Bird Brain

The talking bird in the cage of the animal shelter said "Hey you there kid!"
And I was like "Who me?
And that bird was like "Yea, you! Come ere'. You look like a smart kid!"
I thought it was a joke so I laughed, especially at it's mafioso voice. It was my first day volunteering at the shelter and I hadn't expected to be looking after birds. So I called back to it "Hey bird! You've been watching too much Saprano's, eh? Someone trained you really good."
This upset it cause it molted some feathers and squawked "What, you ain't never seen no intelligent talkin' bird before, ya chump?"
And then I said a little taken aback "Um ... why are you being a cliched character if you're so intelligent, and, you're like, a bird ... And not even a parrot ... Why are you talking?"
I was so weirded out, but I decided to play along with it. I didn't know much about birds, but I did know some could be trained and are smart enough to have whole conversations. It was just, something was off about this bird ..., especially since it looked like a song bird and I never knew of any song birds that could talk.
The bird then told me in a really cranky voice "Look heres you! I may be a cliche with hows I'm talkin to yous, but by God, I'm a frikken' talkin' bird that ain't no parrot or parrot-likes! That's original right? RIght?! I talk and I'm smart, get over it"
So I say a little perturbed "yea, you're right, that's original and okay you're smart. Okay? Um so, what do you want from me?"
The bird eyes me and squawks "Polly wants a cracker!"
"What?" I say, a little takin' back. "I thought you weren't a parrot and you're suppose to be smart, remember? What, you're a pirate's parrot now? You got bird schizophrenia" I say that to push some buttons, or at least test if there were any buttons to push when it comes to birds.
"Polly want's a fuckin' cracker! They're in that drawer over there you nit wit! Why don't you come heres so you can understand better, chump" the bird said rather viciously.
I take a step back, offended, weirded out even more, and started thinking maybe they've finally, and by "they've" I mean the MAN and his henchmen, maybe they've finally spiked our drinking water with that LSD stuff. Maybe I was dropping acid and, well, forgot I dropped and now I'm in a dream talking to a talking song bird, and it's Saturday and tomorrow I go in for my first day of volunteering at the shelter.
So I told that cranky bird, believing this is all a bad trip and in my head "Look, you're so cliched it's hurting my head. First mafia, and now the classic parrot shtick. You don't have to be rude to me you freaky talking bird. If you want a cracker all you gotta do is ask and I'll get you one. Gosh!"
That bird starts chuckling in a voice that, if I was listening from another room, sounded like he was hacking up a hair ball. "Gosh?!?" It laughed or rather hacked. Oh my god! This kid is killin' me! "Gosh", who says "gosh"? Haha!"
That pissed me off. "You're making fun of me now oh Mr. Polly wants a fuckin' cracker!" I spit back at it, mad at myself for being mad at a stupid talking bird that incidentally was suppose to be intelligent, but it was stupid, and maybe I was stupid too, or high. That thought made me madder.
The bird composed itself, settle it's ruffled feathers and lowered its body closer to the stick on which it was perched "Hey kid, that's whys I told you to come here and by here I mean close. And whens yous gets here, you'll all of a sudden get smarter."
The bird said that so calmly and so authoritatively that I felt a little compelled, but also grumpy "Okay," I said, and edged closer to the bird cage, and it waved it's wing until I was close enough.
The bird then whispers to me "Yea, you smart shit look over there!" It directed it's wing to a cage on the right that I hadn't noticed Beneath the cage was a sign that said "Polly". "Yea" the bird said, "That's Polly and he hasn't eatin' all day. So, get him a fuckin' cracker you stupid human else he'll die and they'll liquidate you; and no, I don't means kill yous, I mean you won't be able to volunteer here anymore!"
I was pissed off, but the bird was right, so I didn't say anything. Besides, it's no fun being out smarted by a bird brain. I gave Polly its crackers. That other bird though, that smart little bird with the foul mouth, it eyed me the whole time. When I finished the job I turned to it and said "You could have said that from the get go!" I gave it the finger and promptly left the room. I could hear it squawking something foul back at me, but blah, I had enough of its antics.

I went home that evening and the next week when I returned to the shelter, the bird was gone, but Polly was there.
"How are you Polly?" I jokingly said, thinking that what went down last week was just the result of a bad trip or something I'd been "recreationally" indulging in.
"You stupid shit" it squawked unintelligently.
And, well, I don't work there anymore.

