Directional Mis-directions

I have been running so many things through my mind that I wanted to put down on paper or here in the blog. Everytime I think, "Hey! It's time to write about (insert topic here)" something else comes up and then I say screw it, I am not writing right now. Well, that only works for so long and then I become a jumbled mess and that filter in my brain that is supposed to screen what comes out, kind of disappears and then shit gets really crazy. Well, I have a couple things that I need to get off my chest and if I don't do it now, who the hell knows where I will go.
1st, last night the realtor came over and we signed the papers to sell the house. Surprisingly, I am pretty much at peace with it. There are a couple things that are bugging me, but overall, it's all good. The monkeys are taking it really well. I don't think all the consequences have set in with them and probably won't for awhile. It is kind of a new adventure to them, so that's good. I will be ever vigilant with them though, to ensure that if they do have any issues, I am there 1000% and help them through it. I love my monkeys. Even when one of them comes downstairs at 11pm when he was supposed to be sleeping and has his entire head covered in diaper rash cream. Then we spend the next 10 minutes in the shower, trying to get it all out. It's been two days, multiple showers and we almost got it all out! He was trying to spike up his mohawk, it works, just not exactly the best thing to use. They are definitely my children!!
2nd.....never mind. I am done for now. My brain needs a break. Peace

Shing

What Made ME.....

I am back with another posting after another night of no sleep. Yep, you guessed, boring!! Who really cares about it? No one, especially me, so we are gonna ride out on a topic that has been running around my brain and reinforced by my man Big Slim! Thanks Mike, you help keep me flowing!
In the midst of my 50+ hour range of no sleep, I had a great time watching Def Jam get honored on the VH1 Hip Hop Honors. It is a honor well deserved. Def Jam, as a label, has done more for hip hop than any other label out there! There have been some good labels, but Def Jam didn't bring hip hop to the mainstream, it made the mainstream come to it and play by its rules. I can remember my very 1st hip hop album was Raising Hell by Run DMC, followed by the Beastie Boys and then I was on my way. The great thing about this show, was how as each artist came out and performed, it was like reliving great moments in my past. I was tripping the whole time and just when I thought it couldn't get any better, it did!(well with the exception of Ja Rule and Ashanti....they suck!!IMHO) I hadn't been that moved or hyped since THE GOAT, Big Daddy Kane was honored a couple of years ago. That show was packed with powerhouses from start to finish, but Kane, Set It Off and just took over the whole show. That's the BIg Daddy I always remembered and I still get goose bumbs when I think of the performance, it was fucking insane!!! That was how this show was from start to finish. Seeing DJ Scratch perform again was sick!
Quick Side Note: I saw EPMD perform live at Philly Convention Center in like 1992 with my boys Jack, E-Double and Bubble Gum. EPMD was touring with Chubb Rock and opening for Big Daddy Kane. Well, at one point during the EPMD set, they let DJ Scratch go off and just start cutting for like 5 minutes.....he cut, not missing a beat while taking his shirt off; he cut, without missing a beat, while putting his shirt back on; he cut, without missing a beat while walking up the wall behind until he was almost upside down and still did not miss a beat!!!! I remember me and Jack and Doug and Bubble Gum all looking at each other and saying no fucking way was this real, this has to be dubbed....then it happened: as he walked back down the wall, he slipped and missed a cut, all we heard was FUCK! and then he picked it right back up!!! Then we knew we were watching greatness and it was almost too much to handle. 

 It was sickness beyond sick and we were blessed to be there that night. So, hip-hop, along with punk and metal and jazz and blues and classical music have all had impacts on my life and can change my mood and transport me back to a particular time in my life. Play me some Gangstarr or Eric B and Rakim and I am either back in KC hanging with my boy Jon or back in PA in DJ Butterfinga's basement chilling, drinking and making beats or just watching him practice his skills. That's when hip-hop was real and you had lyricists out there actually saying something over some phat beats instead of 99% of the crap that followed. You could sit back and nod your head and chill and at some point, you would have a moment where you all said "Damn, he did not just say that! or Damn he did not just rhyme those words!" I miss that. Motherfuckers boasted as they always have, but these cats had the game to back it up. This is getting long so I am gonna cut it now, I have much more to talk about when it comes to music, but we will tackle that soon enough. I will leave you with a list of artists that if you don't know them, you are missing out on some good music. These are the people who shaped my love for Hip Hop: Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, Eric B. and Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, ICE-T, Easy-E, NWA, Slick Rick, De La Soul, Stetsasonic, Gangstarr, Audio Two, Public Enemy, KRS-ONE, Boogie Down Productions, Brand Nubian, Grand Puba, Main Source, Jungle Brothers, Tribe Called Quest....that's just the start! Peace

