the rasx() context

Yes, I sat through this somewhat time-consuming Nokia E71 walkthrough on YouTube.com. Myself looks at myself in a daze just gazing in a blur at the computer phone.

“Build an Atom PC”

I have not been interested in visualizing my next PC since computers first got hot—with CPU and GPU heat that is… This Extreme Tech article, “Build an Atom PC,” fills me with renewed focus.

“Building Tiny, Ultra Low Power PCs”

Jeff Atwood: “In previous posts, I’ve talked about building your own desktop PC, and building your own home theater PC. I’m still very much in love with that little HTPC I built. Not only does it have a modern dual-core CPU, and fantastic high-definition capable integrated video—it’s an outstanding general purpose media sharing server, too.”

VirtualBox

Sun Microsystem’s open source response to Virtual PC and VMware is VirtualBox. Blog posts like these seem buzz worthy: “VMWare to VirtualBox” and “Stunning OpenSolaris running on VirtualBox.”

The mother of my third child left me years ago with a birthday present called Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. I have finally gotten around to opening it and dabbling. This collection is edited by Sheree R. Thomas—and, based on the, ahem, ‘love’ in the comments from a previous post, I am obligated to recognize the fact that DJ Spooky is in it—in the back part, next to a great essay by Samuel R. Delany, “Racism and Science Fiction,” sprinkled with a critique directed at Blacks like me that capitalize the B.

Remember, we do everything better—this includes reeking of liberal elitism, sadistic irony and white fascist conservatism—so, when an American person “of color” works hard to get something printed on white paper—for the slat-wall shelves in the “mainstream” as televised in the early 1990s, there is very little interest to publish online. This can come from time-management issues alone. Publishing online is seen a either a gutter thang for hick mud ducks or some “brave” experiment of “extreme” innovation of someone approved by the establishment. It is too easy for me to accuse professional colored folks that shun any serious online activity as the myopia of obsequious Negroes trying to second-guess their non-Black masters (real and imagined). What is most useful is to listen to “Noam Chomsky: Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind” here in the kinté space and get one big picture of the “universal audience.” The smart colored folks may have had it right all the time—once the big, multi-nationals take away the “open” Internet through net-neutrality attrition.

So, instead of assuming that a person with the bricks-and-mortar stature of Sheree R. Thomas would never publish anything regularly online without the encouragement of “white friends” and/or money, I dropped prejudice (for just a moment) and actually checked. I found Black Pot Mojo and am exceedingly pleased!

The only drawback is that she has stopped publishing as of June 2008. I can only hope the hope of the captive that she is just on vacation or something. Here are the highlights of her online style in Mojo:

• She writes on a monthly scale, which is impressive to me because her work schedule, taking her away from the computer, surely has to be very demanding. I write during my self-defined five days weekly because I am sitting at computers every business day.
• She is actually writing journal entries. I can tell that she is actually writing. I sense no condescension toward writing “for free” on the Internet. This indicates personal wealth—a surplus within her that literally means she is not totally sold out.
• She is actually using the Blog to write about her personal feelings instead of holding the Byzantine pose desperate to communicate non-desperation—the false calm of Roman peace.
• She writes in a ‘classic’ or ‘traditional’ style from the world of print instead of the Blackberry or twitter style. I prefer this way of writing because of this interesting juxtaposition of the old world and the new, cohering in continuity.

I read her entire Blog—every single entry. Compared to what professional editors read and write under the bricks and mortar, this is not an impressive task at all. But, compared to the usual myspace suspects here on the Internet, me taking the time to do this much reading must be horrifying. I’m not a speed reader but I am not that slow either—I write way, way faster than I read… These Sheree R. Thomas moments are of note:

From “Soul Suckas, a digression, Then some love for Sekou & Sotigui”:

Over the past two or so years, I’d made a tough decision about cutting loose what some folk might call toxic personalities, negative vibers, who like to keep up a lot of nonsense and foolishness. You may know what I mean, individuals who don’t mean nobody no kind of good, never have a positive thing to say, unless it’s about themselves, but insist on staying in touch, supposedly to ‘see how you doin’, but mostly just to drain you. Soul suckas. They don’t reach out, until they want something, usually said something for free, and then you don’t hear from them again until the next crisis.

