2/29/04 8:59 PM: It has come to my attention that I am "light-skinned."

This caused me a great deal of concern, and accepting it took me some time. It seems that my relatively newfound nocturnal lifestyle -- which I've halfheartedly engaged in before but now live fully and enthusiastically -- has taken me a long way from the light of the sun. This has allowed my skin to become more pale ... and get me called "light-skinned" by no fewer than four people now.

Growing up in Memphis, I was very different from what we considered "light-skinned" people. I grew up with my great uncle Harold Grant, a man of lighter complexion than myself (you can see him here), and he often told me, "you cain't trust them light-skinned folk, boy." His mind equated most Black people of light complexion with the rich, those favored by white people. As an angry, skinny Black boy of his age, he was too surly, too uncommunicative, too mean-spirited to get by on his shading. He worked hard to put that message into my mind.

It didn't take much. Kids like Thomas Boyd, with their straighter hair and their less Africanized features, pushed me around and were chased after by every girl in the school. I remember many recess periods, watching these bronzed idols fawning in the attention of virtually everyone, and I envied them.

Now I'm thirty one and practically a vampire, virtually never leaving my darkened home in the bright of day. Sunlight's something I see on television, and I never equate the "AM" side of the clock with it. I have grown ... lighter. Suddenly, the smiles I get when out in supermarkets make more sense. It's less the nicer shirts I started wearing last year and more the adoration this society drills into people about Black people and how close they are in shade to a paper bag.

Technically, I still fail the "paper bag" test -- just barely. I surely still have friends of lighter shade (Khalil, with the peace sign has two Black parents and is lighter than me, and cowboy "half-breed" Jon -- his term, not mine -- is lighter than me as well). But I've always been attracted to girls that -- surprise -- are darker than me, and in the last year they've started trotting out this "you are light-skinned!" bit that raises my hackles.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I've got no problem with people who are less dark. "Some of my best friends are light-skinned!" "I've dated light-skinned girls!" (Sorry, had to trot out those cliches) I just have always held them apart from me, and despite my great uncle's insistent instruction, I trusted him and I never developed a serious problem with light skinned people, despite my jealousy at the apparently easier life they led. A different type of person with a different cultural experience, much as I've seen, say, Latinos or Samoans. Different, not wrong.

I just never believed I'd wake up Latino or Samoan, as much as I was sure I'd never wake up "light-skinned." If I've secretly just been over sunned, I've been missing out on all the favorable treatment and ease that I've seen go down for most of my three decades on this planet. Irksome, but the world continues to change and I continue to change with it.

But enough about that. On to other topics ...

I'm so late with The Crown it angers me, but February has been particularly hectic. I did manage to not kiss enough ass to keep my fifth job, layout editor for startup publication the Personal Wealth Times, which I didn't really care about one way or another. The boss had no background in publishing or journalism, and it showed. Jettisoning it lost me some money that made things a little more comfortable, but I'd rather have my peace of mind.

On the other hand, my karaoke CD buying addiction is worse than ever. It's even driven me back into the rapacious arms of eBay. I just picked up three custom made CDs full of Prince songs (written by and performed by, from a variety of original disks, which is probably a federal crime, but I didn't actually commit it ... let's stop talking about that) which I've enjoyed a great deal. I rocked "Jungle Love" at Mel's Drive-In, which I justify (in my mind) by the fact I live in the Jungles, in contrast to the use of the term as a negative for people of African descent. Right.

Part of it is business minded -- I figger that if I can get enough urban music in my collection, I can pitch karaoke gigs at places in my neck of the woods, which makes my commute easier as well as opens up a new market for the company I work for now (or whoever I work for -- if they're my disks, the ability to sell urban venues goes along with me). So on that hand, it's something I'm cool with ...

... but on the other hand, I've spent close to two hundred bucks in the last month. This downtown karaoke shop has people who recognize me when I come in, I've been such a junkie. Pfah.

I'm pretty much caught up on my TV watching. Normally I tape a lot on Sundays, but the Oscars scared everybody into reruns, and I'm not gonna watch that crap. I'm vaguely paying attention to Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace on Fox, and I'm amazed at how corrupt and willing to cheat the "good" Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn is. The older I get, the more sense the Empire -- perhaps not some of its specific applications, but the idea as a whole -- makes to me. The Jedi were like the military of their time, and as much as I see police and military cars park illegally and abuse the system for their own benefit, obeying the law when convenient (parking, speeding, running lights et cetera), enforcing the law when they feel like it (a million cops outside the Long Beach Bob Marley festival, a million tons of weed inside, zero arrests ... ). The old almost always become conservative, "those who were the farthest out have gone the other way."

Yesterday I was at work, late in the afternoon because my boss took some grandkids to some presidential museum, and he asks if I was okay when he couldn't get the mail the week before. I shrugged. "It didn't bother you?" I shrugged. "When was the last time you saw me bothered about much of anything?" He chuckled and liked that a great deal. I suppose my core of wholehearted indifference could be considered a benefit in some areas, but I don't really care.

Mmm, leap year. I knew a kid in high school who was born on February 29th. Said he was only four years old, which was a great gag. I believe they just celebrated his birthday on the 28th most of the time. Marcus something or other.

This girl from Togo (a country in western Africa) came into my show last Thursday with her own karaoke CDs, which I thought was very cool, and sang "I Love You" by Faith Evans, which surprised me partially because the girl had an amazing voice and partially because it's one of my favorite Faith songs. On the other hand, she sings a lot of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey songs that I don't know. Still sounds good, with her voice. I hope she comes back.

Lessee ... what else is going on? Nothing else to really note. Mmm, short blurb. Time for me to make a donut run.