Why's everything that supposed to be bad, make me feel so good? Everything they told me not to, is exactly what I would!

I guess this is kind of a follow-up to my last blog entry, sort of a post script. I guess most people that read that entry came to the conclusion that I was getting all emotional and bitch-like. Let me clarify, I have a penis, I have never been pre-menstrual, they call me Rock because I'm hard, dunn!! (extra exclamation for extra hardness) If it came across like I have a fear of rejection (because I actually said that I do), that is a mistaken assumption. I don't fear rejection, I kind of fear letting people get to know me. Some people have called me sadistic (I like seeing people lose), immature (yeah, I'm a grown ass boy, so what?), ignorant at times (isn't that the definition of a nigga), discordant (my crew used to call ourselves the F.Y.F. Mafia, Fuck Your Feelings), and downright bastardly and assholish (thank you Sean). Some of my idiosyncrasies turn people off. So, for a while now, whenever I'm around new faces, I stay silent and a little withdrawn for fear that I might say something out of line. If you ask my friends and family, they will probably say that I have a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. And the more comfortable I get with a person, the more likely I am to say something abrasive or just a little hurtful, for example, here's a conversion between my boy, a female I was kicking it with and me (names changed to protect the innocent).

A commercial for Lexus is on the television.
The girl : I like that car, I want that one day.
My boy : Yo, Digz, when you become a rapper, you can cop that for her.
The girl : When you drop an album, are you gonna buy me a car?
Diggie : Shit, when I drop an album, I'm dropping you for Alicia Keys!

See, it's statements like that that have pushed people away from me (shockingly, that girl is still one of my best friends). Some people may think "oh, he's just joking", no son, I am brutally honest, I would've dropped her for Alicia Keys. If a fat girl asks me "Do these pants make my butt look big?", I would most likely respond "No, your fat ass makes your butt look big!". It's just my nature to say whatever comes to my mind, regardless of the consequences.



Even though my brother says "Snapping" (confrontational in any situation) is a family trait (must've skipped over my brother, he bottles things and I, I'm more into revenge and get back), I believe it's our unchained mouths. In my house it's a chance that you're going to get offended. From my grandmother to my niece, my family has a tendency to be brutally honest. Most times, we may be joking, but like most people say, it's funny because it's true. Seriously, my uncle's wife sometimes fears coming to the house, because it's guaranteed that somebodies going to say something a tad bit hateful. For example, here's a conversation between my uncle and I.

My brother is serving pork to people at a family BBQ. By the way, my uncle is a Muslim.
My uncle : Your grandmother shouldn't eat that pork.
Diggie : Why not? Come on man, the Quran is outdated!

Some of you may not find this offensive, but I disrespected the man's religion (kind of my religion too). It's statements like that that are heard all the time in my grandmother's house. From comments on family member's significant others to family members, nobody is safe. I guess this is one of the reasons that I don't really allow people to get that close to me. I thought about the other reason the other day, while watching a movie.

Last Friday morning, I finally watched "The Wackness", a film about a Jewish weed dealer in 1990's New York City. The film had me thinking, even though I share nothing in common with the protagonist (not being Jewish, a weed dealer, or a loser), I can relate to some of the underlying sub-plot. There's a certain portion of dialogue that really talked to me, a conversation between Josh Peck's (yes, from the Nickelodeon show "Drake & Josh) character "Luke Shapiro" and Olivia Thirlby's "Stephanie".

Stephanie : Know what your problem is, Shapiro? It's that you just have this really shitty way of looking at things, ya know? I don't have that problem. I just look at the dopeness. But you, it's like you just look at the wackness, ya know?

I got the statement that Stephanie was making, mostly because that's exactly how I view everything. I have got to be the biggest pessimist in the world. I mean, if you point a girl out to me, I'm automatically going to look for her flaws. If somebody tells me a song is good, I'm going to automatically look for the missteps. I listen to politicians and I can't help but think that they're plotting something. It's like I can't love anything until I find a reason to hate it. I guess, like the main character from the film, I just look at the wackness.



