I got to thinking; a hobby done best while whittling vanilla wafers into suggestive animal cracker couplings. And after eating a cookie shaped like a zebra chumbawamping a goat and one of a liger tubthumping a hippo, I reached a thought.

I think I might be a contrarian, am 100% sure that I’m sardonic and swear that like Panic! at the Disco writes sins and not tragedies, I write protest songs and not lullabies.

Since the title of this here blog is the Change I Wish to See, you’d think the archives would be stuffed full of Gandhi-inspired rhetoric, Care Bear rainbows and hunger strike pledges. Yet, so far, no dice on any of that. Instead, you’re more likely to read a post in which I wonder why Gandhi didn’t speak up for himself more or I coerce Funshine and Cheer Bear into hunger strikes to protest the bastardization of the lovable bear industry by companies like Vermont Teddy Bear Co.³

I can’t help it. It’s the change I want to see, not the change that happened a while ago and therefore makes this blog so 2000 and late. It’s about telling Houston we have a problem.

I thought that maybe I should write a post that would break my stride; something that detailed a few things I unabashedly love; to switch it up a little; to take off this Stormy Monday underwear I’ve been wearing for days and put on a fresh pair. Obviously, my love for animated movies came to mind. But then I remembered that I even wrote a post telling Little Foot to take his job and shove it. I told Little Foot, hero before time, that he was washed up.

[insert pause, while I pour one out for my homie Little Foot's storied career]

Apparently, a long, long time ago, some obnoxious little kid’s mom said “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and the little brat saw fit to take that personalized attempt to shut him and only him up, spread it like the pig flu (aka “the plu“) and now we’re stuck with it centuries later.

But I don’t believe in that.

Complaining is good for the soul. Like the best chicken soup, it’s homemade, salty and clears your chest of stuff that was in your head but sank lower and lower over time as you failed to blow it out.

I have made New Year’s resolution after resolution to complain less the next year. I have broken New Year’s resolution after resolution to complain less the next year. I think I am complaining about those broken resolutions right now.

But I’ve decided to let the circle be unbroken.

I like jokes. And ever since a 5 hour car trip with my dad 9 years ago when he popped in a tape of “jokes appropriate for the workplace” and replayed it when it finished and I tried to rip my drums from my ears, I decided humor a) shouldn’t suck nearly that hard and b) that the best jokes have a hint of bitterness to them.

So usually I have nothing nice to say. Thank god. Because if I did, I’d be Tony Robbins and would hate my life with the fury of a thousand blueballed virgins.

_____________
¹You know, a joke that starts out funny for the idea of it, then becomes humorous for its truth, then becomes a point of personal reflection.

2In retrospect, I should’ve dropped an “I’m rubber, you’re glue…” but hindsight is for assholes.⁴

3Though, Vermont Teddy Bear Co., I will gladly follow the latest FTC rules and admit you’ve sent me plush products to review if you so choose.

4FN 2 contains arguably the worst pun ever.

Yet, there you are, at my front door, Bible in hand, with a duty to sell, ready to save my soul.  And here I am, wishing for the death of a salesmen.

The problem is not that you believe what I have made a decision not to accept.  The problem is that your system of beliefs seems to come with an aggressive marketing scheme and I learned at an early age to be wary of strangers with something to prove.

I don’t want your god.  I mean him, her, it or them no disrespect.  I’m sure they are wonderful conversationalists; I’ve heard nothing but great things about the miracle of prayer.  But I’m simply not in the market for religion right now.

I grew up in the church.  I understand the need god fills for you.  It’s a need we all have: to understand how/what/where/when/why we are.  I just have a different strategy for finding the answers and I would appreciate it if you found the humanity to respect that.

All ideas are goal-oriented.  We have them to move us somewhere, even if it’s only an inch.  And, to me, you are ordering your steps up a stairway to heaven.  I think you’re more concerned with where you’ll be than where you are.  You have a destination in mind and your travel agent says the travel package features endless days and infinite nights in paradise, but one of the catches is recruitment/referrals.

So you knock on my door, armed with a manual written by men you’ve never met and pamphlets I can keep just in case a cartoon of a sheep and a white, bearded man in draped cloth is the only thing that will get me through a rough day.

Well, you didn’t ask, but if I had your ear, here’s what I believe.

