Pink Thunder

Special Message for Whoever Keeps Calling Me

From a blocked caller id and not saying anything:

I always find out who it is.

Yes, there are a couple of you out there who have had your emails put on auto-delete and your phone number blocked from my home phone.

You know who you are and why that was necessary and healthy.

Whoever it is, we are much too grown for this particular game. We ain't in junior high no more. I can't promise you that I will like, appreciate or respond at all to whatever it is you long to say. But I can listen.

Man up, spit it out and get whatever it is off your chest so we can both figure out how to move forward.

For pete's sake...

Talkin' Bout Black Hair

I have some thoughts I'm collecting about my switch to locs from braids. But I am not ready to share them yet. In the meantime, My cousin CC Stinson of CCSquared Productions is in this movie and the trailer. It's about what African-Americans call "natural hair". I told you... it's a complicated, political and emotional issue. Here's a clip from the upcoming documentary:

New Growth Trailer 1

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Talking about What I Do

For those of you have no idea what I'm up to during the daytime, check out this video. I answer some questions about emerging trends in online technology and politics and also wave my hands around a lot to demonstrate how the internets work. Enjoy. And: thanks IPDI.

How to Board a U.S. Plane Without a Gov't ID

So my driver's license was stolen or lost or something while I was visiting my brother in Ft. Lauderdale. This is not a huge deal since my brother did the driving in FL and I don't need to drive very much in DC. However, I did need to board a plane to get back home. Now with no gov't issued and no picture i.d. at all. Yikes. There was some panicking and calling around although I figured -- hey, this kind of thing must happen all the time. They must have figured out a way to do this.

Both the TSA and JetBlue told me what to do. Which was to show up as is and just be as straightforward as possible with everyone about my situation. I would be selected for special screening. And I was. My strategy whenever confronted with a large bureaucracy is to acknowledge and respect the power over my life's course that each individual member of the bureaucracy has. They know the system. They are the system. Each person has the power to help you or hurt you while you are in their circle of influence.

Honesty helps -- they've heard any lies you might think of before. A clear and sincere willingness to follow all instructions helps. Using terms like "Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir" helps more than you can imagine. It's important not to try and be funny or make a joke until the other person does lest you seem disrespectful. That said, smiling (when appropriate) helps. People in a bureaucracy rarely make a lot of money and so they derive satisfaction from the exercise of their considerable power. My goal is to trigger a positive influence of that power rather than a negative one.

I turned on the big brown puppy eyes of helplessness a couple of times and almost had to start crying at one point when a man in a uniform refused to accept that I had no picture id of any kind. That was in front of the x-ray machines. I had to go through the special machine that blows puffs of air on you and my carry-ons were searched.

That was the worst of it though. I got to the airport earlier than normal in case I was detained, interrogated and slapped around a little in a back room before my flight. I was a little worried about checking my bag as my collapsible sword the Pearl was in there. My bag handle is a bit stiff now and almost broken and there was a note saying that my bag had been searched. 

I was just glad my luggage hadn't been confiscated and possibly blown up in the Ft Lauderdale airport parking lot. Anyway, just another adventure. In fact, it was really nice how sympathetic and understanding almost everyone was from the TSA and JetBlue people on the phone to the security people at the airport. This might not have been the case in some other countries where they take their bureaucracy a little more seriously like France for example. Americans are really good people and even though the entire situation gives me some concerns about the level of security in this country (the TSA never asked for my name on the phone for example), I am re-assured that 9/11 has not changed us such that we are truly suspicious of each other.

Happy Christma-Hanu-Kwanzaa!!!

As you may know, from 4-6th grades, I went to a public school that was about 70% Jewish. Montgomery County MD was somewhat more segregated and somewhat less diverse back then.

For all 3 years, I was on the school choir. Every year, we had a holiday assembly as most schools do. Now that America is becoming more diverse, these types of events have really become true multi-cultural extravaganzas in some places. I'm actually sorry that I never got to see a holiday assembly while my mom was still a school administrator in the Mount Pleasant/Adams-Morgan area in DC. The students at her school came from 40 different countries! She really got into the international aspect of it. It always sounded so cool.

No, life was simpler then, just Christmas and Hanukkah. We didn't actually celebrate Kwanzaa as a kid though my parents did contemplate it seriously. My father actually met the founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Karenga, at a conference and was inspired. Why we didn't take up Kwanzaa is a whole other festive holiday story, though.

No let's talk about my relationship with Chrismukkah. I knew a little bit about it from my old school, but back there, the Jewish kids mostly tried to fly under the radar and not get picked on. Here at my new school, the Jewish kids were out, loud and proud.

One day, a group of mommies came to school and made latkes right there in our classroom with a hot plate and something I'd never seen before called a Cuisinart. We also played dreidel with gold chocolate coins. We got told the story about the temple and the candles and the miracle. It was sort of a sad story, mostly, but I could relate to the message of faith and determination. Eight days of gifts, too! I was knocked out. I was like -- sign me up. Hanukkah sounds great. If you can still have a Christmas tree. And egg nog (though nowadays, I'm all about the soy nog).

Back to the choir. For the assembly, there was a celebration of both Christmas and Hanukkah. It wasn't fashionable to be into Kwanzaa yet. We generally sang a couple of Baby Jesus-free songs (not so much Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night as much as Jingle Bells, Silver Bells and Deck the Halls) and the same 2 or 3 Hanukkah songs each year. One of them was truly dirge-like. But after my first rollicking round of O Dreidel!

