And we accept that. We accept sucky ass government officials who have no one’s best interests at heart.

And we accept that. We accept sucky ass government officials who have no one’s best interests at heart.
One moment in Jordan Cline’s life tears his entire family apart. He and his cousin Travis have been in a tragic accident. All three of the car’s occupants were terribly injured but what happened? Jordan may go to prison for thirty years because although he says that he was not driving all of the witnesses and all of the evidence point directly towards Jordy. And no one believes him except for his mother. Of course, mother’s never want to believe that their children are capable of terrible things.
Faultlines takes us along for the wild ride that Jordan and his mother’s life are on after the accident. Was Jordan drinking and driving? If he wasn’t then why is the town hero Officer Huck out to destroy Jordan’s life? Barbara Taylor Sissal has written a mystery that keeps the reader guessing the entire time.
I loved Faultlines, the way that it unfolds kept me engaged and rooting for Jordy and Sandy. I kept wanting him to be innocent even when all of the signs pointed to his guilt. Oh and the climax… I DID NOT see THAT climax coming. I was literally sitting there staring at the book with my mouth wide open.
Also, That small town attitude that the story describes is XACTLY why I love living in the city. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I gave this story 4 stars and would gladly read another book from this author.
Tomorrow is Independence Day and already my timeline is full of the Uber Woke People throwing shade at other people for celebrating it the same way they crawl out of their coffers for every other holiday and it’s actually quite tiring.
On a more serious note, it is totally possible to educate someone without making them feel like shit. When you create memes and posts that judge people for celebrating a holiday that they’ve chosen to celebrate your information gets lots in the negativity of it all. At that point you’re not really trying to educate. You’re moreso trying to shame someone for their happiness and as my mother in law would say “You need to get you some business.”
Black people have enough crap to deal with and being judged for enjoying themselves by people of the same hue is just something they could totally live without. We deserve every chance at happy we can get and if we want to get that by wearing red, white, and blue and lighting some sparklers with our families then let us and remember to mind your damn mother fucking business bitch.
If you google the phrase “why I went natural” you will find 100s of women of color giving you all sorts of reasons from the fact that the perm never took, to the fact that it burned, or in some cases thinned many a woman’s hair to nothingness. Those snatchback ponytails that many people make fun of are in direct correlation to the thinning effect of lye and no lye perms alike.
So those are some of the reasons why I went natural. Now I only have to see my stylist every 5-6 weeks to retighten my sisterlocks and for the most part I don’t have to deal with any of the reasons I’ve listed above.
My little brother is in jail. Not the baby because he has been playing Jail Monopoly since he was fourteen and I shouldn’t say that I wrote him off but *shrugs* I kinda did. This brother though, I just knew that he was going to make it. He was/is this close -> <- to making it and I’ve done something that I don’t do; recommended him for a job with a friend who has pretty much guaranteed him a career with benefits including paying for him to get a trade where he would/could be set for life. Which he would be starting the second he graduates from high school in May.
I normally don’t do that because honestly, my brothers be tripping. Anger/inconsistency/Laziness/ etc etc. Things too often associated with the job habits of dudes from the hood. Even though my mom took us out of the hood a long ass time ago. But, Not this brother. This one is goofy. Drives you crazy with talking way too damn much, knowing everything in typical teenage fashion, and being a follower. I’ve told my mom in the past that she should send him somewhere. He could make it if he went somewhere far away from bad influences. Especially my other brothers who do things with him that he can’t handle. He might occasionally act like he’s from Newark but this child is straight up Drake in Degrassi corny. Hell he was born in Woodbine NJ. As small town country as one can get.
Of course, she didn’t. What mom really wants to send her child far away? Especially when he’s a follower who could get into all sorts of things without proper supervision. So this weekend to my utter shock this lame has landed himself in jail with multiple charges of breaking and entering. Except this loser really didn’t do any of those things. This idiot is only guilty of the last two charges, pawning other people’s shit and lying on a pawn form.
His “friends” did the crime and ol lame o is more than likely going to do the time. Even if he doesn’t go to jail he’s probably not hire-able for that nice job, probably won’t be able to go to college, which was his other option, probably now on the same track as the rest of my brothers. I know that that whole sentence is a slippery slope BUT it is also what happens in my experience. Now, I could talk about how if he were a white kid and we had money these charges would go away pretty easily. He’s getting ready to graduate from high school for christ’s sake. He’s a teenage idiot doing stupid teenage things. BUT again in my experience this isn’t what is destined to happen for him. No one really cares about messing up the rest of teens from the hood’s lives.
I’m feeling all of the emotions right now- anger, grief, frustration, sadness, and mostly annoyance. Because while the system IS setup in a way where brown boys are more likely to do prison time for petty crimes, my loser of a brother has no real reason to even be in this situation.
Why wasn’t he at home doing his homework or something? Were there no football games happening at his school for him to go and be cute at while drinking Gatorade, eating cheese fries, and macking on girls his age?
He didn’t need to pawn other people’s crap. My parents provide very handsomely for this idiot including letting him drive my mom’s shiny black pathfinder as if it’s his own. He has a nice house with two parents with a fully stocked fridge and all of the electronics that one would want. He has multiple adult siblings who want to see him thrive so they give him money for suede shoes for his prom, homecoming and anything else he could want AND if he could just go to work with my dad and not get on his last damn nerve he could have a job that pays too well for a barely trained worker. But ALAS B-Rad would rather hang with the wrong people and do the wrong things so now my mom is yet again crying over another idiotic ass black boy guilty of doing things that he shouldn’t do for no other reason than
1: He’s lame.
2: He wants to.