I believe that the only religion I need is an unabashedly human one.  I believe that we should be concerned first with whether our lives make the lives of those around us more fruitful and not whether we please a being with nothing at stake and with nothing to lose.  There is no personal reward system for this; no eye towards karma or open hand to receive a key to the pearly gates.  There is only balance.

But I haven’t told you any of this as you stand at my door.  And I won’t if you come back next weekend or the one after.  I won’t; not just because what I think about what you believe is irrelevant, but because faith, much like love, is best communicated by example.  So, rather than read you my rights, I’m forgiving you for the insult of coming uninvited to my home and telling me my soul was in danger of flaming damnation unless I started living my life more like yours.

I forgive you.  But you don’t even notice.  And the irony of that is your loss.  I hope your faith finds you well.

You know, there, right?  That place on the American life’s timeline where engagements and real estate purchases make their appearances; the one where your parents do a stellar job of “subtly” remarking on the preciousness of grandchildren; the place where you either start watching Rogaine commercials more closely or start waxing your upper lip (you know, depending on whether you were born a bird or a bee)¹.

Allegedly, I’m there.  I’ll be 27 in less than two months and while that is still, in my opinion at least, really young, it’s also an age ripe for fielding expectations disguised as questions, like

What do you do?  Is she/he The One?  Where do you live?  Do they have good schools there?

Of course they’re fair questions; of course.  But if the questions are asked in rapid-fire succession or their answers are awaited by 24 curious eyes, it’s enough to make anyone other than the most secure with what’s to come unsure about what to say.

After I write this, we’re headed out to say goodbye to some friends who are moving because they are embracing being already there.  And, I admit, it’s pretty vain of me to be so consumed with what their leaving means for my timeline.  Not every object should be held up as a mirror.  It’s probably a lot like checking my reflection in the window of a car I walk past.

But, maybe, since these questions are all everyone seems concerned with lately, maybe it’s cool if all I can do is think about the answers.

_________

¹Still have no idea what an interspecies analogy has to do with the sexes.

Next year will be my tenth year in DC — a city known for transience. I have seen many people come with lofty local aspirations but go and others insist the grass is greener elsewhere but stay (*ahem* myself *ahem*).

I have never felt more at home than now.

I started this blog, back in August 2006 on Opera, because I thought I had something to say. I needed a way to remain expressive during law school which succeeds brilliantly at stifling you. Over the next two years, I moved to Blogger and on rare occasions I’d write some words no one would read.

That all changed last November. I learned that I’d failed the NY bar exam, after years of convincing myself I was destined to be the first lawyer in a black family whose patriarch was not allowed to go past the fifth grade. When I picked myself up off the floor, I found each of you.

It shouldn’t be a secret: I write in this space because you read it. Everyday, I try to find something to say that you’ll want to hear. I don’t get it right all of the time, obviously. Sometimes I post things that are so bad they embarrass me. But I hope that by the time this space goes still, whenever that is, that something here mattered to you. For me, it’s not exaggeration to say that this place has been life-changing. It’s an understatement. I have always hoped this blog would help me find people and I have found great ones.

I know this probably has a more reserved tone than it should. Where are the confetti, the dancing girls and poo-flinging monkeys? I don’t know; maybe on Monday. I’ve got the monkeys on lease from the National Zoo and they do have to go back next week, whether they’ve flung poo or not, so I might as well get my money’s worth… or at least not return 4 constipated monkeys.

But celebrating me isn’t really my style. So I’m celebrating you. And I’m doing a giveaway; the first I’ve ever done.

Anyone who comments today gets her/his name placed in a drawing (so if you normally lurk behind the curtain, today’s the day to say “hello”). And because you know I love Disney animated movies like a fat kid loves cake or a black kid loves orange drink (not juice; DRINK) and red Kool-Aid, the drawing is for an animated Disney DVD of your choice. That’s right: of your choice. This is a “name your prize” giveaway.

Anyway… It’s Friday and since this post has taken longer to get through than a stutterer reading an unabridged dictionary aloud,¹ I’ll wrap.

Happy Friday. And, as always, thanks for stopping by.

_________
¹What? I can be reflective and inappropriate.

When Californication came up on shuffle yesterday, I was just so sure Anthony Kiedis was right — that a lot of things we believe really just have a production quality high enough to convince us they’re real.

And maybe he’s right.  I’ve never been to space.  I really only have seen it reproduced on screen.  And I guess almost 40 years ago that even Stevie once thought something really similar — that when you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer.; that we have to be careful about to whom (and what) we pledge steadfast allegiance.

