dun duN DUN DUNNNNN!

its time for adventures in the back yard with Pierre Bennu!

budbudBUDbudBUDbudabbuda

…the sound of the eco friendly electric hedge clipper cutting hedges with NO gas or carbon…hooray environment!

budbudBUDbudBUDbudabbudaaZIZIZPHHHHZIT!!

…the sound of the eco friendly hedge clipper cutting its own wire & a tiny explosion

LOLOLOLOLOLOL!

…the sound of all the uncut hedges & all the birds & insects who saw me catch that “L”

@#$&!!

…the sound of me cursing the birds and bushes laughing at me & swearing revenge

tap tap tap tap

…the sound of me on craigs list seeing if any one wants a double dutch rope that used to be a very long electric cord

dun duN DUN DUNNNNN!

…this concludes this episode of “Adventures in the back yard with Pierre Bennu…brought to you in part by ‘eco stuff sometimes sucks’ & ’sometimes city boys need to just hire someone to do their yard’

- note to self: when you fall down in public again (and you will fall down in public again) DO NOT pop back up as fast as you can! Laughter directed at your pain and ripped clothing hurts your feelings instead… lie motionless for as long as possible hold your breath and when you can no longer do that roll your eyes to the top of your head and twitch violently till some one calls the ambulance. If you can muster up some drool that’s a plus. Then when you hear the paramedics, that’s when you pop up as fast as you can, dust yourself off and walk through the crowd surrounding you and off into the sunset. PS Remember to wipe the drool off.

- dear wife: 10 years! WOW that’s cool. but isn’t it kind of random how they only make a big deal on anniversaries that are divisible by 5?  I say after this, let’s celebrate on years that are prime numbers.

- dear guy with one eye working at that place: I would think (seeing as how someone poked out your eye and you have no depth perception and you wouldn’t make a good eye witness and no one is really gonna see what your saying) that you would be a nicer less rude person…oh well guess I was wrong. I got my eye on you.
- Dear conspiracy theory documentarians: Are there any big organizations that work and do good?

- dear everyone at every store I’ve ever been in,  No I don’t work here!

- dear son “NO”does not mean look at me smile and then proceed to do what ever wrong thing you were doing, faster.
- dear doubt F%$@ you and anyone that look like you!
- dear men who try to pick up women on the street with that weak game: STOP! Seriously please. She hears you! she just is not listening to you. I’m am convinced that there is a legend of a man who did this sometime in the late 1700’s and went on to have the most amazing love affair that ever existed. I’m also convinced that every man that tries  to hit on a woman in this manner is either young & ignorant, has more ‘hope’ than the obama campaign, or has heard this amazing myth. who has this ever worked on, and would you really want anything from a woman that responded to your barking upon first call?  I just don’t get it. it’s summer time in the new millennium fellas step your game UP.

- dear professional athletes why don’t losers thank god at the end of games? Here is a short list of things to be thankful for, getting paid millions to play a game, the humility of losing that builds character, those nice sneakers you have on… im sure you and your loser friends can think of more
- dear producers of random crap and bad packaging please  stop making unnecessarily hard to open non biodegradable packaging for simple things then tell me I’m polluting the planet. Do your part.

- Dear any one who finds themselves saying “I’m a grown ass man/woman,” ponder this: When you see a guy in knee high socks with cleats on and a baseball cap holding a bat and swinging it at a ball with outquestion that’s a …come on…say it…yes that’s a baseball player. That person never has to yell up to the stands that he is indeed a baseball player. Let me make it plain I think what’s confusing people are one of 3 things. where you are, what you’re wearing or how you’re acting. Next time you feel the need to say that phrase check one of those 3 things take a deep breath then ask yourself if you need to go home change your clothes, not be where you are and or put some bass in your speaking voice.
- dear children I’m sorry adults run everything and nothing works. I swear some of us are really trying hard…my advice is to  have the good sense to create your own mistakes and don’t repeat ours.