Sleep is SOOOOOOOOOOO Overrated

I just ended an interesting odyssey. From 4pm Monday afternoon until about 1am last night, I basically didn't sleep. I had a 30 minute power nap on Tuesday morning and a couple hours of tossing and turning Wednesday morning. 57 hours! I did it all without the help of caffeine or drugs or anything. I was running on pure rage, on pure love, on pure fucking uncut aggro-fueled desire and......FUCK! I have writer's block! Sometimes if I just keep writing I get past it, so here we go. This may make no sense, but I am gonna keep writing. Feel free to tune me out at anytime, but I must warn you, that you may miss out on something so utterly fucking brilliant, that your life will be just a little bit poorer without it. Does that sound a little bragadocious? Why the fuck did my font just change? Where the hell did bragadocious come from?
I love punk music and good hip-hop and Chuck Mangione. What? Did I just type that? What the hell? Fine, it's true, Chuck is good punk rock, hip-hop, adult contemporary, death metal and pimpin' all rolled up into one smooth pimp daddy sound! Wow, I feel dirty, but fuck it. Where the fuck was I? Oh yeah......

I was running on pure rage, on pure love, on pure fucking uncut aggro-fueled desire and I hate this fucking font......This is much better. Now, where the fuck was I?

I was running on pure rage, on pure love, on pure fucking uncut aggro-fueled desire and untethered honesty. I saw myself in my purest form. I laughed like a motherfucker while shedding tears of absolute sadness. I loved myself while utterly loathing who I have become. I saw the universe and it was my image in a mirror staring back at me. Have you ever taken the time to really look and dig deep inside of your mind, heart and soul? You should, it's scary as hell, but also very liberating, if and it's a big IF (i know so few people who can actually be themselves, they don't have the stones to do it, too worried about how they are viewed by others) you sit and don't judge what you see and what you learn. It's not easy, I spend 50% of time not judging and 50% of the time being my own harshest critic. But those lucid moments when you don't judge can be fucking beautiful.
I was gonna spend this post talking about music that moved me during my little sleepless adventure, but somehow got off on this tangent, so I am gonna cut it now. 

I want to send a quick shout of peace to new friends, old friends and friends that need to find some. You know who you are. Peace

Here I am…R-A-W…..

Damn, it's been 24 hours since I wrote my last blog post. It's 2am on a Wednesday and "here I am, R-A-W, a terrorist, here to bring trouble to"….But I am getting ahead of myself, we'll get back to Raw in a bit. Right now, I am still awake, still kicking, still clawing and scratching and brawling and moving forward,, backward, sideways, all ways. Other than a 30 minute power nap before getting the monkeys off to school this morning, I am without sleep. I am not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. Earlier this evening, I asked a good friend how much longer she thought I could go without sleep and not move from partially insane to completely insane. She recommended I go to bed then, but that was five hours ago and I am still going. The words have been flowing from mind to the paper and I got some good shit done for school and now I am writing for me. Sleep will kick my ass when it's ready so here I am.

What is better for me? No sleep, delirium and anger or sleep and anger. I am leaning towards the former, but we shall see what works. I am feeling fucking good right now. I feel like there is nothing in the world that can hold me back. I feel like a big fucking supernova in deep space destroying everything in my path before of course I collapse into myself and become a black hole, and the big suck. Maybe not a good metaphor, now that I read it, but fuck it, you know what I mean.

(Side note: Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking are my favorite Theoretical Physicists. If you don't know who they are, you better ask somebody, because they are brilliant and wrote some of my favorite books of all time. My favorite Astrophysicist you ask?….Amy Mainzer and no it's not just because she is hot. It's because she is brilliant and hot and sexy. If you don't know who she is, you better really go ask somebody! Go ahead, go! I will wait….see told ya!)

Back to where I was going before I distracted myself with a horrible metaphor for feeling good and ready to take on the world. How the hell did I start feeling better, at least temporarily? Well, there are some great BOTLs (Brothers of the Leaf) out there who know how to make a fool like me laugh. I have some good friends that continue to try and pick me up and drag me back to life. My monkeys give the best hugs and kisses. At bedtime I give them what we call a dream kiss. I pick some superheroes or cartoon characters or dinosaurs or sharks, whatever they are into that day and after I pick some of these items for them to dream about, I seal it with a kiss to the forehead, so they can have dreams about the things they like. Tonight, after they each got theirs, I was about to walk out the bedroom when Jax called me back and said he wanted to give me a dream kiss. So, he proceeded to tell me I was gonna dream about The Wonder Pets, Sharks, Batman, Spiderman, Cigars(damn that kid knows me) and pizza and then he gave me one of his sweet little kisses on the forehead. I damn near cried. Fuck, I am tearing up now as I write this. These are tears of happiness, not tears of anger or fear or sadness. These I can deal with easily, the rest can kiss my ass. Once again, the monkeys have reminded me how great I have it even when I hurt deep inside.