I lived most of my life in "the hood", where bad things happened on the regular. Maybe that is what makes me so pessimistic. Maybe, just living around Humans is what makes me pessimistic. It's like the more time goes on, the worst things get. It's kind of like that half empty glass keeps getting emptier. When you live around bad situations, good times are just times when you're waiting for the next shoe to drop. As I go through my mental Rolodex, I think of the friends I have and the ones I've lost. Every time I meet somebody that wants to be my friend, I start to think of why. What do they want from me? I believe, in general, people are opportunist, they will take advantage of any situation if it helps them reach their goal. I've thought about my friendships and relationships, and I've realized that I try to please people so much, I let them take advantage of me. Ever since I learned that fact, I've tried to make sure that people in my circle were really my people. The mission to analyze my friendships made me skeptical of new ones, that's probably why I haven't added anybody to my circle in the last couple years.

I don't know, maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I don't trust a soul on this or any other planet. I figure, if I don't want to be taken advantage of, I'd just avoid putting myself in the position to be. I do this especially in relationships, I've seen Suflan's (Pronunciation [soo-fleyn] noun an acronym - SUcker For Love Ass Nigga) with their hearts broken and crying and shit, and I don't really want to ever be in that position. Maybe I need to start letting people in more. I write my feelings and beliefs on this blog, yet I can't let actual people into my head. I need to express myself freely in the actual world as freely as I do on the Internet. I'm still growing and hopefully I will learn to trust myself and other people.

Remember the world is Diggie. Even the "Butterfly" told you this was a Diggie-ble Planet. I'm cool like that!

Now you caught my heart for the evening, kiss my cheeks, moved in, you confused things!

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Watch a flick, illing, and root for the villain!

Okay, I guess this is a follow up to my last post. Anybody that knows me, knows that I enjoy three recreational activities above all, television, music and movies. My usual day (night) goes like this, I wake up and check the Hip-Hop blogs for new music to hate, I turn on the television and set the DVR for some shows, then I go through the extensive DVD library in my house. So, basically, my day revolves around these three things. So the other day I was watching "Shooter", and a question came to my mind, "does Hollywood (authors, actually) really think this stuff out before they start filming?

Everybody knows the film, the government/secret agency/corporation builds/brainwashes/trains a soldier/assassin/spy. During an accident/set-up/mission, the soldier/assassin/spy has a notion that the government/secret agency/corporation is doing something evil/trying to kill him, and it is up to him to stop them. I, like most people, enjoy most films with this premise. I love the entire "Bourne" series, I tolerated the "Mission Impossible" films, I enjoy all espionage flicks in general. My question isn't why do they make them, my question is why are the villains so stupid?




Every movie of this type is the same, from "James Bond" to "Art of War", a trained soldier or whatever has to fight throughout the entire film. From the opening credits, we can all see that this unlucky bastard just won't go down, why can't the villains see the same thing. Any film where the hero is constantly being chased by an organization, the idiotic villain never stops to rethink his strategy. Come on, after Jason Statham kicked the asses of about a dozen of your armed soldiers, are you just going to send in a dozen more? I know what you're going to do next, you're going to call for your special martial arts expert, your crazy hot, crazy, killer chick, or your steroid pumped strong man. And you know what happens then, the hero has a problem for about three seconds, and then proceeds to kick ass, just like before. After that mishap, you get the idea to throw everything at this dude, including the kitchen sink. As you should have guessed by now, this unstoppable force, who has been shot several times and broken at least three bones, thwarts your plans. What's left? You can go either two ways, give up and go to your secret hideout or fight the son of a bitch yourself. Let's go with the first scenario, you're in your secret hideout, you receive a phone call/letter/e-mail/text message that says either your dead or that he's coming for you. At that moment either he blows you up/shoots you/chokes you from behind or the credits roll (save something for a sequel). The secret hideout idea may have been a bad one! Okay, what about the latter, fighting the hero yourself. The first question you should ask yourself is, why, if you could have defeated him yourself, why didn't you do that from the jump? The second question should be, if this adrenaline driven madmen killed your henchmen, the body count has to be about a hundred (more deaths, more revenue), what makes you so damn tough to kill? You know how this is going to end, you laying in a pool of blood wondering "why didn't I just let the fact that this dude dropped my brother out of a window slide?" or "why didn't we just leave this guy's girlfriend alone?".