- dear John Legend, I would like to bring to your attention that the word “love” doesn’t have a “W” after  the “O” I ask that next album you correct this error in your annunciation. Remember its LOVE not LOW-VE   thank you
- dear seagulls in the parking lot of the supermarket, I think that it’s gross that you eat chicken and I some how think that makes you sell outs.  know thy self.
- Note to self: invent an exercise or an exercise device for men that gets rid of the folds in the back of the head. Sell for 19.99, It needs nifty commercial like…do you have a pack of franks on the back of your head? Does your barber have to hold up flaps to cut your dome? When you stand sideways do you have two profiles? Well no longer with   “folds be gone”
- dear guy in Lexus car trying to cut me off, The knowledge that you don’t posses about me is that I really don’t care if your car scratches my car. But I think if your car gets scratched your little feelings will be hurt. Trust me i’ll brag about it, i’ll show my friends like “wow, look guys, see that scratch, a Lexus did that” In some circles that actually makes me more cool. Now, I’m not going to make assumptions that just cause you have that big expensive car that you’re a jerk or that you are compensating for a lack of lap time as a child, I will NOT do that! That is beneath me and neither will I belittle the size of your genitalia, your sexual prowess or lack thereof, or your inability to communicate or attract members of the opposite sex due to your ghoulish appearance though those poorly tinted windows. I won’t, that’s just immature so in conclusion I will not be letting you over into this lane, please wait your turn like everyone else and let’s all drive safely on the streets have a good day sir
- dear de la soul,  your 1st album (and some of your subsequent career)  saved my life & every time I get an opportunity to tell you the weird story of why you laugh it off. But it’s really true.
- Note to self: The brown pants are high waters, I repeat the brown pants are high waters
- dear horrible rapper with nerd gear on, I cant help it but some part of me is upset that you’re emulating an esthetic of a group of people that you helped denigrate and belittle. Let’s be clear for history sake. You never had a kind word or a smile for us nerds. Even the brilliant and smart ones amongst you buried your realness and masked it with a veil of practiced cool and willful ignorance. I always felt the real gangsta were those of us nerds who had to walk past you day after day with a heavy bag full of books to get into their building and do their homework. Knowing that they would not get any special treatment or recognition and were in fact social outcasts. (the rest of this rant was illegible)
- Note to self: there is no masculine way to use a straw, or eat a banana. Just let go
- Dear artists, there is no spare time. There is no such thing as a part time revolutionary.
- Note to self: no one has to get it but you.
- Dear non-knower of music, You don’t have to lie. If you don’t know about an artist that is brought up in a conversation just say you don’t know and lets move forward. But when you say stuff like “oh HE IS COOL” when the GROUP “Pink Floyd” is mentioned you make yourself look bad.
- Dear apparently homeless dude, why are you huffing and puffing about me going into the store with you to buy you some food. I assume if you’re standing out here that this would be a great place to purchase the food you said you wanted to buy with the $ you’re asking for. Also if I buy a sandwich for you and then you open the package look at it and say “you don’t eat turkey” and then don’t eat the sandwich I should by law be allowed to rob you for my lost sandwich $
- Note to self: I think the movie  “Coming to America” was the only point of pop culture reference for contemporary black royalty until the Obamas

For a long time my baby was NOT cute. I actually applauded my wife for feeding him. Nature’s trick seems to be that as the responsibility and complexity of this parenting gig grows, the cuteness of the kid grows, too. I’m scared because he’s getting cuter by the day and if his newly flavored farts are any indication, this changing diapers thing alone is about to go to a whole new level.

My messy diapers system is well strategized: I classify them in order from easiest to hardest. For future reference, be sure to multiply each # by about 3 to know how many baby wipes to use.

1. THE WET ONE: This one builds the most confidence as it’s the easiest to handle.

2. THE SKIDS: This one is also pretty easy. It’s more a colorful fart than an actual #2.

3. R.KELLY’S REVENGE: This is when the child pees on you. This is going to happen. There is no avoiding it. I’m sorry, it’s just part of the job.