But sometimes we should believe carelessly in things we don’t understand.  Not recklessly; not irresponsibly.¹  But without concern for whether it fits someone else’s idea of mature or good for you or well-grounded…

So, here are nine things — some as farfetched as space is wide — I have “no right” to believe but believe anyway.²

I believe something was — existed, happened… — before the big bang, but no one has captured it or written about it accurately yet.

I believe I could win a songwriter Grammy.

I believe that passion is like salt: it makes everything better.

I believe that there is more than one person (romantically) for everyone, but that the trick may be meeting only one of these people in your lifetime.

I believe that laughter conquers all.

I believe that yesterday makes us yearn for a better tomorrow, that the fear of tomorrow makes us retreat to the comfort of yesterday and that today is too often lost in the shuffle.

I believe that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was an insult to my able-to-dress-self-like-big-boy intelligence.

I believe that Casablanca is wildly overrated.

I believe that there are sexual relationships and there is the law and that — absent abuse or the serious potential for it — never the two should meet.

_________
¹If all the evidence and your gut say “No,” ignoring it all is dangerous.
²If you’ve got any space on your blog, I’d love to hear yours.

credit: Patrick Wymore/FOX

I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating: more parents should teach their sons and daughters that “curves” is not a dirty word.  No debating that today.  It’s a fact; like the fact that peanut butter and jelly are always better when they’re together.¹

But back to curves.

Although it’s been said, many times, many ways — pretty, uh, explicitly by Lil Wayne feat. Young Money and classically by Sir Mix-a-Lot, for instance –  for some reason, we don’t seem convinced by the litany of examples of how body image dominates our interactions.

Now, Fox reality television has a new series, More to Love.

Quick breakdown: The Bachelor starring a guy and a fleet of women who Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan magazines have aggressively not featured as cover models.

The good:
This is easy — images on our TV screen that, when coupled with all the others we see, better reflect the American spectrum of body image.  Granted, better; not perfectly.

The weird:
It feels a little isolationist — maybe even a little disingenuous — because it’s so showy and maybe even the worst kind of pageantry.

I wonder why that is?  Could it be how the president of Fox’s alternative programming described his network’s approach?

“We aren’t going to thin these girls down so they can find love — that’s a backwards message.” Adds [Mike] Darnell, “For six years it’s been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that’s not what the dating world looks like.”

Yep, that’s it.

“Good-looking bachelors?”  Darnell tried; he did.  He started strong.  But by the end of his statement, he was expressing the exact awkward feeling I had when I first saw the trailer: that this show was going to try and equally fashion a relationship for people it considered separate from our idea of beauty.

For me, it would be much better if, just once, the Bachelor was not a white guy, or chose a black girl, or a Korean girl or the girl with curves, rather than having a network insist that the girl with curves has to be cast entirely separately.  It would be a brilliant social statement if the “good-looking bachelor” just chose the girl with curves from among a diverse group.  Instead, she’s paired with a more “realistic,” “unattractive” bachelor because, well, that’s the real world.

Maybe, on balance, just seeing the images on our screen is enough, though.  Maybe it isn’t absolutely counterproductive to paint the right picture so poorly.  As long as there are women with curves on TV, FOX says we should be happy.  Is it weird that I’m not?

________
¹I don’t think Jack was singing about PBJs, but “Better Together” is just a good listen. So, go listen.

A few weeks ago, a lone gunmen walked into the Holocaust Museum and opened fire.  All of my thoughts were for the security guard who lost his life and for those who were witnesses and victims.  Anger at the shooter didn’t happen for days.

But last night, I guess I shamefully admit, I felt anger almost immediately.

The first thing I thought upon seeing the images was that someone had done something tragically wrong.  My first thought was that someone, or some system, had cost people their lives.  The rear train’s first car rested atop the last car of the train it hit.  In order for that to happen, it seemed, the rear train had to be traveling at a rate of speed that greatly exceeded that of the train it hit.  The front train probably would’ve had to have been stopped on the tracks.  Subsequent reports suggest that’s exactly what happened — that the first train had stopped and, for some reason, the second train barreled into it.

As of this morning, the preliminary evidence suggests there was no attack, no malice, no hate involved, just… mistake.  And I don’t know what you tell families when it’s an accident.  I don’t know what I’d have done if a friend didn’t make it home because of something that appears to have been avoidable.