A Story

A man sits in his living room on a big beat up blue lazy boy. He just arrived home from a day of work and his appearance confirms this - disheveled bushy brown hair, shirt half unbutton half pulled from out of his pants. He doesn't care though. He is content and happy with the world - on the tube his favorite piece of mental oblivion plays itself out in animated glory as the talking cartoon human caricatures act out scenes of comedic air and fluff; in his hand a cool beer sits dripping condensation onto his brown hands. In a lot of ways he is a stereotype of a male come home from work, but in others ways his youth allows him a defining characteristic different from other males that have come before him - he isn't married. His girlfriend lives in a separate home and he is happy with her. They'd been fighting, but the waters are becoming calm again. She had agreed to stay in the city and not go off to where ever. He needed her so much is ached in his heart. Was it love? Possibly, and he didn't want to lose it to that someone else she'd meet and have an affair with if she moved away. He just needed time to tell her how he felt.

This man's quiet contemplation is disturbed by a soft rap on the door. Was it her he thought? No, she didn't knock so soft and curtly. Whoever is at the door knocks again, a little more urgently this time, so he gets up, brushes the invisible crumbs off his lap, and makes his way to the portal of his small apartment.

"Hello sir", says the tiny women revealed behind the door with the thick black rimmed glasses and sharp face. "I represent your girlfriend", she purrs, narrowing her eyes.

The man eyes her, unsure about what's going on and if this is a joke or not. She thrusts out a card to him which he barely manages to catch in his hands. It read "Maddie Carleton, Break-up Attorney, Specializing in civil non-married or common-law breakups between what is commonly called girlfriends and boyfriends in this society." Stupefied he looks up from reading the card and stares at her mouth agape at a loss for what to say and how to interpret this. "Are you for real?" He manages to squeak out.

"As real as the end of your relationship, I assure you sir." She replies as curtly as she had knocked on the door. "Now," she says before he can get a word in "Your girlfriend has hired me to weed through the mundane of this very emotional situation. To put it bluntly sir," she puts her hands on her hips, her briefcase dangling from under her red painted manicured nails "your girlfriend wishes to end all emotional and physical engagements without the possibility of friendship." She slips inside his apartment, beelines to his kitchen, pulls out a chair at his dining room table, places her briefcase on her lap and opens it. She pulls out a small leather book and begins flipping through the pages. "Hmm ..."

"Hey!!" The man stomps after her, leaving his door open. "What do you think you're doing? Who are you?!? You've got to pulling my leg!"

"Aha!" She pips, and stops at a page. "Yes, these are the stipulations your girlfriend has issued you.

"Wait, wait, wait! I've never even heard of a breakup attorney before. This is a sick joke. Are you one of her friends? Why couldn't she just come here and break up with me herself."

"Sir," the woman calmly replies "you girlfriend is currently out of the city. I am allowed certain freedom by law to deal with emotional breakups that may or may not threaten the lives of one of the parties. Sir, you've been classified as a threat, and if you have any doubts, please visit your local law office or court. You will find out more information about people like me if you require our services in the future."



At the door three middle aged women entered. They were all dressed in gray pant suits and wearing heels. The man stared at them with an even more puzzled expression.




"They are highly trained licensed body guards sir. Please don't mess with me or they will promptly hurt you. Now, stipulations." She took one glistening red nail and placed it down on a written item in her book, pushed up her glasses and read. "You are free to sell all the items she has left with you. You may not contact her for she will not contact you. If she sees you she will not talk to you so please don't waste your time doing the same. Ahem, her relatives are free to contact you and you may continue your relationship with them ..."

The man slinks down to the floor on his knees as the attorney talks. Her voices drones out into background noise. He thinks of how content he was with the world and how easily that was lost. Woe, he mused, woe to love! How could she do this, leaving him so abruptly and hiring this attorney here to, to, to do her dirty work! What about the time they had together? Was she really that unhappy? The rage in the man's heart wells up and in a fury-filled moment he lunges at the attorney, hands around her small, frail little neck, tightening until he hears a small but satisfying pop.

The three body guards are on him, and despite their age, they are lithe and fast. They kick him down to the floor, one forces a knee between his shoulder blades, another has her arm around his neck, and the last pulls out a pair of hand cuffs. They cuff him and haul him to a corner where he peers, heavily breathing at the damage he inflicted to the now dead attorney who lay at a sick angle against the table, her leather book on the floor. The body guards stand around him, arms crossed, faces grim, not saying a word. In a feat of wonder, the attorney starts to move, her neck pops back into places. She sits up, fixes her hair, brushes herself off, picks up her book and resumes. The man is sure he'd lost his mind and sinks back against the wall letting her finish her work.

"Sir" she croaks, clears her throat and resumes her husky alto "Your girlfriend has left you her car as payment for this emotionally upsetting treatment. Those representing the law felt this was a good enough payment for your suffering to this sort of treatment." She places her hand on her throat and clears it again. The man stares at her wide-eyed. "I think that is all. Here is a copy of the stipulations, the keys and papers to her car plus a signed and dated document declaring its yours, and sir, here is a receipt that I visited you. Good day."

