11/22/04 8:49 AM: Sheesh, I drop blogging for heavy karaoke hosting and the whole world goes nuts. Yowza. Let's get started with a quote ...

"The ability to look stupid and feeble is one of Bush's political strengths." -- Walter Russell Mead, Council on Foreign Relations

FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY: In the words of Kanye West, "I got a couple o' past due bills, I won't get specific ..." To be honest, short of my rent, all my bills are past due. My car has been sucking money out of me like a vicious divorce settlement (which one of my people can attest to -- if you knew how much cash he was giving up, wow ... now I think about it, I probably could have had a similar state, but it's not worth thinking about now). Latest fun with my car is a replaced crankshaft sensor, which allegedly tells fuel where to go, and wasn't working. I'm still stalling if the engine is cold and having to warm it up five minutes at a time, a real killer on my thin margin schedule. Blah.

ANEDGE HIRAK RUSSELL JONES: According to more sources than I'm interested enough to link, the Ol' Dirty Bastard, Dirt Dog himself, is dead. Recording with Roc-a-fella types, he fell over for reasons no one has made clear, and passed away at the ripe old age of 35.

Holy crap.

I never met the man, heard some amusing stories about him and some disturbing ones as well. I know he left behind a lot of peple who loved him, and for them I have sorrow and condolences. I am suddenly seeing the Nine Rings of Wu-Tang comic as prophetic, because they "wrote out" ODB when he was dealing with his arrests in a way that was spiritual and complimentary, so perhaps he really is in a better place. A world without ODB ... I am very interested in seeing what his Wu-Tang brethren do by way of tribute. In any case, anedge hirak, Russell Jones as you find new paths to blaze.

THE STATESMAN: Then I notice that Colin Powell wanted out of the Bush administration (as does Education Secretary Rod Paige, the bottom photo) and his co-worker (and avowed "Europeanist") Condi Rice took over the job. Gah! The only good thing is that John Aschroft is gone, but his legacy of oppression lives on in a revitalized Republican administration with a clearer mandate and political clout to burn. The San Francisco Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead wrote, "Bush's new Cabinet picks are telling. He no longer needs to shore up his credentials with the political heavyweights who filled his first Cabinet, analysts said. The first three picks are top aides who have close access to Bush and the charge to implement his policies."

Perhaps this will finally be the straw that breaks the camels back, so they can "set aside all pretense and sham and anoint themselves masters" (apologies to Jack McKinney). I just grow tired of the limp attempts at denying the truth of the Amerikkkan empire. Ah, who am I kidding -- self-delusion and apathy are as Amerikkkan as apple pie.

TANGLED: So I've been taking an academic look at the sort of relationships we're all "supposed" to be after -- single family home, storybook marriage, etc. They're a trap. Not even a tender trap, as Sinatra sang, but a brutal and efficient machine for creating consumers who will bleed debt and fuel the engines of oppression worldwide. A single family home has nothing but downside from an economic standpoint. You pour money in. If it gains value, you can borrow against that value, making yourself actually poorer. Madness. Had I gone ahead with my plan and saved my money to buy a four-to-eight unit apartment building, I'd be most of the way to being a millionaire already.

As for the storybook marriage thing, with the trap of single family homes, monetary pressures are almost certain to crop up in most people's lives, which is the number one stress on relationships (again, too many sources to bother linking -- if you can read this, you can get to Google). It helped destroy at least two marriages I know of, put another three on the ropes. It's all an ugly machine to make people spend and be miserable. This message can't be made more clear, especially since the sale of single-family homes is one of the major determining factors of economic strength. A misery index, if you will. Horrible world we live in ...

REACH OUT AND TOUCH FATE: Despite all of that, I'm still awfully chipper almost all the time. I'm having a really good time with my dating life, dealing with quality instead of quantity, and generally making out a lot, which is great. I'm bouncing from one writing genre to another -- fiction to music to poetry to essays -- pretty much willy nilly, getting the work done (more on that in a sec). Most of the time the car works, and it's a fun drive. I've deleted scores of phone numbers of hangers-on and drag-me-downs, blocking them from accessing me. My comic book project is even humming along, with the publisher now public and word getting out. I hung out with Inpu last Friday morning, as he ferried me to the mechanic's, and that was cool to just talk and all. Despite our ... differences in opinion, he's still one of my favorite people in the world and we have each other's back (for what it's worth) no matter what. I was sitting at breakfast one morning with Dana, talking about our lives and how good we really have it. I said, "admittedly, the gaping chasm of loneliness and isolation that exists at my core sucks, and sure, I could use more cash, but it's really all I have to complain about. There's thousands of people in Mogadishu who would literally kill to be us." That can't be discounted.

BORN: So Merilene Murphy of Telepoetics is doing book publishing, and she's hooking me up with a way to turn The Crown into a printed (and more importantly print-on-demand) novel. I'm getting my dawg and former boss Jenna Robbins to edit it (the whole thing is only a hair short of 78,000 words, which surprised me), and I expect a February release, if all goes well (which I'm still budgeting). My "I wanna be inspired" idea turned into a mean-spirited little short story, which I may post soon -- my dawg Chinedum in Boston seemed to like it. I've still got tons of song ideas in my head (despite needing to finish lyrics for "The Pie Song" and "Inscrutable") and also have two free hours in a recording studio down in Torrance by my hosting job. My Wednesday night hosting gig screws with my poetry workshop, but I've swung through a time or two and my interests there are resurgent, despite losing my former goal (i.e. "writing what I want to happen," which became a very limited process due to the realizations of what's noted in "Tangled" above). Despite being sleepier and busier than I'd like, it's a great creative time for me and I appreciate that a great deal.