You may be asking yourself, so that's it? All the aggro and fucking fucks and all that shit is gone, just like that? My answer is yes and no. Yes I feel better; yes I was able to smile like a motherfucker tonight. Yes I am still aggro. No I am not all happiness and rainbows and unicorns and shit. I am moving forward and trying to keep a positive spin on some shit and letting it happen. Also, I was inspired musically tonight. No, it wasn't due to my boy Jose's embarrassing and mind-numbing revelations on his blog (His blog is called Life's Indulgences and there is link to it on the left side of the page. I recommend you check it out. It's quite good and humorous and I guarantee you will enjoy it). Sorry Jose, but my musical influence that had me smiling tonight and all hyped up and jacked and ready to go is hip-hop related and I briefly touched on it at the beginning of this post. But, this has gotten way longer than I planned, so I am gonna save that for tomorrow night's post which is guaranteed to be a fucking blockbuster because I will either being going on two days with no sleep, which should be interesting (my record is 46 hours straight, back when I worked 3^rd shift and the weekend started at 7 am on a Friday morning and didn't end until sometime on Sunday) or I will be semi-rested and maybe more coherent. So until next time….Namaste my friends. Or as ODB would say, "Peace bitches!"

Who wants a beating?!?

So here I am. It's 2am on a Tuesday morning and I am coming to what I hope is the end of two of the most aggro days that I can remember in a long time. Some people may be saying, well just what the hell do you mean aggro? Well aggro can mean many things: it can mean anger. It can mean aggressiveness. It can mean excitement. It can mean trouble. It can be described as threatening behavior. It can mean that a person is horny. It can even mean love. It can also mean: “I AM SO FUCKING PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW THAT I WANT TO FUCKING SCREAM, CRY AND CHOKE MOTHERFUCKERS OUT ALL AT THE SAME TIME!” For me, aggro means all of the above. Sometimes I am aggro and that just means that I am ready to tackle the day and have some fun. But, the last couple days have been “100%, FULL-ON, GONNA HAND OUT SOME BEATINGS, SUPER-MEGA, BRING IT ON MOTHERFUCKERS AGGRO!”
After hours of introspection I still have no clue as to why I have been feeling this way. I am sure it is a number of things, all just deciding to crash in on my psyche all at once. I should just sit back and let it go and come back stronger as I usually do. That would be the easy thing to do. I could just pretend that everything is super neato-burrito happy and smile and nod be the “hap-hap-happiest asshole since Bing Crosby tap danced with Danny Fucking Kaye!” I could do that. I could also sit in zazen and not judge and not chase what is bothering me. I could just let it arise in front of me and then say “whoa, that’s fucked up!” But, I have tried all that already. I have smiled and nodded and done my best to ensure everyone else around me is happy and that they know how important they are to me or how they have had a positive impact on my life, etc, etc, etc. Now I am not diminishing those things, because they are an important part of my life and who I am. But, that stuff just isn’t working right now.
So, what the hell do I do? Do I go out and take a walk around campus or the neighborhood and just hand out random beatings? Right now, it does sound enticing; even with my dislike of violence for violence sake. I enjoy the violence of sport (mma, rugby, football, and boxing). I enjoy violence in movies and video games, especially if it is over-the-top. But, the everyday violence in the street, the violence against women and children, that sickens me. It sickens me to the point where I can get physically ill. So, with all that being said, handing out beatings probably isn’t an option I want to take. Hell, I have even tried the “combat jack”, which usually helps, but that isn’t cutting it either. Smoking cigars, drinking a beer or some Jamaican rum, watching my monkeys play, Zazen, Tai Chi Chuan, Muay Thai, listening to music, even playing games or watching movies; none of it has gotten me out of this foul mood.
What to do now? Well, I can tell you that I think I am starting to come out of this funk of aggro. I had a good friend reach out and offer an ear to listen. I spent a great deal of time talking with an acquaintance, who has now become more of what I would call a friend. I had a couple other friends remind me of some things that I was blind to, because of the aggro standing in my way. Most importantly, I had my monkeys give me their unconditional love even though Daddy has been a pain in the ass the last couple days. These are all positive moves in the right direction for me. Now I am still feeling aggro, but not AGGRO!!! So, I will continue doing the things I do best and the things I do every day to try and stay sane. Hopefully, that will take me in the right direction and this too shall pass. If not, walk the other way if you see me coming. Or if you are brave, walk up and give me a hug. It may be exactly what I need. Peace