. Watch Purple Rain, The Terminator and Police Academy - Those were the only 3 movies we had for our VCR. This was back when I was still young and none of those movies were really age appropriate, but I still watched them all the time.

8a. Get up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons - No matter how late I stayed up the previous night, I had to get up to watch my toons. Even though I watched them all week, the Saturday ones were better to me. I remember Turbo Teen and Mr T were some of my favorites, but I also like the Looney Toons that came on at 11.

8b. Stay up late Friday nights to watch TV - I had to watch Knight Rider, Remington Steele and Miami Vice, then I would stay up til midnight to watch the video show "Hot Traxx." It was the only show that played black videos at the time. Rebbie Jackson's "Centipede" and Stephanie Mills "Medicine" used to give me nightmares.

9. Crush on Ana - My mom was a teacher for troubled kids when I was young. When I was let's say 10 or 11, she brought Ana home. Ana was like 14, and the first girl that I noticed in that way. I never said anything about my crush, but for however long she stayed with us (a couple months I think) I was in luv (l-u-v, not love.)

10. Hang out with my Big Brother - After my mom and dad separated, she enrolled me in Big Brothers to give me a positive mail influence. He was pretty cool at first, until he started dating my sister's Big Sister and forgot all about me. At least that's how I remember it. But for awhile, he used to take me to arcades and stuff. Thanks white liberal guilt for the free video games.

11. Be outside all the time - If me and my crew weren't playing sports, we were riding our bikes all over creation. During the summer, it was nothing for us to be outside from the time we woke up, til the street light came up, only pausing long enough to eat lunch, and play a quick game of Atari.

12. Go to the store for my father - My father was my hero, so if he wanted me to do anything for him, it was done. He would give me money, and I would go to the store to get his cigarettes and cough drops. He ate Halls cough drops like candy. (I found out later that was a cocaine thing to keep the sinuses clear, but at the time I had no idea.) He would let me buy my own candy with the change.

13. Read voraciously - I read everything I could get my hands on. If I wasn't outside playing, I was reading. I remember always being a few grades above my grade level. My favorites were the Encyclopedia Brown books and the Choose Your Own Adventure series, but I read everything. I definitely took advantage of the libraries. It's a shame that I don't read anything now that's not on a computer screen and the only novels I take part in now are audio books.

Monday Mindspacing

I caught a portion of "Freaknik: The Musical" on Adult Swim the other day. A lot of people have been offended by that show. I too was offended. Not by the content, but by the shoddy animation. Seriously, it looks like they hired a couple of third graders and told them to draw their nightmares. It was pretty pathetic.



I used to think that I was a pretty jerky person, and in a sense I am. In fact, I'm known for saying crazy stuff to people's face. But my level of jerkiness is nothing compared to people on Twitter. They take things from jerky, to just plain negative. It almost seems like they don't like anybody or anything.

Speaking of Twitter, I think I don't like the social part of it. I don't want to have conversations with a bunch of strangers. I much rather would just read and never say anything. I guess it makes sense since I'm anti social in real life, I should be anti social online. I'm afraid that if I ever typed what I was thinking about someone's tweets, I would cause twitter beef. A lot of people say stupid stuff, and I feel it to be my duty to tell them it was stupid. Probably best I keep my mouth shut.For example, I saw someone attribute the following quote to Steve Harvey: "Faith without works is dead." Excuse me, that ain't Mr Hightower, that was the Bible.

I'm ready for the NCAA basketball tournament. Go Syracuse! I'm looking for a pool to participate in. I'll do it for fun, but I got 5 on it if I can find one.

I got this DVD of a British TV show called "Worst Week Of My Life" from Netflix on Saturday. I usually like British comedy. It was 7 episodes. After the first one, I knew I didn't want to continue watching, but I couldn't bring myself to stop watching. Jameil was amazed that I spent 3.5 hours watching something I didn't like. I know it doesn't make sense, but I felt like once I started I was obligated to finish. I should've listened to her and to my own instinct. It was pretty stupid.

I need some new jeans, and some new casual shoes. Not sure why I didn't go do that this weekend, but I didn't. Maybe if I talk about it long enough, Jameil will do it for me.

The thing about cleaning up, is that I'll get struck with the idea to do it, but then want to stop almost immediately. Sunday, I used this steam cleaner thing I took from my mom's house about a year ago. It worked really good, but by the time I finished that, I was no longer in the mood to finish. I finally managed to go clean up the kitchen like 3 hours later.