Why are government conspirators/criminal masterminds/corporate geniuses portrayed as total idiots? Does having the highest IQ in the entire film mean that you lack common sense? I know it would make for a very short and sucky movie, but how about, after the hero kills 30 0r so of your henchmen, you forget about kidnapping his wife/girlfriend/child, and cut your lost and move on? The worst would be the hero that was built/brainwashed/trained by the villain. If you already know that you did some amazing work on this crazy dude, why would you even dare go up against him? Oh, I forgot about the everyday Joe Simpleton, who thwarts the plans of the government conspirators/criminal masterminds/corporate geniuses. How did this idiot beat you, better still, how did you get into the prestigious position that you sit in?

Come on, an aging guy on the verge of being put on crossing guard duty thwarts, not just one, but four criminal masterminds (including a pair of brothers)! A labor lawyer and a retiree who lives with a bunch of cats takes down a government conspiracy (where the hell are they at when we need them?)! A driver, a man whose job is literally just to drive, takes down, in three films, over fifty henchmen and three bosses! What the hell is wrong with these villains?

Okay, Hollywood, I've got a quandary, there's a villain, yet no known hero in sight. Here's the villain's back story. The villain is a known racist, he was against the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, supported apartheid in South Africa and opposed the release of Nelson Mandela. He led enterprises that specialized in the criminal misuse of oil and weaponry. He infiltrated the government and proceeded to limit funding and downsize the military. He came up with plans to use force against nations that he deemed as enemies to his plots. He organized the genocides of millions, some of other nations and some of "his own people". The villain failed to disclose documents of importance to the people, leaked the identity of a spy, and even shot a man and made the victim apologize for getting shot. He may or may not be immortal, surviving numerous health problems and an assassination attempt. He is an immoral, callous, compassionless man. He even has a secret hideout. Now, I'd really appreciate if Hollywood could create a hero to thwart this criminal mastermind.



Remember the world is Diggie. Even the "Butterfly" told you this was a Diggie-ble Planet. I'm cool like that!

When the scene unfolds!!!!!!

Oscar Wilde coined the aphorism, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life." I was watching "Fox and Friends" this morning and it had me thinking about Wilde's statement. As I watched the ongoing reports on the dwindling economy, I saw a parallel in current events and films. My brother and I grew up as film junkies (I guess because our pops brought crazy bootlegs), so I've learned to love the moving image. Some of my favorite types of films are dystopian films, political thrillers, and psychological science fiction. Maybe it's because I'm skeptical about politics, maybe the weed cloud I grew up in has me in a permanent state of paranoia, or maybe I just mistrust anyone with power. So, as I was scanning the guide on the DirecTV, I saw "Live Free or Die Hard", and it had me examining the plan they had to overthrow the government.



How do you actually go about overthrowing the government without making too many people suspicious? Well here's my plot outline for Hollywood.

The first thing you have to do is infiltrate the infrastructure, the best way to break down an organization is from the inside (word to Sun Tzu). I guess in America you would try to go about this by getting elected into some public office and working your way up the ladder. Then you have to find a way to limit the ability for the infrastructure to fight back. Once you're in the position of power you put your allies into positions to aid you in the ultimate goal. After laying your plans, it's time for you to start attacking. Just like in "Live Free or Die Hard", you have to start breaking down societal systems. The systems include defense, finance, and energy. I would start with defense, by starting a war, you weaken the military. With the military preoccupied, they are unable to protect the homeland, making it easier for you to take-over. The war also keeps the public distracted and unaware of your ultimate goals. Your next step would be to soften the finance system of the government. Give major companies aid in moving their operations to other locations, limiting available jobs. With a job shortage, unemployment will rise, homelessness will follow (making the entire country Detroit). Without commerce, companies will start to fall, which will be followed by a dwindling stock market. The final system would be energy, a major need in any country. You could create an energy crisis, it doesn't have to be real, just use speculation to say that the crisis will happen. With the horrible financial situation, you can just raise energy prices to a point where nobody can afford it. When questions arise about the defense problem, blame it on an cabalistic enemy. When questions come up concerning the financial crisis, you can always call it a downward trend, that will eventually turn around or a result of acts by the cabalistic enemy. To quiet questions about the energy crisis, you can blame it on citizens' overuse of resources, creating a cloud of guilt as a distraction or a result of acts by the cabalistic enemy (cabalistic enemy is a must-have). With the breakdown of the defenses, people won't have protection from crime and other problems that a military is needed for. The financial and energy crises will have a direct affect on food, housing, etc.. You have accomplished your mission of destroying the infrastructure, good job!



