love in other places

how about this new gem of a website  that i’ve recently ucovered … where you can stalk the flyness of mrs. president … i think it’s just a great place to see random candids of black love & presidency.  are those buddhism beads on her wrist?

did yall know about this story below?  i had read about the initial court case but wasn’t aware of the settlement.  are all the facts checked – no.   but my gut checked it as mostly true.  google any thing you read about for yourself and experience the joy of learning and research.  below is something i copied and pasted from an e-mail my auntie sent me.  none of these are my words but i love to share:

Black Author wins The Matrix Copyright Infringement Case
This little known story has met a just conclusion, as Sophia Stewart, African American author of The Matrix will finally receive her just due from the copyright infringement of her original work!!!
A six-year dispute has ended involving Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Stewart’s allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were received and acknowledged by the Central District of California, Judge Margaret Morrow presiding.
Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will soon receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Hollywood , as the gross receipts of both films and their sequels total over 2.5 billion dollars.
Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works..
According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.’ These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been ‘often used during preparation of the motion pictures.’  The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success.
Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers.  One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings are open to her story.
Others are suspicious and mocking. ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ said Stewart in a phone interview last week, ‘I always knew what was true.’
Some fans, are unaware of the case or they question its legitimacy, due to the fact that it has received little to no media coverage. Though the case was not made public until October of 2003, Stewart has her own explanation, as quoted at aghettotymz.com:
‘The reason you have not seen any of this in the media is because Warner Brothers parent company is AOL-Time Warner…. this GIANT owns 95 percent of the media… let me give you a clue as to what they own in the media business… New York Times papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN news, Extra, Celebrity Justice, Entertainment Tonight, HBO, New Line Cinema, DreamWorks, Newsweek, Village Roadshow and many, many more! They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing my case for years.’
Fans who have taken Stewart’s allegations seriously, have found eerie mythological parallels, which seem significant in a case that revolves around the highly metaphorical and symbolic Matrix series. Sophia, the Greek goddess of wisdom has been referenced many times in speculation about Stewart. In one book about the Goddess Sophia, it reads, ‘The black goddess is the mistress of web creation spun in her divine matrix.’
Although there have been outside implications as to racial injustice (Stewart is African American), she does not feel that this is the case. ‘This is all about the Benjamins,’ said Stewart. ‘It’s not about money with me. It’s about justice.’
Stewart’s future plans involve a record label, entitled Popsilk Records, and a motion picture production company, All Eyez On Me, in reference to God.  ‘I wrote The Third Eye to wake people up, to remind them why God put them here. There’s more to life than money,’ said Stewart. ‘My whole to the world is about God and good and about choice, about spirituality over ‘technocracy’.’
If Stewart represents spirituality, then she truly has prevailed over the ‘technocracy’ represented in both the Terminator and the Matrix, and now, ironically, by their supposed creators.
Stewart is currently having discussions with CBS about a possible exclusive story and has several media engagements in the near future to nationally publicize her victory. June 13th 2004. Sophia Stewart’s press release read: ‘The Matrix & Terminator movie franchises have made world history and have ultimately changed the way people view movies and how Hollywood does business, yet the real truth about the creator and creation of these films continue to elude the masses because the hidden secret of the matter is that these films were created and written by a Black woman…a Black woman named Sophia Stewart. But Hollywood does not want you to know this fact simply because it would change history. Also it would encourage our Black children to realize a dream and that is…nothing is impossible for them to achieve!’
Greg Thomas, Editor

in my very informal buddhist studies (yes i believe in Jesus Christ – what does that have to do with it?) a wonderful new concept was revealed to me.  ultimately, yes, i believe it was Jesus who revealed it.  anywho … as  i was listening to a zen podcast by my favorite buddhist lecturer, gil fronsdal, he said that ‘we are not our thoughts.’  most people take this to mean … oh, ok, i’m not bad if i have mean thoughts.  yes, absolutely that is one aspect of his true statement.  and the tracking of our thoughts is of course, central to the buddhist concept of mindfulness and that was the context gil was putting it in.  but what i immediately thought of was how similar that phrase is to ‘we are [not] what we eat.’  then … in the way my brain usually works i started to compare the brain to the digestive track. 

and i started to realize that the brain AUTO-produces thoughts the way our intestines auto-digest our food and produce sh*t.  and the skies opened up … and i saw the light.

my thoughts are just the sh*t of my brains!  so that night i sat and just ‘watched’ my brain produce thoughts … i realized that the majority of my thoughts were not consciously produced – meaning i did not knowingly prepare the thoughts or create them.  they just kept shooting out into my mind automatically and constantly.    i had multiple levels of consciousness … and the consciousness that was watching my thoughts actually had no opinion about the crap my brain was auto-producing … the observer in me was just like, ok that’s the 32nd time you’ve thought about clowns, and that was it.  observation/tracking/mindfulness done.  it’s a great exercise and it helps you divorce your identity from your thoughts.

