"Have you drugged your kid today?"

Recently, a teacher was just fired from her job because she would not remove a bumper sticker from her car that read, "Have you drugged your kid today?" The sticker is a criticism toward parents and doctors who medicate hyperactive children. The teacher never made a comment about her opinion in class and personally I do not believe she should have been fired. She feels as though it is a violation of her first amendment rights and I agree that as long as she respected her work place, she should have been able to keep her job. Now do I agree with the content of her sticker? Yes and no. Yes because my younger brother is medicated for being hyperactive child and I personally believe that when he is on the medicine he is a different person. The best way to handle hyperactivity is to give children individual activities and tasks that can challenge them because many times "hyperactive" children are just bored and disinterested in what surrounds them. However, this may be difficult and inconvenient for teachers who can not always control hyperactive kids. So medicating for parents can also act as a stress reliever because they don't have to worry about their child acting up throughout the day. If it was my choice I probably would not medicate my child but hope that he would grow out of his hyperactivity.

Above the Rim

Although this subject is very off topic from my previous posts, it is something that has sparked my interests. This past Saturday was the NBA dunk contest and unfortunately I was on the road and unable to catch it. I did however catch the tweets and the most talked about even was Blake Griffin jumping over a Kia. After I heard this, I HAD to youtube the video. Once I saw the video, I was completely and utterly disappointed. I thought he was going to jump through the screen the way that people hyped it up. I can't do it, which is why I suppose I wasn't in the dunk contest but Blake Griffin is 6'10 and him being able to jump over the hood of a Kia which is at most 4 ft tall should not have come to a surprise to anyone. Now if you want to talk about a player full of surprises, I would personally bring Nate Robinson into the conversation. A 5'9 man dunking over Dwight Howard who is 6'11. Griffin having 'hops' was expected and although he hopped over the hood of a car I still have seen other players dunk over the full width of a car. Check out the video below

The Beyonce Minstrel

Above is a picture of Beyonce in a photo shoot where she was paying tribute to Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician and human rights activists. The photo shoot was to celebrate African beauty and involved Beyonce having her face painted resembling minstrel characteres. The pictures have sparked emotions from different people claiming that they were unsure how painting her face black paid respect to him and saw this as an act of disrespect. Others have went so far as to claim this as an act of racism from the French magazine. Believe it or not, the black face painting has caught on as a fashion trend overseas which as you can imagine does not sit too well with many people. This is not a good look for Beyonce, especially following rumors of her using skin bleaching (see first blog post). I personally feel that it can be looked at as art however I do not believe that it was a smart choice for Beyonce to participate in such a photoshoot. If we are to forget the past, as some people are proposing and to "just get over it", then what other "fashion statement" is to come out next? White pointed hats or women dressing with inspiration from Mammy?

Diary

Wale - Diary (Feat. Marsha Ambrosius)(Acoustic Version)

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For an assignment in my beloved Social Psych class, I was probed to look into the meaning of three songs, "Fancy", "Diary", and the spoken word "Ambitious Girl". Diary and Ambitious girl are both works by the rapper Wale who is from DC. Ambitious Girl speaks for itself while "Diary" ft. Marsha Ambrosius fit into a deeper category. My take on the song was Wale taking on the job of speaking to black women and girls and opening their eyes to see that every man is not out to hurt them. The story of "he aint sh*t because my mom said so" has been confronted in his song. In hip hop today many artists aren't complex or deep enough to come at such a topic. With Ms. Ambrosius only helping to take the song to a whole new level of creativity I truly appreciated this piece of art. With insightful lines such as, "Every problem that you ever had with another man I gotta face. Started off on thin ice, I'm still here but I can't skate" personally makes me only want to understand and delve deeper into the male mind. Not only that, but it makes me want to improve and try to help other women feel that their are such things as happy endings. Above is the acoustic version if you haven't heard the song.

What's the message?

This semester I am taking a class with a great professor called Social Psychology. In the class we discuss the role of men and women and relationships amongst other things. One subject that has been brought to my attention through this class is the two sidedness in what people want and need in relationships. A lot of times we hear men saying they want a woman of substance, with her own money and mind. Yet when we hear the music they listen to it gives us the complete opposite of what they say they want. Instead of glorifying the smart women who do things for themselves they are singing about a red bone in a tight dress and how they aren't worried about their baby's father. Not to say that their are absolutely no songs portraying the right message because their are, however the long lists of negatives outweigh the positives.

Twitter #Fail

Was your favorite app one of the couple that was recently suspended? Ubertwitter, Twydroid, and Ubercurrent are twitter apps for android and blackberry phones that were suspended this past weekend due to violations of twitters rules. One of the things that these apps were accused of is changing the content of peoples tweets to advertise and somehow make more money. From the looks of the tweets that I witnessed, you would've thought that the world had ended because people could not have the layout of twitter on their phone how they wanted. Now I can go on and on about how social networking sites have taken a higher priority then what they should in reality, however my aim is more so on the uproar of users who were mad about their alternate apps...the problem wasn't that they couldn't tweet, it was that it couldn't look how they wanted...Has the look of a site really taken precedence over the content?

Ashura Beatings

The video above is in Ashura, India. As crazy as it looks this is a day of mourning to commemorate the death of a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. Imam Hussein was said to have been decapitated and mutilated so on this day they reenact his murder. I can't speak for anyone but myself but I would not participate in an activity that harms my own body for ritualistic purposes. That may be the difference from other countries and the U.S., I do not know anyone that would willingly use knives to whoop themselves. There are probably a couple events that Americans could use to do such acting out however I personally believe that Americans are too self centered too do such things. Could you do this in order to keep someones memory alive that you never even knew?

Death to Video Games

"Those shoes are to DIE for!!" How many times have we heard a saying like this? Well it seems this generation of kids are taking sayings like this seriously. I just came across a story where a 16-year old boy killed his mother because she took away his Playstation privileges. The teenagers privileges were taken away and while his mother was asleep he went into her room and hit her 20 times with a claw hammer, tried to cremate her in the oven, then beat her corpse with a chair leg. This is the second time that I have heard a kid has killed their mother over a video game and if video games have this type of affect on my children then I don't know how I feel about them playing them. If two children were moved enough to kill their parents, then on a lower level what are other children willing to do for video games? Fight, steal, and actually act out the actions done in the games?

"Far Away"

So after watching the video for Marsha Ambrosius' song "Far Away", I feel compelled to give my two cents. It's not everyday that you see a celebrity tackle an issue as sensitive as gay rights, and I applaud Ms. Ambrosius on her video. I think that when we see flamboyant homosexuals we often times get caught up and see it as entertainment when in reality that is just one side to such a lifestyle and their issues and feelings matter just as much as the next. In the music video a gay male commits suicide because of his insecurities with his sexuality and how people reacted to him. That is a strong message to portray yet I feel that it probably sent a message to people who never thought twice about it. If you haven't seen the video, here it is down below:

Skin Bleaching...Right or Wrong?

       Recently popular reggae artist Vybz Kartel unveiled his new light skin complexion after formerly being a "darkskin" male. This has caused an uproar in the media with people questioning his motives and morals. For years in Jamaica and some parts of Africa there are people who have chosen to bleach their skin. Alongside Vybz Kartel in skin bleaching is athlete Sammy Sosa and another reggae artist Lisa Hype with the song "Bleaching Fit Me" in which she declares "Unno say bleaching can gi you skin cancer, My gyirl you ah smoking, unno say smoking can gi you lung cancer"....My question is, is skin bleaching an act of self hate or is it as casual as someone going tanning?