4. (The Classic) POO POO PANTS aka cookie dough aka honey mustard: This is what makes you a parent.

5. THE OPENING ACT: This one comes after a series of body contortions (think Joe Crocker singing “You are so beautiful to me.”) It’s not that special till you realize that it’s part of a series.

6. THE MAIN EVENT: This one follows on the heels of the opening act, often after the ‘curtain call’ of a successful diaper change. Like a surprise guest at the end of a concert, it’s a little something extra for all those in attendance.

7. THE ENCORE: just like in a real concert, sometimes they come back for 3 or 4 of these, often pulling out the pyrotechnics, the extra dancers… they just keep hitting the stage for more unrehearsed glory. In this category is the poop that goes up the back of the diaper or down a leg of a poorly put together diaper. This can be a shot to your confidence, especially if you were the one responsible for not putting on the diaper properly.

8. THE “#%$@ IT”:

aka “Oh the Humanity”

aka “how did all that come out of you”

aka “shaking your head silently in disbelief”

aka “whispering the name of an omnipotent being”

aka “the x-files”

This is the one no one sees coming. This is the one you pray never happens to you in public. This one is so bad your child doesn’t even cry, he just sits in its warmth and stares off into the distance. This is the one where your friends hand your “I’ll watch your child anytime” baby back to you to change. You sometimes can’t avoid getting something on your hands, and often have to throw away whatever the child is wearing to feel you have done it right. You call your spouse over to see and then proceed to team-clean as if it were an operation, with each of you asking the other to pass something ’stat’ or hold something, before finally giving up and completing operation in the shower. All three of you. Because some part of you suspects you may never feel clean again.

(click ‘read more’ for bigger picture)

He will be remembered.

He left so much good stuff to for us to marvel at.

I would’ve loved to have been able to tell him to his face how much what he had to say and how he said it meant to me.

He is one of the greats.

over time, of course, it became clogged with spam and useless, and besides in the interim i had gotten a yahoo address (way more storage; i used it to sign up to mailing lists i’d likely never read), built my own website and had my own domain-based address (way more fancy, even almost professional; it became my main address) and even most recently, gotten a gmail account (another moment of not being able to resist the uber nerdy chic since i got it super early when it was invite-only) (and yes, i know this matters to no one other than me, and only in that secret cyber place in my heart that is vain about my tech prowess. but don’t worry because really, that’s not what matters. it’s how you USE it.)

so, the hotmail had become mainly a place to let myspace send its constant friend request emails, and it sat there collecting mailing lists i no longer read but feel nostalgic enough about to not unsubscribe from.

it also housed like, 10 years or so of my early internet communication history. if i ever wanted to chronicle the trajectory of certain relationships, revisit correspondence between myself and my sister when one or the other of us was living abroad, refresh for myself just exactly why my various exes are just that – i was secure in the knowledge that the historical effluvia was archived there for my personal posterity.

and then.

i go to login one time to doublecheck an amazon order status, and those bastards had dismantled my account! there was a screen where i had to reactivate it, and they tried to play like it was just some routine maintenance shit b/c i hadn’t logged in in 30 days or whatever… and so i click the button that said, “yeah, assholes, i DO want this account, what kind of jerks are you guys anyway?”

and when i get in, i see that the entire history was wiped clean.

brand new.

inbox at zero.

spitwads.

inspired by the hubbub around 3-6 mafia’s oscar win.

copied from a comment made on kenji’s blog.

b/c it is late and i am a lazy bastard.

————————-

for the record, i was disgruntled wayyy before the oscar win. black culture’s strange fascination with pimpery is as inexplicable to me as its delight with black men cross dressing as their own grandmothers. i don’t get it. and i think it all speaks to a discomfort and dysfunction we have around gender and sexuality that we really need to deal with in a responsible way if we are going to survive with our collective minds, families, intact.

but at the end of the day, i definitely think songs like the oscar-winner are a result of a deeper issue, not the cause.

or, is that a chicken and egg sort of distinction?