O Dreidel! Dreidel! Dreidel!
I made it out of clay
And when it's dry and ready
O Dreidel I will play!

I said something dumb like -- wow that's a pretty good Hanukkah carol! Which is when I painfully learned there are Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs. It took some personal PR but most kids were talking to me again by lunchtime.

I admit that I really liked the O Dreidel song and could easily imagine shopping happily to it. They never play it in stores, however, or on tv. I don't think I've heard it since I was a kid. But now I hear there's Radio Hanukkah on XM -- Channel 108! I have XM Radio via DirecTV and Tivo so I am hoping that it's available. I think it's a nice idea to have more diversity. There are actually a lot of different holidays at this time so maybe in coming years we'll see more festive choices. I also like listening to the salsa and reggae station around this time for alternative holiday songs. Try it out...

New Study on the Brain and the Spirit

"A Neuroscientific Look at Speaking in Tongues". In the NYTimes:

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania took brain images of five women while they spoke in tongues and found that their frontal lobes — the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do — were relatively quiet, as were the language centers. The regions involved in maintaining self-consciousness were active. The women were not in blind trances, and it was unclear which region was driving the behavior.

[...]The new findings contrasted sharply with images taken of other spiritually inspired mental states like meditation, which is often a highly focused mental exercise, activating the frontal lobes.

I've never done anything even close to speaking in tongues, though a cousin of mine who is a very powerfully spiritual person and a good friend has sheepishly told me a bit about her experiences with this in the past. I've never seen this phenomenon in person however. When she prays, the feeling in the room and around her literally changes. You get used to it.

It will be interesting to see what we learn about the human spirit and its relationship to the universal divine as science advances. There's actually been quite a bit of medical  and scientific research into meditation but not very much at all in speaking in tongues for example to my knowledge. Have you seen that movie What the Bleep Do I Know?

AKA Cool People

A friend of mine (shout out to ThudFactor) recently shared with me a blog that his friend has setup for teens who have gotten into some trouble and are trying to turn a new corner through a program called CrossRoads.

In college, I turned down a lucrative CIA internship (boy they really wanted me! and actually I could have used the $$$) my sophomore year to spend 3 summers working  with the homeless kids' summer program at Martha's Table in D.C. What I paid in school loans doesn't even come close to what I gained hanging out with those bad-ass kids. D.C. was different then. Before we walked the kids to Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park after lunch, I slipped a ziploc bag and surgical gloves into my back pocket to pick up needles and condoms. One time, a police officer took another counselor and me aside and told me we had to get the kids out of the park because they'd discovered a man's body in a quiet shady corner. Time to head back to the Table!

Both my mom and another family friend have worked with teens growing up in difficult circumstances. I've never worked with teens really so I can only imagine how challenging that is. Both of them are super-kind, super-smart -- and tougher than they look. I think Crossroads may even be the program my family friend (who's like an unofficial aunt) has worked with -- it's connected to D.C. public schools. Sort of.

It's nice to watch things change for the better. I'm willing to bet that if you stick with this blog, you might be able to watch a few people change for the better...

Quantum Computing...Quantum Thought

What an interesting time we are living in. When I remember the stories my father told me about growing up -- he used to study as a child in the 1930s by candlelight! -- and the ones my mother's mother (10 years his senior) tells me now, I wonder at how much innovation we will see over our lifetimes. For all the perils we face from climate change, disease and war, there is the potential to see amazing human achievement sooner than we imagine. The grandparents of Generaration X could scarcely imagine the tools we take for granted today like microwaves and hybrid cars and laptops and bluetooth cellphones and talking GPS in cars. One of my greatest delights was watching my grandmother's face when she saw my Roomba robot vacuum running around my dining room for the first time. "Oh!" she said. "Look at it go!" Now she has her own hot little red Roomba. What surprises await us using inventions like teleportation of both light and matter to facilitate quantum computing! I can't wait!

Fall Shoes

Life is so very serious right now. There are some serious things that happened a year or five years ago. Some serious things are happening now. And some serious problems are on the horizon.

Thus is it all the more important for me to share with you one of my favorite, not very serious blogs -- Manolo the ShoeBlogger. This man is obsessed like many men -- gay and stright -- with women's shoes. Why are men so interested in women's feet? In my early 20s, I asked many men this question until I achieved what felt like an answer. Many answers were incoherent or evasive at best. However,  I broke a few down and achieved my answer (at least regarding the fascination of straight men. For gay men, it is the forbidden fruit, I think. That which is so beautiful yet often too tiny to wear).

It is simply the love and fetishization of that which is cute, small and pretty. Women generally have no such interest in men's feet except that they be appropriately shod. And preferably, ahem, big.

Anyway, for the gals and those with foot fetishes, my trend prediction for Fall 2006 so far via Manolo and recent window shopping is:

• rounded toes (whew! --those tapered toes can be rough),
• lots of ballet flats,
• metallic turns to glitter,
• fur styles,
• peep toe forties pumps.

So don't say no one warned you. That's all for today's news in shoes!

Someone Even Crazier Than Me!

I am loving Ze Frank. Soooo funny. Enjoy.

The site

The show

Sadly not accessible in YouTube...