He Spoke Volumes

Jun 17

The Weather Games

I imagine the weather folk sit in a back office smoking some sticky and plot on how they gone fuck with us everyday.

“Let’s tell these muhfuckas it’s gone be hot and sunny tomorrow so they will run to the beach with 2 pieces of thread and a button on.”

“Naw, naw let’s tell them a tornadocane tropical tsunami storm called El Niggarache comin’ and watch’em buy out all the Lil Debbie cakes and Koolaid packs.”

I’m about to start my own weather channel, because clearly…

…

We give the negative too much shine.
And a lot of the time…
We do it without going directly to the source.
And if that source is around us enough for us to always give their negativity a stage…
What does that say about us?
We give the negative too much shine.

Coming From Where I’m From: Backwoods Church (Kids) Edition

• The first time I ever had blessing oil put on my forehead, I was around 7 years old. I had an allergic reaction that lasted for almost a week. I vowed never to be blessed in that manner again. Amen.

• I’m convinced my cousin Pat was requesting herself to sing “Oh Happy Day” every 3^rd Sunday. She did this rendition where her and Ronnie (the pianist) would start off in a ballad and go into an upbeat version of it. Problem is, Pat ass would start shouting at the same damn part of the song every time. It was so calculated, me and my constituents would do a countdown to her shout and the exact move she was going to bust first.

• One of the AME churches we would attend didn’t have heat or air in the fellowship hall, yet they always wanted to have first Sunday fellowship in that box. Oh, and the damn stove didn’t work back there either. So we in that piece eating cold ass chicken, stiff spaghetti, iced over green beans and matted up macaroni and cheese. Then they had the nerve to charge you 25 cent for a Big K soda. If you don’t know what Big K is, be forever grateful.

• Let us not forget the dry ass pound cake and condensed milk soup claiming to be pecan pie.

• Me and my brother would drop a request in the usher box for Dukes to sing “I Trust In God.” See, Dukes is a classically trained singer and her rendition of that song is so damn over the top, it’s comical. She didn’t know me and Shaun were sending those requests until last year.

• At the Baptist church, Rev. Hampton had a speech impediment. “World” became “wul” and “flesh” became “flush.” We were kids. We were not shit.

• One time my cousin and her friends were doing an interpretative dance at a musical but somebody forgot to completely dub over the tape, so immediately after they finished performing “Left, Right” by Drama came on. They started marching to their seats like it was part of the performance.

• Mattie was always singing lead even when the song didn’t have a lead part. It could be Senior Choir Sunday (every 5^th Sunday), but Mattie didn’t care. She said she GONE sing lead today and that’s what the fuck she did. She had more adlibs than Young Jeezy.

• My great aunt/godmother would get mad if the president of the kitchen committee didn’t ask her to help or fix a dish for any sort of fellowship dinner. I mean she would curse, throw a tantrum, and call everybody in the family if she wasn’t asked to make that salty ass dressing or that tart ass lemon pie. The president of the kitchen committee was her sister.

• One of the floorboards broke during a church service at the AME church one time. One of the mother’s of the church looked over at it as she walked up for offering and said, “GaaaahhhhhDAYUM! What we usin’ the building fund fuh?!” This was the day I stopped contributing my quarter to the collection plates.

• My cousin Jerry was the pianist at the COGIC church down the block. One night during a praise break at one of their functions, he fused “Back that Ass Up” with the shout music.  

thebootydontlie:

It’s the disillusionment I can’t get down with. When you think about how microscopic sex cells can combine to create a three-dimensional living, breathing, eating, thinking, laughing, crying, Being of Consciousness…that gets to exist on a topographically diverse sphere spun in space…and experience how said sphere is altered dramatically by the imaginations of said Beings of Consciousness…you should be able to be in constant awe of the world around you. You should be able to witness the infinite marvels of the universe and how they manifest inside and around you. So when people reach “adulthood” and acquire this gloom and general disenchantment about life, I just know something is wrong with that. If you are lucky enough to live well into your 70s, and you haven’t been happy since your childhood, that’s 60 years of pseudo-living. But that’s what many of us are heading into—picking up careers we don’t like, putting off what we love until tomorrow, pledging our souls to families and institutions we don’t agree with, looking at children with a kind of resentment because they get to nap when they want and cry when they want and invest their whole bodies unapologetically in their environment because somewhere along the line somebody told us that we stop being children.

It’s the robbery of wonder that I can’t get down with. When a civilization is structured in such a way that it can snatch your joy in the morning for years and years on end (because you’re black, because you’re a woman, because you are young, because you are queer, because you are lost, because you are poor, because others are envious of you or intolerant of you for no justifiable reason) when there is so much to do and see and be, it’s frightening and unforgivable. That people aren’t excited to stretch their potential is scary, is a waste, if you consider how remarkable it is that we know Life. That people have to decide whether they want to survive or be in Joy is so absurd and paradoxical because no one survives. That’s not a choice. That’s not a bargaining tool. Why don’t you choose you if you have a limited time only to do so?

When we crack jokes…

We crack JOKES!

I was going in about Dukes and her wigs/weaves.

Dukes was going in about my big ass head in proportion to my body. 

Then she sent me this in the mail:

And just in case you were wondering, this is a real card.

Jun 14

Guess who just realized it’s Friday..

Yea, Imma just go put myself in the corner.

I know where it is..

“A night out on the town sounds so good, but I looked at my bank account and that hoe said sitting my ass down somewhere sounds a lot better.” — Rine!

thebootydontlie:

I’m steadily and unsteadily reaching this point where I cannot fake it—it, being this professional courtesy, this mindless appreciation of all things mediocre. What am I trying to prove to my mother? That I can survive half-happily on minimum wage, smile in the face of people who bore me on the regular basis, be an obedient, taxpaying citizen of the racist, sexist, classist Divided States of America? During the lulls at the welcome desk, I read various texts on anarchy, chaos, metaphysics, international politics, and love…and it’s all hard to stomach sometimes. There are so many types of prisons of thought—it’s almost taxing to imagine that there is another way to live. How do I supersede the cynicism, the helplessness, the apathy, the defeat, the belief that it can’t get better…that all comes wrapped up in a fuck-you package when you start to realize that something is not right? I’m searching desperately now for that bravery inside me that will permit me to stop pretending to be okay with the senseless culture of misery that is tradition in this country.

This. Right. Here.

Hunger is not what you want catching you off-guard.

Signs of Bedtime

• June-June: I just want to be held.
• Rine!: Hold to Trump's unchanging swoop.
• Rine!: I had too much damn coffee today. I should NOT be up...
• June-June: Yeah, you should be sleep..

Jun 13

LOL! I bet it tastes better than Starbucks, too!

You ain’t lied. Starbucks gone need some receipts..LoL!

don’t be! i’m on a hunt for a ton of mason jars.

I can’t wait to finish off this coconut oil because the jar is the perfect size for a summer’s iced tea. #testify

Iced coffee in this big ass jar. I am not ashamed.

Jun 12

I need to be sleep…

-All my friends tell me I look like Beyonce
-I just don’t see that for her
-Goodnight.

wtf is wrong with Americans

thebootydontlie:

Heeeeellloooo sooommmmeeboooodddaaaaaayyyyy!!!