From “Octavia E. Butler Crosses Over”:

The last time I saw Ms. Butler was a very joyous moment, when she received the Langston Hughes Medal at CUNY. Surrounded by so many of her fans and lifelong friends I met at Clarion when we all applied *because* Octavia was teaching that year, the evening was magical, with music and an insightful interview by Wesley Brown. I remember still feeling shy around her, because she is, after all, one of my favorite authors in the world, and she reminded me of elders in my own family, warm, funny, keenly observant, and gracious as ever.

From “Stars in Her Eyes”:

Jarita C. Holbrook sees the world through many different sets of eyes.

And that’s a good thing, too, considering the amount of time she spends staring at the sky, usually as part of her research on African astronomy and culture.

But that’s not all. As an assistant research scientist at the University of Arizona Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, Holbrook’s research interests also include indigenous knowledge systems—especially astronomy, technology transfer, and lay astronomy practices—African Americans and science, and African history of science, technology, and medicine.

Although her content is thinner than what most of the “Blog elite” would consider as serious contribution, what she does write about in a month is more diverse and more in depth—and involving more real people (especially humans in the so-called “arts” and sciences)—than what I can write in a whole year.

I feel like I let Sheree R. Thomas down by being ignorant of her Blog for so long. But this is often how being on the Internet goes—one may not get instant gratification but over the years people do get into contact with the work. Almost all web sites are like a patch on a coral reef just looking at the ocean pass by… one deciliter at a time.

Based on, ahem, comments from a previous Blog post, it would seem that the number of comments is an indicator of personal popularity. Having followed hundreds of Blog sites closely and thousands more loosely, I know any strict, scientific research into this will reveal that Blog comment participation when controlled by ethnic group, economic class and age is not an indicator of personal popularity. I just know that this lack of participation through this single function would have nothing to do with Sheree R. Thomas losing interest in writing online. It can’t hurt to mention that the Black Pot Mojo technorati.com rating is about 200,000 points higher than mine with an “authority” five points higher than me! That is very impressive for a single, relatively infrequent Blog writer without a multi-national record deal and a crappy myspace page!

Apart from my vacation guess, taking on certain kinds of media-related employment demands that writing online must cease. Maybe Ms. Thomas is working close to Malaika Adero? (Also it must be stated that Ms. Thomas grants herself the right to moderate comments.) I want to know!

Black Pot Mojo is a Blog for grown folks—folks old enough to know who Octavia Butler is… I look forward to the Mojo coming through 2009… Wow! What was that? I just dared to fantasize that Ms. Thomas would actually read my Blog posts (at least one month’s worth) and point out editorial errors and real opportunities for critique… I just cannot see her as being “too good” to do this because of me, personally… Some people actually do this for fun! Once they are actually located, sometimes the ideas overshadow the egos.

Note: Jarita C. Holbrook edited a book called African Cultural Astronomy: Current Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy research in Africa (Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings). It sells for over $100 on Alibris and Amazon.com. This price has to be beaten—right? A hick like me just cannot afford to drop cash on a book like this on any given Sunday. This is the third time I have run into this high price issue when trying to get some real African material.

Without Tiffany Brown, her article “A List Apart 2008 Survey,” I would not have known about this survey and the fact that they release their raw data for free. Very cool. So I decided to do the “divisive” and “hostile” thang and look up the people in this survey who dared to describe themselves as “Black.” Since I added the challenge of using OpenOffice.org instead of importing this stuff into a “real” database my, look-ups are extremely simplistic:

The number of Black developers: 87 out of 32,831. Most are between 25 and 32 from the United States, with Bachelor degrees. Seven are from the continent of Africa. One is from the Middle East.

The number of Black female developers: 13.

The number of Black creative directors/art directors: 25.

The number of Black female creative directors/art directors: 3.