DESPERATION: Like many people, I'm enthralled by the ABC show Desperate Housewives (and was long before Terrell Owens became associated with it). I teeter between real appreciation of Felicity Huffman's acting, lusting after Eve Longoria and being terrified of Marcia Cross' Bree Van Der Camp, a scary Stepford fusion of my ex-wife and my aunt Elizabeth. Then she shows up half naked and I see she's built than a mug, and I was even more horrified of her. The idea of a gorgeous woman whose sex drive is tied to, say, a household or cleaning ... it just seems sick and wrong to me.

Then there's the whole MNF flap, which I found especially odd since Nicolette Sheridan is -- at best -- a secondary character on the show, and I'd have much rather seen Eve Longoria in the towel. Of course race plays a role, as does money, but I liked best ESPN's Page 2 report on it, showing the brilliance of T.O. as a self-promoter (which of course I can't find now ... argh). It'll all be forgotten sooner or later.

INCROYABLE: So I saw and enjoyed The Incredibles, a film with a great deal of sentiment under its digital core. The one thing that leapt out to me was the villain, Syndrome, a former fan of the protagonist. In lots of stories, the really most compelling villains are the ones who were once heroes. It seems really hard to make a villain not be ridiculous, and the tearing down of a hero's image (and yes, I'm looking at you Brad Meltzler) is one of the surest and quickest routes, since everybody gets to know and love the character first.

I prefer more ... complicated paths. More on that later.

LOGJAM: Starting in January, Alias will be shown at, IIRC, 9PM PST on Wednesday nights. This is a problem. You see, The West Wing (with CJ Cregg as chief of staff, the best story development on the show ... maybe ever, definitely since the campaign) is also shown at that time. As is Kevin Hill, a Black man's Ally McBeal which offers a lot for the ladies as well. Dude. I have two VCRs and work Wednesday nights, if I'm not out at poetry. This is killing me. Couldn't they have tried Alias on Tuesday, where the network is wide open? Or even Thursday, to counter-program against, say, The Apprentice? I don't know what I'm gonna do -- I'm debating forgoing the entire season and just grabbing it on DVD when it's all said and done. Argh.

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE: The Vibe Awards. I believe my comment would be, "bwahahahahahahahaha." I'm so glad I got out of urban music journalism.

RESURRECTION: Black Panther is coming back to comic book stands everywhere. Now, I was a huge fan of the series written by Christopher J. Priest, but I've got some knowledge of Mssr. Hudlin's work and I'm confident in his take on it. Having John Romita Jr. on art doesn't hurt. When I thought about it, Hudlin seems the only way Panther could call it a comeback -- his success in "other media" is bigger than even Brad Meltzler, DC's "it" boy, and his ethnicity makes him perfect for a property the company has mismanaged for decades. An unknown's pitch, or even a known writer of only moderate regard, wouldn't have gotten in the door, and there's no Black writer in comics of sufficient name cache to carry it off. That said, I sincerely hope that the project is well marketed and ordered, and I'm gonna be picking it up, no questions asked.

RELATED: My uncle Bobby Hazelwood died recently. My mom just barely caught me, rushing in from something, with a phone call about it. I used to really like Bobby, a jovial brother with rounded edges and an easy laugh, a dedicated father and all around sweetheart. But when his wife, my aunt-by-blood Wynetta and I came to ... disagree over a wide variety of things, he got grouped in my rancor, and I had no more sentiment for him. In retrospect, that was probably unfair, but I am of the opinion that if you, through omission even, facilitate my pain, you're an enemy. Bobby was never a very forceful guy, Wynetta always ran things and everybody knew it. So when, say, she basically jacked me for my go-kart at age 14 or screwed all of her siblings out of an inheritance, he stood by and watched. It was a loss for me, as his sons Teron and Thance were, at one point, like brothers to me more than cousins, and I have no relationship with them at all (a much more complicated issue than just my enmity with Aunt 'Netta).

That's all ancient history now, and Wynetta is suddenly alone in that big house. For him, I wish him good travels to his next destination. Anedge hirak Bobby Hazelwood.

DELUGE: I'm not dating as much as I could. Partially because I'm happy doing what I'm doing, partially because I'd rather save the expense, partially because there really is an endless stream of attractive women in the world, and in southern California the per capita percentage is even higher. So when, last Wednesday, I swung by my homegirl Dana's show and ran into one of the most breathtaking sisters I've ever seen, a woman named Najia (and her friends Rachel and Joel, who're tangentially friends with one of my regulars AB), I played it cool. I didn't trade data, I just let her know about my show and moved on. It feels good to not want from a space of lack. I have an abundance of riches, and I am finally able to see myself as an attractive, interesting guy, so it feels like a buyer's market. That's a great feeling.

AND FINALLY ... All that, and my dawg Mikey (who I miss greatly since breaking up with his venue) has returned to blogging, yay! Now, in the words of Spider-Man, "Enough talk. Let's go make with the 'biff' and the 'pow' already!"