None of your business sucka!!! Nah I’m kidding. As you can tell, I’ve been quite busy lately.

I got me a little gig where I’m teaching Math again, this time for the Post Bac class. And well….that is what it is. Some days I feel like I’m really helping, other days I feel like I have no purpose. All in all I like it though. Don’t know when, if, how much I’ll be getting paid, and honestly I don’t really mind, I’d do it for free. That’s the God’s honest truth. People helped me to get where I am, and I look at this as part of my way of giving back. Of course I won’t turn down some loot either, just saying, it’s not a big deal right now.

I am proud of myself and the way I handled my money this semester. I think not having a check card has A LOT to do with that, because I have to go through great pains to have cash on hand now. If life wasn’t so blasted difficult without a check card I probably wouldn’t get another one, but as soon as this refund goes through I probably will.

Let’s see, what are some OTHER highlights since last you heard from me. We celebrated the homie Eman’s birthday 2 weeks ago. That was great! We got our “grown folks” on. Complete with cards and dominos going on at two tables, and kids running around dancing and such. I made a disastrous drink which was saved by some quick thinking on the part of Janelle. It was the best time I’d had in a LONG time.

Last weekend I went to this pool party or whatever and drank a bunch. Then we watched the Mayweather-Gatti fight and I drank a bunch more.

I have been enjoying my summer so far, the weather is nice, not too hot and not too humid. We’ve had a few of those good old summer thunderstorms, which is the OFFICIAL “it’s summertime” sign for me. I wish it could stay like this all year.

What else is there in the world of Cal? I think I’m becoming more of a jerk in my advancing age. I realize that there are people I just don’t like and I have NO good reason for not liking them, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like them. I never thought I’d become one of those people who just “hated on” people, but I have…..without really noticing.

*sigh*

Oh, I knew there was something else. Nina and Che have moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina (well Nina still has some loose ends in Atlanta for a few weeks). So my mom is living alone for the FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE. I’m a little worried about her, but I think she’ll be okay. She probably worries about me as well, and I’m hanging in there.

Anyway, I’ve got to prepare for this class, I’ll holla whenever!

I haven’t done this in a minute and I have nothing specific to say….sooooo

- I really want some White on White Air Max 93s….like those were my favorite shoes EVER, EVER, EVER!! Better than my beloved Huaraches.
These bad boys:

- Out of the blue an opportunity has been offered me that I wasn’t expecting at ALL….I don’t want to jinx it so I won’t give more details yet. But it’s just what I need!

- I hate Elvis…I’m of the Public Enemy school of thought….you know “Elvis was a hero to most” etc. ….but there is one song of his I fuck with….and that’s Heartbreak Hotel.

- I am not ready for love, but I’ll accept some reasonable facsimile….just saying….

- I’m really proud of my music entries on my livejournal….I had some good shit on those lists!!

- Whatever became of 3LW?

- I’m really loving the fact that they are showing Season 3 of The Wire again on HBO2 on Wednesdays! If you aren’t on board, what the fuck are you waiting for? It’s the best show on TV!!! I can’t say this enough!

- I talk too much sometimes….like to the point of getting myself into trouble….I need to learn that not everything is worth saying….it’ll save me some headaches in the long run….

- I’ve never felt more “big brother-ish” than I do now that my sisters are a week from moving to North Carolina….

- Blackjack on Yahoo games is VERY addictive….even more so than poker…I think it’s because I win more at it!

I don’t have anymore to say….thought I did, but I don’t…OUT!

Due to recent events (particualarly the two Mikes: Tyson and Jackson) and the demand of a very vocal few of you, OJ and I have done it again!

That’s right, another episode of SHOOTIN THE GIFT!!! And to borrow from OJ, “It’s THE GUTS!!!” I gotta say that it was VERY funny man, for real!

Make sure you check it out!

Aight chums, let’s do this!!!

Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroyy nnnnnnnnnJeeeeeeeeeeeeenkins!!! (sorry ya’ll I’m obsessed with that clip, it’s funnier everytime I see it!)

Mike Tyson is good, I’ve got to give it to him. No, not as a boxer, but as a con man. I mean honestly, his last five fights have been something well below stellar, yet he managed to get me to pluck out $5 to go to Bailey’s and watch his fight while drinking overpriced drinks!