It is important to understand that more people in this survey described themselves as “Other”—and what is really interesting is that almost the same percentage of people gave no answer to this question than the total percentage of those calling themselves “Black.” Just these numbers alone explain why I would never expect to “monetize” my Blog in the manner the “mainstream” suggests.

I am not implying that more people “should” describe themselves as “Black”—I am saying that when I use the word to describe myself (or facets of me) I know statistically how few people among the web tech elite are interested in this description. But somehow my behavior persists. You have your thirty-two thousand theories as to why this “Black thing” still happens and me gots mine…

The Gaia Framework for Adobe Flash runs inside of Adobe Flash. This may be “obvious” to some kid designer with a five-o’clock shadow but was not plain to me until I saw the download in MXP format. This is an interesting way for well-meaning and enterprising developers to treat Adobe like Google: a start-up can build a very popular open source product that Adobe now has the option to buy.

“The 5 Best Firebug Extensions”

Adam DuVander: “Firebug extensions are a sort of meta-extension that lets you add on to Firebug. Developers are adding some features that we’re starting to find hard to live without.”

“Moffett Field becoming a country club airport for Valley ultra-rich”

This story from valleywag.com, “Moffett Field becoming a country club airport for Valley ultra-rich,” reminds me to drag out and dust off my other wacko conspiracy theory that air travel for us commoners is worse these days because the “ultra-rich” don’t have to fly commercial carriers. The market can “decide” anything when it is in control of a proud few…

“One Yahoo’s ten reasons for leaving”

A Yahoo employee via valleywag.com: “It take 10 meetings to agree on something and eventually, the project got scrap or delayed for another 10 weeks…” Almost every “mature” American company ends up like this… except for Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings, Inc.…

Today’s word: “Externality”

Wikipedia.org: “In economics, an externality is an impact on any party not directly involved in an economic decision. An externality occurs when an economic activity causes external costs or external benefits to third party stakeholders who cannot directly affect an economic transaction.”

The last time I met Saul Williams in person, he was with the finest South African woman of some kind of Afro-East-Indian descent I have ever seen. So let’s get that straight. So, like DJ Spooky, when you are going to accuse me of being a jealous “hater” then assume I am jealous of not having the female company Saul might keep—but when it comes to other stuff… well… I try to speak in parables to the colored folk who think they know who I am… I try to use the parable of Arthur MacArthur… more on that later…

I’m sure you, Black person reading this paragraph, don’t have my “special” problems but I often get the feeling that when I meet, what someone on Bossip would cruelly call a “D-list celebrity,” the supposed celebrity sees me as so poor, ignorant, provincial and so much in awe of the crumbs “the white man” can throw down, that my apparent reserve and nonchalance is a pretense. What pisses me off is when someone like DJ Spooky or Saul Williams might assume—just for a second—that I would like to be them—or that I would like to “trade places” with them… When it comes to these void, egocentric showdowns—when it becomes clear to me that the only way communication is going to take place is within the limited confines of bloated egocentrism, then fine—let’s be egocentric:

Now hear this D-list through A-list celebrities! I don’t want to be you. I want to repurpose the power and resources of the muffuka that pays you… You are an errand girl sent by groceries clerks to collect a bill… Me watching you in “mainstream” or “alternative” media is like watching you go to Nicks Check Cashing to pay your gas bill… Who gives a f’ about being the art president!!! What kind of ghetto do you think I am from? I see the power that subsidizes the presidential platform!!!

I think of myself as of the Jackson Family led by a dancing Michael angel before he got his nose cut off (like the nose off the so-called “sphinx”)—and I think of people like DJ Spooky and Saul Williams as the hard-working Osmond-family, tea-dance substitutes for the real shit… I’m old enough to be honest about this now… Anybody who can get along with properly-assimilated, bourgeois, white liberals of all skin colors all over the world with nothing lost in translation is not from the real shit… A lot of black people are just painted black, they are just “the same” on the inside… The science tells me that my melanin is not a topical application… it is in my body… neuromelanin makes me think different… “What?” “Huh?”