Whilst cleaning, I almost killed myself. I have this giant Foreman grill thing that I haven't used in a long time. I decided to clean it today. So, I'm running the water over the inside, when I suddenly realize that it was still plugged in. Luckily, I didn't get shocked or anything, but that would have been an embarrassing way to kick the bucket.

My job decided that they were going to shake things up and switch all the managers around. I'm am mad nervous that I'm going to get one manager in particular. I got beef with her. She may not know it, but I really can't stand her or what she stands for. I also hate her voice, her demeanor, her tone... you get the point. I find out this week if it's going to be her, and I'll do my best to maintain, but I really think if she tries to talk to me, like she talks to her current team, we gonna have a problem... CUE R KELLY AND RON ISLEY: "Girl I'm bout to have a fit...oh it's about to be some ish" (Contagious)

I've had the hiccups entirely too often over the last two weeks. What the heck is that about? Jameil likes to ask me if I'm drunk when I have the hiccups, as if I was this cartoon character. 



I really need to do something with my Wii. Like get a new game, or sell it for drug money. It don't make no sense that I've played it like 3 times since I got it.

I think I'm going to go back to daily blogging, but this time it's only for me and it is not an open competition. Not a subliminal competition... No competition at all. You hear that, Jameil. Just b/c I'm doing it doesn't mean you have to do it too. This is NOT a challenge. It's just that if I stop, I lose all will to come back to blogging, so I'm going to push myself. Don't know when this is starting though.

And I'm Back...

How crazy is it that I posted everyday for 4 months, then I take a week and a half break? Well, I decided to stop, then I went on vacation. I’ve been in Gainesville with Jameil for the past week. I could have posted, but I just wasn’t in the mood when I had the opportunity to. At first I was going to go back to it, but Jameil was using the computer when I felt like it. Or when I did use the computer, I wasn’t in the right state of mind to compose a post. So, I took a bit of an internet break. I still read facebook, but I haven’t really interacted. I didn’t really read blogs too much and I sure didn’t comment on any. But now I’m back.

So let’s recap the last week and two days…

Went to get my oil changed and wound up having to get an oil leak fixed. Sucked, but for some reason, my car seems to be running a lot better. Probably a placebo effect, but I’ll take it.

Tried some new restaurants in Gainesville with Jameil with mixed results. I also realized that if you are a vegetarian, Gainesville is the spot for you. They are so veggie friendly. Tofu and Tempeh is on a bunch of restaurant’s menus.

Went to an Oscar Party with Jameil’s classmates. Was supposed to be black tie, but mine was purplish. I don’t like award shows at all and I hadn’t seen most of the nominated movies, so I didn’t really care, but it was still cool. Felt crazy every time they showed Precious or The Blindside. It was all in my head, but I felt like I had to be the resident black person in the room. For the record, I hate the whole concept of white people saving black people in movies, so I’ll never see The Blindside. You can tell me it’s a great movie, I’ll never watch it.

Went antiquing and to a Butterfly Museum. That's not gay by the way. I was with my woman. LOL

Ummm… some other stuff happened too I guess, but I need to go back to work now. Pictures later hopefully. I’ll check out all your blogs when I get off tonight. Have a good one!

Taking a Day Off

Lest you think I didn't post b/c I didn't want to, check the timestamp. 12:01 AM. This post was written before the deadline, but I decided to stop blogging so Jameil can concentrate on finishing her film instead of blogging. I know what you are thinking... why didn't I stop a month ago? Well, I was hoping that Jameil would stop being so doggone competetive and let one go. Obviously, that isn't going to happen, so I decided to stop at the 4 month mark. The clincher came this weekend, when I saw that Jameil already had 3 posts for this week completed. It was just going to keep going and going. And sure I could have been the stubborn one (like I was for the last 4 months) but on the way home from work something told me to just stop. Now, I realize that I'll probably have to hear about yet another competition that I lost, but in my heart I didn't actually lose. I set out to blog everyday for a month and went for 4. That's good enough for me. By the way, it's killing me not to post this before the midnight deadline, but I have to fight my urges and let this go or we'll be posting everyday until she graduates in May. Congratulate Jameil on being the more obstinate of the two of us. LOL ! Aretha, Saturday's post does count. There is no rule about what you post, just that you do post, so there. I could have posted an exclamation mark and it would have counted.

I'm a good boyfriend... just wait til you see what else I did for Jameil this weekend. She'll post that on Wednesday. Okay, talk to y'all later. And remember I didn't lose...I voluntarily stopped for love.