Speaking of Bailey’s for the fight. Why did the sound go out not once, but TWICE! Once right before the opening bell until like the middle of the third round, then again RIGHT as Tyson quit! Plus they tried to charge my boy Ebon for ANOTHER drink when he sent his watered down drink back! Unless it’s Tuesday or Thursday for $2 pints, I’m not effing with Bailey’s anymore.

Anyway back to Aluminum Mike (he’s no longer Iron….maybe Iron Pyrite), I feel really bad for people who paid to see it on Pay Per View, because like me I’m SURE that they thought he would pummel this guy. I mean this guy was hand picked by the Tyson camp and is of the mold of guys he USED to beat up!

It was disgraceful man! I also wonder about his future. This was supposed to be like the 3rd in a series of 7 fights to pay back his various debts. What is Mike going to do now?

When I got home, the Cotto/Abdulleav fight was on HBO, and that was a tad bit better. Cotto zeroed in on homies eye and cut the fight short, but at least both competitors tried!

Strangely, the Tyson debacle wasn’t the strangest thing I saw on TV last night (and neither was the all gay/lesbian episode of NeXt which was on briefly). The strangest thing I saw was the Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith commercial with their kids for the BET Awards. Has anyone else seen this? Are those kids really cussing like that?? Man that was surreal. Not something I expected to say the least! I gotta see it again!

You know, in my interpersonal relationships, I often find myself playing the middle of the road. I somehow manage to find myself as a “mediator” or a “facilitator”. I am a pretty decent listener (like to think) and I tend to try to understand where the other person is coming from. In general I’m a pretty good sounding board.

I also tend to befriend all sorts of different people from different walks of life, and they interact with one another and become friends as well or what have you. OR I may be friends with two distinct subsets. Like if I were a Romeo and Juliet character I probably wouldn’t have been a Capulet or a Montague, but I would have had friends in both families surely. That’s just how I am.

But of course this leads to the inevitable problem, what if those friends become enemies, or what if those enemies finally come to blows. That’s where I always run into problems.

I seem to always want to understand both points of view and to help resolve the issue, but in the end, I usually cause more problems than I solve.

Sometimes you just have to wash your hands of an issue, whatever it is. What I need to do is learn to say, “umm hmm, I feel you” and NOT offer my opinion and NOT “take sides”.

This happened back when I was in college, I think I may have written about it. When my boys tried to make me make a decision on “whose back I’d have” if they came to blows with another group of friends I had. And now it’s sorta happening again, and you know what guys, I’m STILL not picking sides. I’m washing my hands of this shit. I think it’s some fucked up, repugnant shit on BOTH ends, but I got bigger problems and worries, so ya’ll can handle ya’lls business however you see fit, and I’ll just pray.

I’m out!

First things first, I want to thank the homie Nile for the comment he made….he kind of put some things in perspective (not saying the other comments didn’t, but his was more….well personal as it were)….

Anyway, those comments got me to thinking, I’m alot of things to alot of people….

I couldn’t help but laugh at Boogs’s comment about not being able to see me as an asshole, because to some people that’s ALL I am. Then again, some people hold me in as high regard as Boogs and think that I am just the sweetest guy on Earth, and you know what? I can be.

It’s just, well the flipside of that coin DOES exist. As I type this, someone is feeling the brunt of that (not anyone I’ve written about recently). I hate being that way, but I can be driven to it.

Very few people really know me that well. It takes either tremendous insight/intuition, like Baby J, or alot of time around me, like Geoff or Nile. I’m a social chameleon of sorts. I can blend in and adapt to things around me if I really want, but then again I can stand out just as easily. I like to fancy myself as complex but I think that’s just me being megalomaniacal (and I do have those tendencies). My bluff was actually called on some of my megalomania earlier, she really burst my bubble (she is probably the only one truly capable of it).

Why am I saying all of this? Who knows. Why do I say ANYTHING here?

I’m going to bed, today was a long day and from tonights events it looks like tomorrow will be even longer.

You know women I don’t understand you at all.

Even the “cool” ones of you. It’s like ya’ll have the right to flip the script and act crazy as fuck. What gives you that right?

