MIDNIGHT

Midnight

2005-11-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

Everyone is tired of me

This weekend my parents will be gone but instead of going out and being stupid I'm going to go to a sushi bar or something with people who I don't really talk to anymore. I've just distanced myself so much from my grade, it's really not cool, but whatever, I'll get back in the loop soon enough. Everyone's on myspace it's pretty weird. I go on myspace too, but I can't delete it. It's a really annyoing situation. The email adress I used to sign up for myspace was deleted, and myspace has this stupid system of emailing you, to confirm that you want to get rid of it. Believe me if I could, I would delete it, I've emailed the people in charge asking them to change my email adress like 10 times. It's stupid.

I'm in history class. Our school requires laptops for a lot of the classes, I like how they integrate computers into the curriculum, but you get too used to it and you become sort of dependent on them. I feel like I abuse my laptop priveledges and it hinders my learning.

I really don't have much to say, I was just feeling lonely and I needed to write it down somewhere. I'd like a camera, then I would post lots of pictures all the time. Alot of them would be taken at night, without flash, so that the lights looked very natural.

Pink Elephant

2005-10-24T06:33:00.000-07:00

This one's about a nightmare I had. I wake up and my mom's driving us to Compton. When we get there everyone is mean to me and they try to kill me because they think I'm a blood.

A glare of light
An unholy light
Unnatural, my eyes sting now
Pain

“You come at the worst times” I say
Shall I walk through the valley of your shadow?
“No,” he whispers
“rather seek my cousin amongst the myriad voices calling you into the night
the garbage truck outside
children drunk with laughter
the rain tapping at your window”

So I listen
So I listen
An echo without a sound

merely an elephant
pink with fury
flames, green eyed with jealousy
flames, passion

the third eye opens

I wake up in an automobile
Paradox,
Because my mother can’t drive
A dessert, then houses
Glares from everyone
They’re all looking at me
Thick necks, epidermis from which light cannot escape
My greatest fear is that I’m not accepted
Malignant, macabre, melanin

Hostility…

POP
BAM
SLASH

Like a bolt of lighting
God’s thumb crushes out all opposition
Down from the heavens comes a familiar face

Fail

Not even the light of god can escape it’s fate
No, this isn’t a dream

This is a nightmare

It seems we’re underestimated the situation once again

It’s my turn
A third eye opens
Choking me
A third eye opens
Lockjaw, Flame, I can’t speak
It burns, why am I here…
Why am I here?

And I wake from my slumber.

A Little Reflection.

2005-09-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

What different communities contribute to you as an individual in society? Reflect on your involvement in family, school, church, peer, and other groups and describe the ways that each community has contributed to your sense of self and your attitude towards the world.

From the day you are born, things contribute to how you are seen as an individual in society. All the punishments, the people you meet, the books you read, build up to make you who you are at any given point. For me the alienation I’ve always felt from society influenced me to do things that I never thought I would do. The need to escape from societies has made me what people see in the society we live in.

My mother’s side of the family has greatly contributed to me as an individual in society. The Cunningham’s, my mom’s side of the family, were mostly born in Jamaica, my mother and my uncle (who disappeared before I was born), being the only people born in America. Jamaicans are very proud of themselves, their culture and the people who come out of their country and they value education and hard work. From the day I could actually comprehend and remember what my mom and dad was telling me, I’ve been told to keep these values to heart. At home I saw my cousins almost every day, and they were always more afro centric than I was. I always felt a little disconnected by the generation gap, being the youngest in the family. I didn’t grow up in the same neighborhood as the rest of my family, and most of them could speak with a Jamaican accent and I could not. Living in a dominantly white neighborhood, it was always a culture shock when we got together at family get together. However, even though I grew up in the middle class, I have always been influenced by the ghetto as a whole because of the pressure I felt as a young boy to be more like my black peers. This is partially from the bullying I had endured as a child.

Although there was pressure to be more “black” as a lot of my peers told me, I became intrigued by some aspects of life in the ghetto of New York City, at first I was pulled in by rap music, then later on hip hop culture as a whole which lead to my interest in the alternative scene of New York.When I was old enough to venture out into the city on my own, I met a lot of punks and hipsters, and also a lot of people who were into hip hop. I became very defensive of the culture whenever I came across someone white who was interested in hip hop; this is a result of the pressure I felt as a kid to be more “black.” Also because as I got more into it, I began to appreciate hip hop for what it was. What I saw as hip hop was all the minorities in the ghetto uniting to create their own art and culture after the government and the “white man” had abandoned them. Rather than using a canvas and oils to paint a mural, they used the side of a train and spray paint. Rather than using conventional instruments, sampled from their favorite songs and MC’s did just what their name entailed.