so, it’s still hard to control thoughts and even track them … but the practice & the goal is oh so worthy.  i can look at a thought and say, it’s just that – a thought – it has no greater significance.  the brain has to produce thoughts – that’s its job.  just like the stomach has to produce sh*t.  the brain just takes all the stimuli from the internal and external environment, it takes the belief system you’ve created, it takes your personal history and it just sh*ts out doo doo.  

yay!  it’s not you!  it’s just a natural, bodily function.  you can think one thing.  and do anything you want.  so love your thoughts and who you really are at the same time.

not as easy as it sounds.  this is a picture of an actual flyer for an actual party someone actually attempted to throw in detroit circa 2007.  i am indeed a libra.  and i have light skin.   but i am disgusted by all color complected arguments.  as well as those related to hair.   but this is actually … the world we live in.  people do things like this.  people think things like this.  and they think it’s ok.  it’s called … self-hatred.  it’s why people say dumb things to me about the way i look.  or make assumptions about what kind of person i am.  it’s what makes dark chocolate little girls cry in bathrooms at school.  or late at night when the day is done and everyone they have interacted with has told them they aren’t pretty enough, cute enough, special enough, or sparkly enough.  it’s what makes people turn ugly.  it’s what makes people turn against each other.  but go on … keep hunting redbones, keep stroking baby girl’s hair telling her it’s so GOOD … keep on hating … cuz only when you love your own skin will you leave everyone else’s alone.  happy black history month snitches!

i retract every bad thing i ever said about soulja boy.  he might be a melodic genius.  you can hate me along with soulja … we don’t care.  i like his funny songs.  i like how he says “all the way … turned up” … i like the melodies he puts together.  i don’t care if it’s simple music.  some of hip hop’s earliest releases were simple …  his songs make me dance and smile while i do it and they makes me sing along.  period.  and i am really trying to constantly let go of all judgement.  so i rebuke the root’s non-black history list – they put together a slide show of historical black public figures whom they would like to remove from our history … if it’s a joke then fine, it’s funny!  but i think they were kinda serious  and that is judgemental and elitist and it’s just plain … off-balance.  who puts omarosa, karrin stephans, soulja boy … and idi amin on the same level???   and even then … AGAIN … who are we to judge idi amin?  or anyone else for that matter?

my new favorite blog … i love this post … giggle … does that make me crazy … just like you?

Matthew 6:16-18 “Moreover when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret …”

hip hop is officially middle aged.  some say it has died … not just cuz of that nas album but more recent events such as the taping of the remixed? new? we are the world recording.  this hip hop blog as well as this one have shut down their sites as a result of that debacle.  you can watch it for yourself and decide.  so while those two blogs and several of my good friends have labeled this the death of hip hop … i’m just citing it as a travesty.  a clusterf*ck to be sure and corny as all get out.  i think it would be more accurate to say that hip hop is full of oldheads tryna re-boost their careers and not fully cognizant of what is truly cool anymore.  i don’t go so far as to call it the death of hip hop just because wyclef, snoop, wayne, busta, kanye and many others showed their age.  it’s we are the world!  i found it corny in 1985 or whenever they did the original.  i mean i got it and i support (ed) the idea but it’s still corny.  and it was just a matter of time before hip hop got conscripted into the mainstream.  if there was gonna be a rap on we are the world .. it was gonna be corny.  and so it was.  tell those 37 year old rappers … their time to hang it up … is now.  buy an oil rig … like baby!  LOL ……………. where is the love part?  well …. for those of us who came up during a time when hip hop acts couldn’t even get a major venue … i aint mad that some of hip hop is mainstream and in the mass public sphere.  i aint mad that as a genre it has achieved a spot on that corny song, we are the world.  i find love in the fact that these rappers have lived to see 35 (meth) and 37 (snoop) and even 42 (kane) … i am totally guessing on the ages but i know them nuccas is in that ball park.  only 20 people read this anyway (if i get lucky) …

uhh fat tuesday was two days ago.  and i just recently learned what it meant.  ash wednesday was yesterday … and the tuesday that precedes it is designated as ‘fat’ because it’s your last day to GET IT IN … before lent.   i thought fat tuesday was just the name of a bar on south street in philly and the name of something they do during mardi gras.  we are now in lent so if this message came too late.  oh well.  there’s about 38 more days and nights to go for those of us who give up something or add something spiritual.  i’m not telling you what i gave up … yet.  cuz it’s HARD and talking about it just makes me want to quit at giving up.  the end of lent is signified by easter.  i’ma tell you then.  

i heard on the radio the other day that baby aka birdman aka the man who lil wayne kisses on the lips … on a regular basis …

 diversified his business to the point that he bought an oil rig company.  i love that!  that’s the way white people work their money … they invest in NECESSITY industries … they invest in the MEANS OF PRODUCTION not just a product ….  buy the oil rig, not the gas station … buy the team, don’t just play ball … buy SONY, don’t just make an album for them … buy cardboard, don’t just put your name on a perfume … the means not the ends.  cuz the end result is the end of the line.