With people scared and hopeless, they will start begging for help. Who will save them? You! With a breakdown in the basic structure of society, it is necessary to find some order. How is that accomplished? Two words, martial law! I'm sorry, around here they call it a "state of emergency". Throw out the rules, remove the normal freedoms, you are now the supreme commander and chief. Get rid of elections, don't worry about oppositions, ship them to a detainment center for terrorist. Have fun, you're the man! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Follow the steps above and this could be you!



Remember the world is Diggie. Even the "Ladybug" told you this was a Diggie-ble Planet. I'm cool like that!

My life, my life, my life in the sunshine!

Well, it's nearing my Tricennial, my Pearl Anniversary, in four years, on the same day as Britney Spears, Lucy Liu, Nelly Furtado, Teairra Marie, and, my favorite Sagittarius, from HBO's Cathouse, Isabella Soprano (just some gift ideas), I will be turning 30. One of my best friends reminded me of this the other day (thanks, you fucking downer). You know how somebody tells you that a deadline is imminent, and your mind starts processing a whole bunch of shit it wasn't ready to? Yeah, I had that moment. I started thinking about careers, houses, cars, children, and other adult things (you thought I was going to say marriage, right? Do I look like a chick, huh?). I guess that 30 would be too early to have a midlife crisis, so I guess I'll just have an early life crisis. You know the questions that run through your head. Have I wasted 30 years of my life? Have I accomplished any of the goals I set (I never set any, so I'm cool)? Am I ready to grow up? What am I going to do with the rest of my life? And just like you, I have no answers (unlike you, I don't care).




So, I'm sitting here, guzzling a Heineken, thinking about the questions I will ultimately have to answer. You remember when you were a child, you looked at adults and thought that they were having fun being grown ups. They didn't have homework, they did whatever they wanted, they didn't have all the stupid rules that you had, and they didn't have to answer to stupid grown ups. And what did you realize when you became an adult? That was all bullshit! You started working and realized that this is a lot like school, which sucked. Yeah, you get paid, but you have to pay bills now. You can't just do whatever you want, you have responsibilities now. At least you don't have the stupid rules, right? Wrong, you have more rules, and these rules have worst consequences. Remember when you got into a fight and your punishment was a time-out (ass-whipping in my case), well now if you get into a fight, you punishment is jail. Oh, and the not answering to stupid grown ups, what about that? If you're at work, look over at your supervisor, he's definitely a grown up and most likely a stupid one. If you're at home or at Starbucks, open another window and go to http://www.whitehouse.org/, that has got to be the stupidest grown up around. So, is being an adult as cool as it looked like when you were a child?




To answer all those question that went through my mind, I have no answers! I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know where I'll be, I'm just hoping for the best. I was reading my brother's blog, and I got to an entry, and it made me think. Hey, if my brother is Earl Hickey, I must be Randy Hickey. Maybe I do need to reevaluate my life. Pretty soon I'll be in a hotel room with my brother, riding around in my crappy car, getting into wacky shenanigans. Hey, that doesn't sound too bad at all!

My brother and I. Oh, and a hot Latina that I'm married to. Cool

Remember the world is Diggie. Even the "Butterfly" told you this was a Diggie-ble Planet. I'm cool like that!

What would it take to authenticate my niggerness?