Although I was pressured to act a certain way, my values and decisions were always heavily based on the teachings I learn in Sunday school since I was in first grade, or at least my interpretations of those teachings. When I was 6 years old I would listen tentatively to my C.C.D. teacher and her teachings of God and Jesus, Noah’s Ark and all the other stories. I always enjoyed going to Sunday school, even though most of my friends hated it, by the time we were nine they all became sarcastic and cynical. While they were arguing with the teacher and arguing that Jesus didn’t exist cause “My big brother told me!” I was reading the bible and trying to be teachers pet. As I got older, I began to think of god in a different way, and I started thinking about what my friend’s big brother told him. When I was thirteen years old, my little bubble of security was popped with the disaster that was September 11, 2001. After 9/11 I began to ask myself, if all those innocent people could die so randomly, is there really a god? I was always a pretty reverent kid, not like those kids out in

I think that although on the outside I kept a pretty calm attitude and seemed pretty resilient, September 11^th really affected my personally thereafter. Living about 4 or 5 blocks away from the Word Trade center, I wasn’t allowed back in my house for weeks. I was separated from all the material things that I enjoyed, so I had a lot of time to think about all of the things happening in the world. Being out of my home kind of exposed me to the world around me; I would have to walk to school everyday and pass by the barricaded streets, emergency tape and wooden barricades held me from what I missed and enjoyed the most. At night I would picture the park I grew up playing in covered in ash and debris. The depressing mood of the city for weeks to come after 9/11 affected my schoolwork and the way I behaved. I became very indifferent to the world and very antisocial, my parents sent me to therapy but I wouldn’t budge, I just wanted to disconnect myself from the depressing world around me. The New York public school system had different plans for me, so my search for an escape ended when I didn’t get into any public schools because of my grades. In some ways, I think that September 11^th, even though it was a terrible tragedy, helped me, were it not that I had done so badly, I probably would have gone to some public school instead of Packer.

In a way I feel connected to Chris McCandless, because his journey to Alaska was really just a search for himself, and an escape from the world that constantly asked him to do things against his morals. This is what I was really aiming to do through all the phases of my life, kids, teenagers, and even adults are constantly searching for a sense of self in the world. Everyone wants to feel secure, some bully others into being exactly like them, some seek God, and some detach themselves from society like McCandless and I. Whichever way you go about trying to find your identity, every new person you meet is contributing to the way you are seen in society, by affecting the decisions you make, and through the views that person shares with you.

2005-08-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

since when is chalk drawing illegal?

Watching VH1

2005-08-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

One hot TriBeCa spring day, this dude was walking down Laight street, back when the scaffolding was still up and The Wetlands was still opened. Anyway he was walking down the block, talking shit, sipping a can of pepsi, when a bird rolls up and shit on his head. He was about to be really pissed when his friend says to him "Yo you know that's good luch right?" Naturally my friend didn't believe him, when suddenly he tripped and spotted a hundred dollar bill on the street.

Now naturally, you'd probably just think it was coincidence that something like that would happen, but a few days later, another bird crapped on his head, and later on that day his friend called him up inviting him to a Bikini Kill concert, because they were the shit in the 90's. At the concert, he was mingling, about to get a drink, when all of a sudden he bumped into the hottest indy girl there who wasn't even a lesbian (if you don't know Bikini Kill is so dykey it's not even funny). She was all "hey what's goin on?" They started talking , one thing lead to another, and the dude found himself with a date the next week.

At this point the dude was crazy with this whole birds taking a shit on his head thing. He was getting crapped on more than the germans in those Scheisse films, nahmean? He'd hang out at washington square park with the pigeons and the homeless people and feed all the pigeons, hoping they'd take a crap on him. He was fucking insane I swear to god.

The day of his big date he was freaking out, he was all "yo maybe if the birds shit on me I'll get laid tonight." So he went to the park to get the birds to shit on him again. Of course they did, it was like reflex now, after a week. So he went home, all proud of himself and whatever, but when he got home he looked through his things and realized "Oh fuck I have nothing to wear!" So he went to his roommate's room and on his dresser was a letter.

"Dude... There's shit all over your clothes, you're lucky I'm going to the laundromat today, but you're gonna have to hang out at home for a while cause you don't have any clothes."

Needless to say the guy was screwed. The girl was pissed he blew her off, so she never called him back. The dude, as messed up as he was, grew an obsession with her and kept sending her weird emo letters; needless to say they were as crappy as his clothing.

Don't go looking for luck, let it find you.

My Lucky Day

2005-08-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

Today was a really good day, I went to the graffiti store today called the scrapyard, they have a bunch of graffiti merchandise. What was great about it was the people there didn't even card me, they just gave it to me. What's even better is I didn't get busted by the Vandal Squad! New York is really cracking down on that stuff so you gotta be careful. It's all Ed Koch's fault.

So anyway then me and this kid Max, who is coming to the high school next year, walked through SoHo to Broadway, and I found two 4 by 4 canvases on the street, perfectly clean and stretched! It was awsome! I dunno what I'm going to do with them yet, but first I have to coat them with gesso or rabbit skin glue or something. Then I'll think of something. I'll probably do some kind of stencil work for it with my new paints.