She rose unsteadily to her feet, cautiously took a few steps before straightening up and trailing out of his apartment with her three towering body guards following close behind her exuding power in a middle-aged female sort of way.

The cuffs on the man's hands fell off the second the women left his apartment. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door and looked out. They had vanished. When he turned around, the cuffs had vanished. He didn't bother to go and see if the documents the attorney left on his kitchen table were still there. Instead he went back to his couch, back to his tv, back to his beer, and tried his best to forget about the whole affair. That night, he succeeded. And when his girlfriend never called him again, he didn't even beat an eyelash.

Tryptophan

So, recently I've been able to get my paws on this great stuff. Tryptophan is an amino acid made by organisms as a precursor to serotonin and niacin (those wonderful B vitamins). In other words, you need this stuff to feel happy-pappy-cappy, content-ta-mament and invigorated-macated.

Woe though, this stuff has a history of misinformation and stupidity since it got banned in 1990. What's silly, is that the reason it got banned was from a tainted shipment that got people sick. The company owned up and said that they did not harvest the stuff properly leading to contamination (look I'm not going to break it all down, you can read more about it from this link here:). Unfortunately some people got sick and were killed by this tainted shipment. This opened the flood gates for stupidity and greed. The FDA subsequently banned the stuff in the US, and other countries followed suit like silly ol' pawns. Thankfully sanity resettled and now people can sell it and buy it over the counter again (1990-2002); although you'd probably be hard pressed to readily find it in a typical store.

Well, since I've already established that tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin, the stuff helps people to deal with their depression and anxiety and PMS. Even better, it is ridiculously cheap. Much cheaper and safer than the pharmaceuticals. But, the politics of greed have stepped in, and that twelve year ban did a lot of harm stemming from one company's tragic err. In the 90's, all that was left for the depression stricken masses to help boost their serotonin were pills like Prozac and what not - the reason I feel why white kids in the "Prozac" generation are shooting up their schools, and, now that they are old enough, their universities; and also why Black kids and other nonwhite groups are so fuckin' delusional to how society fucks them up the ass everyday like a prison bitch (matter of fact they bend over and spread their cheeks willingly but yet don't call being fucked up the arse as being fucked up the arse). I mean denial is powerful, but so is the so-so feeling inducingness of anti-depression drugs.

Oh, it gets worse! Those so called antidepression pills seem to really do nothing for erasing depression in people unless they are severly depressed. See article linked here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.medicalresearch?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

So, what's the deal, yo? Tryptophan isn't banned anymore maybe cause stocks in antidepression pills on the market now will soon plummet??? Cause I know this info was known in 2002. It take time for research to be peer reviewed and published.


Anywho, I started taking L-trpytophan recently and it has been great stuff. Got me through one of the most nerve wracking days of my life so far!! Buy some and try it!!!

Trying to make what's fake seem real

It has been many years since I've reflected on the topic of natural hair and women of color or afros; and, for just as long I've been trying to free myself from the constraints of adding chemicals to my hair. At first it was to empower myself and curiosity of wanting to know what kind of curly hair type I have. It's funny, you are unconsciously taught that in order to be a Black woman and wear your hair in an afro it has to be an "acceptable" natural hair type. I was curious to see if my hair fit under "acceptable". As the years went by I started to see more shaved heads and more broad spectrum Black women with natural "curly" hair ranging from very very loose curly afros to very very tightly curled afros.

I decided, okay I need to let go of the relaxer cause I was feeling very phony and my hair was breaking off - a sign that curly hair don't need such abuse. So I stopped, had all my relaxed hair cut and then totally copped out. It felt bizarre. So I went and got my hair texturized, which is a nice way of saying "mildly relaxed". I felt more comfortable, but a nagging voice raged in the back of my head "hey girl, you know your mind is still shackled".

I was puzzled. I obviously thought women with afros were beautiful and they appealed to me more than Black women who did not have afros. What in the choock was stopping me? Was it the desire to not have short hair? Partly. What else though? It was something stronger. Something much much stronger, strong enough for me, who tries to live a no " harmful chemical" lifestyle (from food, to beauty products, etc ...), to put harmful caustic chemicals on my scalp once a month-every three months and have it absorb into said scalp through pores and do all sorts of unspeakable nastiness.

Here's the low down:

I have never known my hair in its natural state.