So, a while back I was checking out this website that my brother put me up on (what up, S.), it's entitled Stuff White People Like, very interesting and entertaining. One problem though, as I continued reading the posts, I noticed something. I noticed that I like most of this stuff too. I like coffee, I love sweaters, I rock scarves year round, I enjoy sushi, the Daily Show, wine, New Balance kicks, threatening to move to Canada, etc.. In all honesty, from their list of 109 things, I count about 70 things that I love too. My question is, does this make me less Black, am I subconsciously practicing allopphillia (emulating other groups not your own), or am I just doing me, and being from a culturally diverse city, have I become an amalgamation of the melting pot? I'm wondering, because I remember when I was a child in "the hood", whenever a young Black person liked something other than the regular hood staples, they were seen as trying to be White. I've never had that problem (maybe because I'm very niggerish), but my very eloquent sister and driven brother did. My sister told me of how she was told "you speak so well", like it was an astronomical feat for an African American female from "the hood" to use proper grammar and diction. My brother was a gifted student (what happened?), so he went to a private school, and anyone from "the hood" that strives for a greater intelligence, is trying to be White. I know for a fact, that my sister and brother don't strive to be or consider themselves to be White or White-like. So I decided to check out some other sites.



There's this other site, entitled Stuff Educated Black People Like. I guess this is a site dedicated to the black entrepreneurs that get rich and move to the Buckhead section of Atlanta. I don't know, maybe I'm an uneducated Black person, but out of their list of about 30 things, I only found 6 things I like (2 would be Barack and boat shoes). Maybe I just don't have that much in common with these educated Black people that they are referring to. Maybe I'm just a little too niggerish for these educated Black people. But, wait, I have so much in common with White people, I must not be too niggerish. What if I swayed so far away from my people, that I don't have anything in common with the educated ones of my ethnic group? Fuck that, I have to do some more research.



So, I look on Google for Stuff Black People Love, and I am reassured of my niggerness. The site is still under construction, it's crude and uncreative, very niggerish. So I hit up the link to their former site, and it was just as crude and uncreative as I would expected. I would tell you the relation of my likes to their list, but it's not numbered and I'm kind of tired. Let's just say, I like damn near everything on their list. I mean, who doesn't love "chinkiness" and finding out that a criminal is not Black. It made me feel totally secure with my niggerness. It brought me so much relief, I had flashbacks to my nigganigans (nigga shenanigans) as a youth, in my Niggeropolis, studying Niggernomics and Niggerology, trying to maintain my Niggerosity. I apologize to anybody that I offended with my use of the N-word. Damn, I apologized, something else to add to my list of things I have in common with White people. Somebody pass me a Newport, some Kool-Aid and let's spark the revolution.



Remember the world is Diggie. Even the "Doodlebug" told you this was a Diggie-ble Planet. I'm cool like that!

Dr. Kanye West or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Puff Daddy

The way I'm going to start this post is going to be with a flashback sequence. So, cue the foggy visual and the crappy harp music. I'm going to take you back for a minute. Can you hear the song playing, can you hear it. "Now with Sean on this hot track, melt like it's hot wax", "I was in one bedroom, dreaming of a million", "Put your money on the table and get your math on". You're feeling it now, right? The year is 1997, after successful, critically acclaimed albums by Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., and Wu-Tang Clan, things are about to change. One thing that "Illmatic", "Ready To Die", and "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)", is that they all had a grimy New York City street edge to them. These albums, as well as "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...", "The Coming", "Beats, Rhymes & Life" and albums from other regions, such as "ATLiens", "The Chronic", "Doggystyle", and "The Diary", led to the era between the late 80's and 1996 being coined as the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. Everything was right with the world, until, a young man from Harlem, New York, by the name of Sean John Combs, came to change our world. Combs saw the hard edge of rap music and, I guess, he decided to soften it. Combs introduced the Hip-Hop world to Cristal (actually, Wu-Tang introduced it), the shiny suits (actually, Dr. Dre), heavy sampling (Premo did it, only better), he reintroduced dancing (a la Hammer), and jump started the Jiggy movement. On July 1, 1997, "No Way Out" was released, and from there on a bottle would never go un-popped. Following the release of "No Way Out", we were introduced to Bling, Bentleys, brilliant-cuts, and bad music.



