randomWalks

Habari gani? Umoja. If you’re looking for information on Kwanzaa, you can’t go wrong with the Official Kwanzaa Website.

Drawing life to a close with a transcendentally orgasmic bang, and not a pathetic and god-forsaken whimper, can turn dying into the culmination of one's existence rather than its present messy and protracted anti-climax.

I was surprised to see the degree to which children's television exists to sell toys to children. When you have the attention of that many kids there's a lot of good you can do that doesn't involve the selling of products. But I always got upset when we got more press for the amount of toys that we have for sale as opposed to the educational value of the show. The one thing I was never comfortable with being the host of 'Blue's Clues' is that television in general has too much influence on children. With Blue's Clues we did everything we could to get the kids' attention, and I always felt that was a tremendous amount of responsibility. Luckily we were always so careful that our content is always good.

If a Black Santa can cause this much trouble (“last year there was a dark-complexioned black Santa, and most of the white families got out of line”), imagine a Black Jesus!

If you’re planning to buy a copy of Blu’s Hanging, be sure to get it from the Asian American Writers' Workshop.

Jack Herer for Agriculture, John Sellers for Defense, Bill Nye in Education – this cabinet has my support.

CMJ presents Smashing Peanuts in “A Billy Corgan Christmas”.

Among animal cases received recently by the Animal Control Division of the Fairfax County Police Department:

Fair Oaks District, Centreville Rd., 2300 block, Dec. 7. Animal control was called about a squirrel running inside a residence. When an animal control officer saw the squirrel, it jumped into an open baby grand piano. After the officer started playing the song "All I Want" by the group Toad the Wet Sprocket, the squirrel jumped out of the piano and onto curtains, damaging them. The squirrel then jumped onto the officer's head and pounced onto a couch, where the officer was able to catch it. The officer released the animal outside. Neither the squirrel nor the officer was injured.

She is wearing a baby blue sweat shirt with tiny pink flowers. She is not wearing a coat despite the strong winter chill. She holds her own bag of gasoline, a black one, wrapping the plastic around her bleeding lips and nose. The bag swells and sinks, rising and falling. She holds it as if she were blowing up a party balloon. She giggles. She stumbles. She is 10.

Hey, guy: saw your fucking Jolly Green Giant tee shirt--Ralph the Fake. Thanks. With support from you guys we put The chief into the White House. Now we are going to name 3 or more Supremes and get rid of fuckin gRoe shit and kick the asshole teachers' union to hell and fuck over your social socialitic security and make this one big fucking military camp that will make imperial Rome look small potatoes...again, thanks. Without you and yours, who knows, Gore won but we still lgot in but withoutt you guys he might have really wond!

This is fantastic! Today borrowed blogs borrowed my blogjam blog about Random Walks borrowing my blog about borrowed blogs borrowing my blog from borrowed blogs! Or something. I feel giddy, and just a trifle sick.

Every so often it’s fun to play Guess the Evil Dictator/Sit-Com Character as yourself and see what it comes up with. Just now I was pleased to discover that (apparently due to the birth of my son and my move out of New York) I’m a close match for Mork from Mork and Mindy.

Today I’m watching two webcams to see stuff blow up. The Hoan Bridge Camera is pointing at a condemned bridge in Milwaukee that’s scheduled for demolition, and the Popo volcano webcam is showing a column of smoke (and ash?) rising as high again as the recently-erupted Popocatepetl in Mexico. thanks to lake effect and robotwisdom for the links.

In the Beginning was the Command Line is a short book by Neal Stephenson that's available for download. It considers the evolution of operating systems over the years and is a great read for anyone who wants to know why computers are so damn hard to use and why that's a good thing. Or something. It's free. Read it.

Get ready to play Name that Candybar, a.k.a. Twelve Things I May Never Eat Again.

United Skates of America is a photo essay on New Jersey roller-skating rinks 1976-1979.

W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the great intellectuals of American society, wrote that white people are rewarded for their support of a system that largely does not benefit them - in terms of how much power and wealth is concentrated into the hands of the few. He called this reward, the "psychological wages of whiteness". The ability of white people to think of themselves as better than Black folks, regardless of how poor they are, how many hours they have to work, how their labor makes someone else rich. "I might be poor, but at least I'm not a nigger" is how white identity helps shape a horribly disfigured humanity of hierarchy and punishment in the service of power and wealth. If white people are to work for an end to racial injustice then we must come to understand how the psychological wages of whiteness have (mis)shaped our identity and (de)formed our consciousness. Until white people confront their internalized superiority, the dynamics of racism will be reproduced unconsciously. Becoming conscious of how race operates, one will still make many mistakes and reproduce racism, but at least we can work to undo this and undermine this dynamic. Furthermore, when the internalized impact of white supremacy - of (un)consciously believing that white people are simply better - is confronted by white people, then as bell hooks suggests, new identities can be shaped and we can work to define our own reality.

"Usually, if you wait long enough, someone will ask your question," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explained. How can the only black judge on the court really believe that?

Good digital photography website. thanks, brainlog.