3: He thinks that the system is against him and he has nothing to lose and I want to tell him that yes it is, but also No it ain’t.
I don’t know why I watch movies or read books where people put themselves at risk, I’m so judgmental. My empathy ends where the character’s stupidity begins. I feel like I need to conquer this in order to be a better writer. Without risk the story is boring. The same can be said for the opposite, if there is too much risk, or the character never wins, the story becomes overwhelming and boring.
SO ANYWAY, This post is about the stupidness that is The Shallows. I live blogged this so bare with me as I type my thoughts.
Overall I appreciated a few things about this movie but for me the premise is weak. I don’t see any good reason for her to have been out there in the first place but then again, I don’t have the privilege of being that willy nilly with my life. I’d give it 3 Stars.
IDK about you but I am pass the point of tired of:
this election
racism
sexism
xenophobia
terrorism
all of it
Like seriously as a world I think we should take the whole batch of it and dump it into the trash. Then we should light it all on fire and go have a cook out.
I mean really, 99.9919892 of us already know who we’re voting for. We knew as soon as the nominees were announced. And when the people we really wanted to win the nomination didn’t win, we knew which one of the second string quarterbacks we were voting for. SO then why as a country do we continue to waste money, time, emotions, and brain cells over this popularity contest of a farce of an election?
Nope I’m not saying your vote doesn’t count. I’m saying arguing over which contestant (cause it is a damn contest) is the best contestant via the internet for fifty eleven months, unfriending your grandma, and being kicked off of your soccer team just doesn’t cause any forward motion for our country’s real concerns.
Like I am this close:
to quitting the internet until we have “chosen” a president. Seriously what’s the point of losing friends over people who secretly hang out and shoot golf together on the weekends while they separate the rest of the country for fun Monday-Friday.
And as for all of the rest of it it is; 2016. Two thousand and sixteen years post the year of most of y’alls Lord and Savior and we are really wasting time, money, and brain cells practicing isms. I’m not saying we need to hold hands and sway to Kumbaya but maybe we should. AKA Get it together, Mind Your Own Business, and Realize that you and your people are no better than anyone else and their people.
Until Next Time,
Live Happy
Oh and usually I welcome comments and critiques but I am no more interested in arguing about politics than I am in buying a $2 Make America Great Again T-Shirt. #Silliness
So I just posted a selfie on IG and when I looked at it I realized how large my lips were. Funny thing: I have never thought that my lips were large. I’ve never paid them any attention except to apply some Chapstick. If you know me you know lipstick is such a rare occasion that I don’t even own any.
Anyways, I never thought of how large my lips were until there was this huge racist uproar on MAC Cosmetics IG. And even then I didn’t say anything. I guess I just sort of absorbed it.
That selfie made me think of all of the parts of my body that I’ve thought were too much. And when exactly that happened, like my breasts… They became too large when it was cooler to have smaller perky breasts. Anything larger than a hand full was too much. That’s what the media has shown us for so long. Until getting larger boobs became a thing. Even then the media loves those perky fake ones over us heavy full breasted girls.
I know I know you’re like Adrien what are you talking about but this is how women especially black women begin to internalize hatred for aspects of themselves. I don’t hate my lips but now I know that they’re large. *shrugs* Now I know they match my Michael Jackson Nose.
Also, I keep seeing my “social media friends” mention how they are so over the talk about racism and this and that and why don’t black people get over things that happened in the past.
Sidebar: Acknowledge your privilege. You can turn it off.
But the reason we can’t just get over it, whatever IT is, is because the past is today. It’s because being a black woman in America means that at any given moment a portion of your body can become unacceptable, too much, and ugly while it is lauded and applauded after someone else purchases it.
edit
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When you write a whole blog post to a white mother of a black child and try to minimize her fear for her child because she’s white you’re starting to hop over the fence into the territory of those you so desperately proclaim to be better than.
Sandra Bullock has every right to fear for her child as much as any black mother does. As much as any mother does. That’s what mothers do best, Fear. For which they then try to protect.
In fact isn’t it fair to say that the two fears aren’t really comparable? Her fear is not the same as ours, it’s a different type of fear because she only knows what the media says. What she’s seen in movies, watched on TV, heard on the radio. All of which serve as strong forces of silencing the voices of black people and their plight. So she can’t possibly know what all she has to fear. Or at least that’s the assumption that I make when I try to put myself in her shoes.
You seek to minimize the importance of her fear by saying oh she wasn’t raised with this fear, hasn’t watched this trauma and abuse first hand in her community, to her brothers, cousins, uncles, etc. As if that doesn’t add a different element that is in fact still; Fear.
Do you ever stop to think what it must be like to know that the world is setup against your child yet have no experience in it? No preparation?
Do we (this collective voice of people sitting behind screens spewing out 650 words anytime anyone else has something to say) not have any empathy?
Some of these posts only serve as more fodder to further skew the focus.
Aren’t we yelling and screaming saying that Black Lives Matter, in hopes that other people will understand that they do? Isn’t this child black?
Does the fact that his mother is white cover him in the blood of White Jesus so that now he does not need to be covered in the blood of hashtags?
Roxane Gay says in Bad Feminist “We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through our difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have the truth stand without a hundred voices clamoring, shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot co-exist.”
Today I urge you to think before you fix your pen to say that someone can’t express their fear because their fear doesn’t look like yours.
1: Using the horrendous massacres of American Citizens to further your antiabortion platform isn’t just immoral, it’s massively insensitive.
2: Doctors performing medical procedures whether for choice, convenience, or to save a mothers life is not equal to or greater than gun violence.
3: If he’s not willing to support these embryos
Even if any of these cases were true his voice is still low man on the totem pole i.e. No uterus no talky out against.