MTV is garbage. I'm watching this show called the 70's house, which is being really stupid. These people are so ignorant I don't know where they get them from. First of all, they went to a hip hop club to disco dance, of course I wouldn't expect them to know this, but hip hop was actually born in the 70's so they could have breakdanced a little. The moves would be limited but they wouldn't be totally lost. I kind of don't like this whole new wave of white people being down with hip hop, I feel like it's a symbol of how the media has finally taken over the culture. But I guess it's too late to complain about that.

But back to MTV. It's no longer music as you probably already know, it's not stupid fat 20 year olds that look like their 14 doing stupid stuff, and crudely done tv shows where they all do the same stupid stuff in every show. I don't get how no one sees it, a lot of people claim to see it but they don't really. I just feel like they should call it Media Television instead of Music Television. It's sick how low people will go these days to please people. Maybe whats even sicker is how low peoples' standards are, whatever happened to entertainment?

I'm really into the blues right now

2005-08-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

I just got a new harmonica with my friend Aiyana today, it's a c. I love how buying harmonica's sounds like buying a bra. I was buying it and the lady at the store says "what do you want it in?" and I said "hmmm, do you have any in a g?" and she says no, so I say "well I'll just get the one in a c then." It was pretty cheap too, only 12 bucks. So now I'm listening to Robert Johnson, Junior Wells, Little Walter and Willie Dixon. I dunno, I think that after the whole civil rights movement, the blues was kind of killed, cause even though there were things like "my girl just dumped me" blues, there wasn't that underlying feeling of oppression any longer, that was at the heart of blues music. But enough with that intellectual crap.

Then after buying a harmonica I went to Parson's to pick up my friend Carolyn, who is really into indie culture and whatnot. We went to Ft. something, to go to this girl Lara's house, who is mad obnoxious. Then we walked to Park Slope and I felt very excluded. I dunno, I'm just tired of all this indie garbage, it's like the people into that scene are just as bad as mainstream culture, just listen to different music and buy cheaper clothes sometimes. Same shit new asshole kind of deal. A lot of people in that scene act like their into art and music just cause they can name names, but if you don't have the talent or the respect for the artists and musicians that paved the way, you're just spitting game.

I'm totally into what Basquiat was trying to do, he saw what was happening to the art world, and how it was becoming just about the money and a search for legitimacy, and he started an effort to kill the monster. He regressed his style to the raw essence of art, just drawing and writing what he thought, laughing at the idiots trying to decipher it, because not everything needs a meaning if it's what you love to do. Would you ask Robert Johnson why he wrote music? No, would you ask Miles Davis where he got his note from? No. People just need to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Uprock/Primal Urges

2005-08-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

This is the Notorious B.I.G. the best rapper in the universe. I think I'm gonna talk a lot about hip hop on this blog, meaning rap, graffiti, b-boying and dj's.

I'm really into old hip hop fashion right now. Like those thick glasses that all the kids up in the ghetto had, and the pants, and the addidas, and the four finger rings. And of course all the fucking chains, it was beautiful. There's a hat store across from my house, so maybe I'll buy a Kangol or something.

I guess I'll start out with a list of my favorite rappers. Cause I'm a loser, leave me alone.

1. Nas
2. Notorious B.I.G.
3. Aesop Rock
4. Chuck D
5. Big Daddy Kane
6. Bigg Jus
7. El-P
8. Kool Keith
9. Method Man
10. GZA

There you have it, pretty cliche but whatever.

So anyways, today my friend and I were talking about what we've always wanted to do to a baby. She's always wanted to just punt one, and I've always wanted to drop one, shake one or throw one. The only reason I've really ever wanted to do it is because society says I can't. This got me to thinking, where did the phrase "you're so cute I could eat you up" come from? What if when we think a baby is cute it's really just our desire to eat them? What if it's human nature to want to eat their children, and it's just been supressed over the years? That would be so weird and we'd all be disgusted with ourselves, but things like that happen all the time, like it's a guy's nature to check out a girl, there's nothing we can do about it really. It's a weird concept, but whatever.

That got me to thinking, I've always wanted to fight an animal. So I'm always being mean to my dog, even though I love him, I want to fight him, just to show dominance. I'll never fight him though, he's my best friend, I'll just keep feeding him.

Enter Harpoon Tokyo Robot Pink Lightning

2005-08-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

Seems simple enough, I'll be completely honest with you I'm really just on this cause I'm a pathetic follower and Gabriella uses it. But I'm down with blogs. Hopefully I do something more constructive with this one than on my livejournal: www.livejournal.com/~__tomb (I mean, not to whore myself out or anything).

Anyway, I'm being gay for a week. My logic is this: if I pretend I'm gay, I won't be bugged by people when I shave my legs. People would just think it's a normal thing to do as a gay person, because they're ignorant. It would probably work cause I'm kind of flamboyant, which is another gay stereotype.

Oh and that's me with the afro, I'm making invitations to this party I hosted that I didn't go to. Pretty weird I guess.

FIRE!