I know this isn’t the time to point fingers.  I know there are statistics and probabilities that address the everpresent likelihood of accidents like this one.  I know that for each time we step outside our front door, someone, somewhere, has calculated an expectancy for our return later that evening and that that number is never 100%.  I know all of that.  I know about the variables, constants and the equations.  I just don’t feel comfortable with the sum of their parts.

It’s why we sometimes know exactly how many black, Jewish, Chinese, Pakistani, Irish, etc. friends we have. It’s why we almost never admit that.

It’s why we recognize unfamiliar loss, but it’s why we often don’t remember it.

It’s because we don’t know what to do about us. We share commonalities but also difference. We have the same hopes but varied faith. Sometimes we just get each other, and sometimes we don’t. But we accept it, unsettled, because resolution seems cloaked.

And so in yesterday’s aftermath, amidst all the angst and vitriol and hate and dismay, a simple reminder:

A one-act play was scheduled to show last night at the Holocaust Museum. It’s a conversation between Emmett Till and Anne Frank, both young examples of how hate, even fully exercised, loses to hope (every time, without exception) and evidence that we know more about each other than we think. And on the threshold of the building that would host this play, a security guard — a black man — died protecting the memories of millions — Jewish, gay and many others — and the lives of thousands of too many colors to count.

Thousands of people were in that building for one good and real and simple reason. I hope we don’t spend today thinking about the one exception.

credit: powerbooktrance

I like words.

The best ones have a great personality.  Whether they like it when you bend and twist and mix and match them to suit your needs or instead insist upon never being altered, the ones that have a sense of self stand out.

Or so I thought.  Apparently, those responsible for updating the annals of the English language — those at the Global Language Monitor — feel differently.

At this very moment, we are allegedly just 22 days from the one millionth word being accepted into our official lexicon.  Exciting, right?  The millionth word.  Surely, it’ll be something majestic.  It has taken us until 2009 to get to one million (i.e., this day doesn’t come around that often).  The GLM is going to mark this occasion with something epic.

Or, they’ll mark it with “noob.”

Yes, “noob.”  According to the Daily Telegraph, one of the frontrunners for the millionth word is “noob.”  And do you know what its competition is?  ”Defollow” and “defriend.”

For the love of god: Facebook slang could be the millionth word in our language.

Who cares?  I mean, “bling” became an official dictionary entry years ago.  So, no big deal, right?  I’ve got a bunch of words it would be pretty amazing to see move past the html of Urban Dictionary and make the official cut; words like “netherstick” and “felony-ig’nant.”

But we could at least pretend like the one millionth word should be celebratory.  I don’t really want history to look back and say that the two most memorable contributions our generation made to the English language were “bling” and “noob.”  That would be like us giving the lamest possible gift as a collegiate graduating class: “Hey, underclassmen.  The seniors before us raised $6 million for the library.  So, here’s our gift to you: one $25 gift card to Borders.”

Yeah, I know this all probably sounds elitist.  But it’s not that “noob” shouldn’t be in the dictionary.  It just seems that it shouldn’t carry the weight of marking a once in an ever transition in language.

We treat words and the people who can professionally use them as sideshows, it seems.  The writers’ strike from 18 months ago?  It’s a perfect example.  Shows suck, now.  Have you noticed?  Sure there are obviously still well-written shows on TV.  But there are scores of shows that couldn’t rebound (Heroes, I mean you).  And the recession has meant that shows haven’t been able to retain writers like they would otherwise.  I love some reality TV.  But it’s no secret that most of us could’ve written most of those shows on a napkin after any long night of heavy drinking.

Words matter.  And we should joke about them, make fun of them and abuse them almost as much as we want.  I just think it would be ok, every once in a while, to admit how much of a disaster we’d be without them.  ”Noob” doesn’t feel like enough of a concession.

But I don’t have any better ideas.  So, “noob” it is, I guess.  It just feels like we’re running out of words.  And that feels really scary.  So, I’m nervous.  It just can’t be that we’re running out of ways to describe, can it?

]]> http://francobeans.com/2009/05/19/where-did-all-the-words-go/feed/ 27 brad 527041023_889ed3a199_b http://francobeans.com/2009/04/15/gotta-get-up/ http://francobeans.com/2009/04/15/gotta-get-up/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:01:13 +0000 brad http://francobeans.com/?p=1450 ]]> I don’t want to sadden everyone today, but we gotta get up from here, kids.

credit: ClickFlashPhotos

I get it.  I really do.  And we’ll get to that in a minute.