That's a heavy statement which transcends ideals of beauty. I've never known my hair to be anything other than chemically choked. As far back as I can remember I've always had relaxed hair. I can just close my eyes and hear my mother say "come on, time to relax your hair, it needs to be done." It was as if she were trying to hide a shameful secret that would rue my life. The act of hiding it was what actually did the ruing though. My whole construct of "me" has never involved my face + natural hair. So when I finally did have natural hair, and very short too, I was shocked to the bones. The person I saw in the mirror was not the me I was used to and comfortable with; infact part of me said it wasn't me at all. Oh no. The me in the mirror looked strange to me even if she didn't look strange to others.

The image you have of yourself in your mind is very powerful. If you live in a society that forces your mothers and fathers to teach you to look at your natural hair as something that must be chemical bombed in order to be beautiful, normal, professional, pretty, controllable/manageable; then if you are suddenly left staring at yourself in the mirror with natural hair you will feel a powerful since of dis-ease. Members in society who know how you looked before will respond to you in such an intense way. The afro is a thing of scorn, mystery. It is a "trend". Some women who rock one do so because they don't see it as their normal selves, but rather as their trendy selves, or that they're giving their "hair" a break and that soon they'll be back relaxing again.

Ugh!

How can I live as natural as possible if I can only envision myself as beautiful and normal with a relaxer. What the bleep am I gonna do if the world ended and the expiration dates on the all the boxes of relaxers have expired? I don't wish to wait until then to get my shit together. Tina Turner be damned in Beyond Thunder Dome. That bitch character had to be wearing a wig, fuck it. There ain't no relaxers in the wastes of the Australian post apocalyptic desert. And I didn't want to cop out again and loc my hair or turn to acceptable "curly" weaves or wigs and crap or have it braided or twisted up forever (I mean, I don't mind all of said things. I love getting my hair braided and twisted and I have a lot of respect for locs, but I always like choosing the harder path - an afro). Hells naw.

It has taken me three years since the day I first went completely natural to finally be comfortable with a me with natural hair. So I've been growing my hair natural again and plan to chop the texturized chemically mess off. I know I still have some kinks to work out (quite a lot in fact), but hey, I'm envisioning myself with a beautiful tightly curled afro because hey, that's my hair! It's what I've been born with and will have until the day I die. I can hate the world or I can embrace myself. So I've embraced myself (my middle still flies up whenever I see a globe though).




So, after coming to that epiphany, with the help of a little inspiration, I've decided to go natural again and stay that way.




www.anitagrant.com for some hair products that show afro hair love

The Natural Health Low Down

This is a series of posts in which I shall invest my time. I suppose for starters I'll dig into the magic of Tumeric/Turmeric.

Good ol' tumeric, as I've grown up to call it. This stuff is what makes curry so yellow. Known for it's anti-inflammatory properties, it is highly touted as a supplement for those suffering from arthritis to ingest, break down, and get all unarthritis-ee.

I personally like it for what it does for the skin. This stuff is a gold mine for black skin types. It is good for getting rid of dark spots without harmful as well as dark skin hating bleach (damn you bleach! I want toned skin that isn't gonna make my face lighter than the rest of mah body!)Taking it orally and applying it topically, tumeric is one of the main beauty products in my repetoire. I'd say the stuff makes your glow like a bronzed fire ... *dreamy eyes*

Tumeric Mask

What is does: clears pores, gets rid of dark spots, tones, sticks its tongue out to bleach and goes "Meh!!" Back tah Black beauty product hell with ya. "F" hydroquinone or whatever that crap is.

Whatcha need:

• Powdered Green Clay
• Tumeric
• Apple Cider vinegar (with mother - a type of bacteria)/water
• Aloe Gel (for the moisture)
• Funky love

So basically dole out the green clay powder in a cup. About half a cup or however much you want to make. Add 2 teaspoons, or more depending on how strong of a concotion you want to make, and blend. Add enough apple cider so that the mixture is a nice liquidy paste. Squirt in some aloe gel and keep on mixing. Apply to face and let dry. As a caution, tumeric is tends to stain, albeit not permenantly. Wash off (of course). Repeat once a day, twice, or however often you want. I recommend 1-2 times a day for the best benefits. Store your leftover stuff in the fridge. You should have enough to last you for quite a long time depending on how frequently you use it.

As for stuffing you face with tumeric, you can take pills or add it to your food. In addition to keeping your skin looking great and your joint unarthritis-ee, this stuff is purported to increase longevity.

Who knew diving off a diving board could make you a comedian?

My god! Your face! Apparently Olympic Diving can make even the most stern or statuesque of faces look hilariously funny. Damn those people with cameras and their time freezing capabilities! Let's hope none of these folk become politicians! Ooooh the smear-campaign fodder these would be.

http://english.pravda.ru/photo/report/diving-2512

Oh so cute...

Wow... Just wow...I want one of these. It brings university memories of people singing that "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road" song and boy did it stink to high heavens.









http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2616729.html?menu=news.quirkies.badtaste