Fast forward to our present predicament. There has been a debate going on within Hip-Hop circles for the past few years. A somewhat new (not really new, at all) genre of rap music was introduced to the world, Hipster rap. Some would say that Hipster rap is a sub genre of Alternative rap (alternative to what exactly). A lot of people would trace Alternative rap back to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and others. I agree, these acts are different from the mainstream Hip-Hop acts that are shown on BET or played on your local stations. Now, I wouldn't trace Hipster rap back to these acts, but rather to one act, Kanye West. You all know the lyrics, "What if somebody from the Chi, that was ill, got a deal / on the hottest rap label around? / But he was talking bout coke and birds, it was more like spoken word...". In this new era of Hip-Hop, where everyone was a drug dealer, turned rapper, turned baller (kind of a mix of Golden Age themes and Jiggy Era subject), Kanye was praised for being different. He was the child of a professor, his father was a photojournalist / ex-Black Panther. He attended college. He rapped about personal issues, Jesus Christ, fashion, politics, etc.. While the rest of the Hip-Hop nation was either leaning and rocking with it or flipping birds, West was finding ways to stay away from the norm. Contrary to popular belief (and T-Pain), Mr. West introduced the rap world to the "Auto-Tune" (a crappy computerize version of the Talk-Box made famous by Roger Troutman and Parliament/Funkadelic). His over the top wardrobe and stage shows have made him a style icon. And in 2004, with the release of "The College Dropout", Mr. West changed the game, in the same manner as Puff Daddy did back in 1997. After Kanye's success with being "different", other rappers came out and attempted to shine by being "different". From Kanye came Lupe Fiasco, who raps about robots and manga (and dresses like a drunk Kanye, I like to refer to him as "Kanye Lite"), Kid Sister, who raps about nails and beepers (and only has a deal because she's dating Kanye's DJ), The Cool Kids, who rap about nothing, like a "Seinfeld" episode (and wear the tightest jeans I've ever seen), Jay Electronica, Kid Cudi, Wale, Izza Kizza, and sometimes Kidz in the Hall (who I wouldn't put in the same category as the rest of these sucky people, they are actually good). I guess most people define Hipster rappers as people with a fascination with retro clothing and 80's culture (half these kids didn't even grow up in the 80's), and dress different from the status-quo (even though once everyone is wearing it, it makes it the norm), and most often, wear tight jeans (especially them damn Cool Kids). Some people have said that Hipster rap doesn't exist, but I believe it does, and it sucks. All these young kids, they're reminiscing bout an era that bred AIDS, crack and Ronald Reagan, name one thing good about the 80's (besides this fly Sergio Tacchini suit and dope pair of Troops'). I mean, seriously, if I wanted to listen to nonsensical 80's type music, I'd blow the dust off of "Youngest in Charge" and listen to Special Ed rap about his dog's solid gold bone. Why would I want a pale imitation of the music that I grew up on? Thanks to Kanye West, everyday I am surrounded by tight jeans and DayGlo sneakers. My delicate eyes are bombarded with pictures from Complex magazine in real life. Come on now, his influence is so embedded in Hip-Hop that they have sites dedicated to dressing like Kanye West (oh lord, why?). I don't know about anybody else, but I can't wait until the new thing comes and outshines Hipster rap. I'm starting to hate thinking that I'm in Juice whenever I'm riding the train, looking behind my back at the kid with the Bishop hair cut (get a Caesar, nigga).

Remember the world is Diggie. Even the "Ladybug" told you this was a Diggie-ble Planet. I'm cool like that!




Editors Note : Before any smart ass says it, let me clear it up. Andre 3000 is not responsible for Hipster rap! Even though he was rhyming about alternative subject matter and dressing as crazy as he could, people didn't call him groundbreaking, they called him weird. Not until Kanye West came and did the same thing that Andre had already been doing, did it become innovative and forward thinking. It is funny, however, that years after Andre lived as an outcast (get it), he is now getting the recognition that he deserves.