But I was on the metro yesterday, and the sadness was suffocating.  Every single face was its own perfect storm: furrowed brow, droopy eyes, frowned lips.  There was only reclusive color: a sea of grays and blacks and browns; the kinds of colors perfect for blending into shadows.

I felt out of place.  But not because I don’t have any reason to fret or fear or fall.  It was because when people are that sad, you feel as if they should be left alone.  You don’t belong in that moment.  They don’t want to be seen.  They want to curl up in bed, pull up the comforter and watch reruns of their favorite sitcom or the last movie they watched with him before he left or the first movie they watched with the her that got away.  They want them to themselves.

And there I stood in the middle of it, my eyes bouncing from face to glass to another face to floor, trying to notice unnoticed, feeling guilty for having boarded with a smile.

Then today, just walking down the street, I saw the second person I’d seen in the last two days sitting in a car at a light just crying; just sitting and weeping, waiting on more than the light to change.  I thought of Jonny Lang’s “Red Light:”

Too slow to roll
Put your life on hold
An open path
With nowhere to go
You start to wonder
While sitting at a red light

And I know none of them are reading this.  But for those of you who are, we gotta get up from here.  The energy in this city is fleeting.  I know part of this is because DC’s unemployment rate is 9.9% as of February.  That’s 1 in 10 of every person we know.

I get it.  My family is struggling, too.  Our last three years?  There are parts of it you wouldn’t believe if I told you.  The parts I can tell without (I pray) revealing too much of the lives of others…

All three parents have lost their careers: mom, dad and step-mom.  My dad lost his after 26 years, 5 days before his birthday this February.  It was the only job I’ve ever been alive to see him have.  It was part of his identity.

Two Christmases ago, my brother, mom and I spent Christmas at my place here in DC because it was the only home between the three of us.  Why?  My brother was still in the dorm stage in college.  And for the last three years, my mom has been living with friends in Pennsylvania.  We sold and packed our home in Connecticut three years ago to move to PA.  But a lingering complication has meant the closing on the PA house has still yet to happen.  We still haven’t moved my mom into that home.  For three years, she’s been with friends there, while everything that made our house our home is in storage: baby pictures, furniture, you name it.  My place was the only “home” any one of us had.  Our Christmas presents to each other were homemade gifts that year.  And the money I’m able to send home since then just isn’t “mortgage money.”

After failing the bar exam last summer, unable to rely on the promise of a law license to find a job, but also unable to hide the last three years and a law degree from my resume when applying for things like retail after the first 150 resumes to firms went unrewarded, I started the fall telemarketing, just to make ends meet.  Everyone I knew from law school was at a firm right away and I was asking people for money over the phone, during a recession.  One night, one of my randomly-assigned calls actually went to someone I had sat next to in a few classes.

In just the last few weeks alone, my brother has been in a car accident that nearly totaled his car, almost three years to the day his best friend lost his life in a car accident, and also had his home burglarized.

So I get it.  This thing called life will break us if we let it.

But my family still smiles when we talk to each other on the phone.  And we still laugh when we see each other.  And no one who has met me in real life lately would know any of this if I hadn’t told them, because I still smile when I walk down the street or sit across a table at happy hour.  Because at a time when everything seems so able to defeat us, I know we’re incapable of being defeated.

And though I may not have met you, I have to believe the same about you.  I just do.  I don’t believe the smiles we wear on our morning metro rides should be secrets, let alone never worn at all.  There has to be a way to deal with this while we face it, not just once it’s a memory.

Maybe you were one of those people on the train yesterday.  Or maybe you gave up on this post paragraphs ago because none of it seems like a big deal.  Maybe it’s just April and the rain.  I don’t know.

But for today, I hope at least some of you use the space to talk about why you’ve felt burdened lately (if you have) or why you’re still smiling anyway.

Because these are our options:

you can wait for ages
watch your compost turn to coal
but time is contagious
everybody’s getting old.
so you can sit on chimneys
put some fire up your ass
no need to know what you’re doing or looking for
but if anyone should ask..
tell them i’ve been cookin’ coconut skins
and we’ve been hanging out
tell them god just dropped by to forgive our sins
and relieve us our doubt