When I use the phrase ‘the real shit’ I am referring to the shit a dung beetle from the Nile Valley rolls in African manifestations that Mos Def might throw away brilliantly in a rhyme scheme—but real people got to live that shit… and when you start to live that shit… it gets real hard to show up at Lollapalooza and talk about where I need to put my bags down… it gets real hard to tolerate people who write explicitly that they are from somewhere between “self hate and Brooklyn”… I’m from L.A. mufukka: the great Fela had to travel from Africa to Los Angles back in the 1960s to find out that he was Black and proud—I know you all got plenty, plenty of rejection for me writing this but I find Black people living in the snow—often choosing to live in the snow—very strange…

Every “successful artist” has to go through a phase of self-exploitation. Laurie Anderson talks about mechanical trees that grow to their full heights and then chop themselves down. I think that associates well here… So when Saul Williams writes about his sound showing up in a Nike commercial, to me he is just announcing another effect of lumber-jack enterprise in his wooden-mahogany-brown furniture factory:

I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song ‘List of Demands’ to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’. Furthermore, I believe fully in the power of music and have branded my work with [its] own conscientious stamp and stomp of attitude fueled to steal the show in the face of the nonsensical.

First, when he says the word “allow”—do stress that he is saying that he “allowed” Nike Corporation to use his music in a commercial. That’s like saying a Tibetan monk allowed the Chinese government to use a pair of slippers that was hidden in a box to be put on the feet of the appointed puppet ruler for a day-long ceremony. Second, when he says that a “small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough,” I will flatter myself and assume that he is referring to me. But don’t let me feel too “good” because Saul clearly has dismissed me. Third, when Saul says that he can “steal the show” he is saying that his message will be more powerful and eternal than:

• Decades of The Simpsons with their Monty Burns character designed to ‘help’ the masses question the upper classes.
• Almost a century of Monty Python, anti-colonial, anti-establishment buffoonery.
• Jim Morrison (a more powerful rock-and-roll poet than Saul Williams) actually yelling at audiences of thousands telling to them “wake up!!!” (study “Celebration of the Lizard”).
• In 1984, Bruce Springsteen released “Born in the U.S.A.” this anti-establishment, protest song was later raped by the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign. This song is rated as of the top 500 songs of all white time—Saul Williams is ready to beat this…
• And Joe Strummer? Saul Williams? Hah! Well, I am recklessly confident that Saul Williams is a “nicer” person than Joe Strummer… But I mention Joe Strummer because his father was a diplomat and this caused “Joe Strummer” (John Graham Mellor) to travel the world and live extensively in many places at an early age—this had a profound impact on his life that nouveau riche Negroes (who often preach in utter ignorance to poor boys like me about needing to “expand my horizons”) need to study in depth. Joe Strummer, by the way, leads to my Arthur MacArthur quip (see below).
• Kurt Cobain’s message (a union of lyrics and music that is way, way more powerful than what Saul Williams brings no matter how hard he squeezes his face and sweats—and I am referring to non-Black people in this list on purpose)—smells like teen spirit?

I’m going with this: Nike Corporation is releasing an image during this Chinese-dominated Olympic season to sell radical American “freedom” juxtaposed with Chinese explicit totalitarianism. This is the same move white U.S. powers would use with people like Paul Robeson to pose in front of the former Soviet Union. Saul Williams should be flattered because I have compared him with Paul Robeson. The little catch is that Paul Robeson had the entire Cold War era to not be killed by the U.S. powers. Once the Olympics are over and bullshitting in front of China is off the radar, my feeling is that Saul Williams’ people will not have enough parlay-time to get another deal. It’s down to the Warholean 15 minutes, baby…

Who was the Naz’ with God-given ass? Naz’ refers to Nazi as well as Nazarene—that’s depth in Ziggy poetry… (what’s sad to me right about is that Saul’s “Niggy Tardust” rhymes with “Ziggy Stardust”—but Ziggy played guitar—was inspired by Jimi Hendrix who is quite “niggy”—so we lose a stratum of depth?)… My rule for the powerful artist is that the more you study them the more you will find—not finding less the other way ’round. Saul Williams, like thousands of truly talented actors and political business people who answer to the name “poet,” is to me the other way ’round. You people outnumber me so I don’t plan to “win” this “argument.”