What makes it cool to have jokes and cosign on other peoples jokes and just be one of the guys, then when the joke is on you all of a sudden you wanna flip the script and get sensitive and say something like, “Don’t Say Shit Else To Me”? Honestly?

I mean you KNOW saying something like that to me is like asking for the OPPOSITE. You KNOW I’mma say, “well you can leave”. You KNOW I’mma pick up your shit and point you toward the door. I’ll be halfway playing about it, but at the same time, I mean, I don’t like that flipping the script shit, just as much as you hate getting the boot!

You KNEW shit was all jokes. I don’t understand you sometimes. Sometimes I wonder why I try! I really do. It would seem like we’d know each other by now.

Last night I went through a range of emotions, I was angry at first, then I felt some remorse, then I felt apathy. I don’t really know HOW I feel right now. I didn’t really do shit in the grand scheme of things so it HAS to be something else underlying. Maybe you just put up with me because of the common company we keep. Maybe you never really liked me in the first place, who knows. I haven’t changed. If anything I’ve mellowed out.

We’ve had bigger issues in the past, but this is how it ends eh? Fine with me. Apparently our shit was shakey ANYWAY, unbeknownst to me.

Ya’ll I’m tired. I had too much fun during my birthday weekend. For real. Like I didn’t stop having fun, which is good, but now I’m tired as hell.

Let’s see, what highlights are there?

Well I went over the homie Eman’s house on that Saturday. He made BBQ and shit. I made Long Island Iced Teas, and let me tell you, I’ve NEVER seen some women drink like I did that day. They almost exclusively tore into that batch of Long Island! Then they went shopping for cleaning supplies at Target! Maybe that’s just funny to me and Eman and the other fellas who were there!

Then Me, Eman, and his boy Kris went to kick it in Downtown Nashville. You know, show his out of town guest a good time. Man it was about the best night I’ve ever had bar hopping here in Nashville, and that’s saying something because I’m a kicking it nigga! Eman wrote all about it on his blog, and I couldn’t do a better job of recapping it, even though he wanted me to tell, “my version”. Just read his, it’s all true, I swear!

Anyway, because we kicked it so hard on Saturday night, most of the day Sunday was spent with me trying to recover from a MASSIVE hangover. This was about my worst hangover ever where I didn’t barf. I probably should have honestly. But I didn’t. Then I got a call from the Devil Himself, who goes by the Earth name of Geoff. He was like, “nigga wassup with the Beer Sellar?”. I asked him if he was trying to kill me!

I hadn’t been to the Beer Sellar for their Sunday 2 for 1 in a LONG LONG time. Of course I went, and the first thing I noticed was that they changed the set up a bit. The table we usually sat at was gone, and in it’s place was a big screen HDTV. We sat at a low table across from it and watched the game and drank beer. The homie Wendell came through and we argued about sports the whole night, mostly me yelling, “that’s bullshit” because, well, he was talking some “taurus feces” all night! I told that nigga he needed one of them horse shit bags under his mouth for all the horse shit he was spewing (most of it related to Dan Marino needing to sit at the Little Man Table as far as the greats are concerned because he doesn’t have a ring). I pwnt his argument though.

After awhile at the Beer Selllar some muthafucking goth, vampire wanna be’s started streaming in. Man I don’t understand that lifestyle AT ALL. They were straight up CRAZY. And then they started playing all sorts of crazy bloodlust music on the jukebox. Music with names like “Neckbiter” and “Type O Negative”. That was our cue to get the fuck outta dodge.

We went over to the Rythym Kitchen where Mr. and Mrs. Fry and a few other folks were. I mostly watched Blade 2 (ironic don’t you think!!) on the big screen up in there as I had no money for drinks. I got my people watch on also. I was tired though (fatigue had started to set in) so I went back and slept like a log.

Memorial Day was run of the mill. I went over to Geoff and Heather’s and Heather made some bleu cheese burgers for a nigga….DAMN they were good. And niggas watched movies and shit, I saw the Full Monty for the first time and it honestly wasn’t as bad as I expected.

Since then I haven’t done anything really. NO I haven’t put the pictures up yet. I don’t know when I will, actually I do….when I get around to it! Ummm, what else is there? Oh yeah, on my livejournal, I’m doing a 7 part series on some underrated songs. So check that out.

I’ll be around!