Combine the fan-base of Michael Franti, Saul Williams, Carl Hancock Rux and whoever else of this chocolate ilk (ever in defense of a “universal message” which ‘accidentally’ does not hurt ticket sales) you can think of and you have a large “community” of pseudo-activists who can actually galvanize for once around the news of my future death. My potential to bring people together around these “important” issues is actually quite impressive.

Most pop personalities have a de-facto dependency on the ignorance and self-centeredness of their enthusiastic, youthful audience. Saul Williams seems like James Baldwin for kids born in the 1980s—and being James Baldwin for PBS kids with excellent taste in women and a Spike-Lee-style-Nike-commercial income is not a horrible place to be for a few fiscal years. I am not saying that Saul Williams needs to get run over by an Israeli bulldozer penniless in some stolen suburb of Palestine in order to “prove” that he is “real” but… hmm… (“hater!”) well… look: we are proud to present Saul Williams here in the kinté space—check out “Saul Williams: Antiwar Freestyle.” And dig this 10-minute interview on YouTube.com with Saul in the Jimi Hendrix soldier jacket.

The last time I thought about Arthur MacArthur was when I was sitting in the recently remodeled kitchen of the mother of my youngest son. She lives near the park where I saw Saul Williams twice and the grocery store where I saw him once. Because of where my son’s mother lives are the only reasons why I have seen Saul Williams in person and have spoken to him. (I mention this so that Saul Williams “fans” won’t erroneously assume that he actually sought me out. Don’t worry, kids, Saul still does not know where I am…)

My son’s mother (who is a Black woman by the way) wanted to announce to me that our son will be flown to England in 2009 because her live-in boyfriend (who is a Black man by the way) has some kind of academic appointment at Oxford. I thought this experience would be great for my son so that, like Arthur MacArthur, he can travel the world at a very young age and (I pray) remove a lot of illusions and trappings of what it means to be “rich” and/or “famous.” I think there is a reason why Arthur MacArthur did not even try to “become famous” like his father—and I think it has something to do with learning at an early age what is bullshit, a gas-bill payment and what is important. My son’s mother, by the way, will not remember that I told her I obtained my first passport specifically for events like this—she was too busy thinking I was threatening to take my son out of the country. But that’s another story about nouveau riche Negroes…

Like his real father, my son continually has the opportunity to get the fascination of flying first class, staying in expensive hotels, getting educated while sitting next to white children, eating the finest food in the world and wearing the finest clothes out of his system. I am sure a young Joe Strummer went thought a similar experience (and possibly Saul Williams had something like this with his civil-rights-preacher-father childhood). One very rewarding effect of living with supposed “riches” at an early age is that you can grow beyond that shit and get down to what really matters (which is not getting a “message across” embedded in a Nike commercial). I know many of you know that this is not true in all cases—but the potential is there. Arthur MacArthur is my symbol of that potential.

Now I am not here to convince Saul Williams—or even Jason Calacanis—that they need to rethink a lot of shit of a nouveau riche fragrance. I am not going to play a bunch of Pink Floyd albums in tribute to Saul Williams so he can learn (probably again) about being crazy and having a real need to see pigs fly. This therapy is not needed and would not work when it is—that is why I bring up Arthur MacArthur. Arthur MacArthur is more of a non-conformist rebel than Saul Williams—and Arthur was right there in the heart of military whiteness. Let him tell you without even speaking how much vanity and vexation in public gets you —just to pay a gas bill…

Correction: Saul Williams was in a play at Stages Theater Center in Hollywood called “Tibi’s Law,” by Jean Verdun (translated from the French by Robert Cohen). I happened to see him (again) in this play because of my old connection with Arye Gross and Stages as sound designer for a one-woman play called “Shak’n” by Saundra Quarterman and Lisa Arrindell Anderson. This effort, by way, won a nomination for best sound design in the NAACP Theatre Awards. Also, Saul Williams was nominated for best leading male performance for “Tibi’s Law” in the 25th Annual LA Weekly Theater Awards.