Entries Tagged 'Random Thoughts' ↓

I just haven’t felt like blogging lately.

Although the summer has been slow, I have done things. I just haven’t felt like writing about any of it. You can watch the Olympics on your own and get news digests from other bloggers, so there’s no real point in me giving you any of that. I admit I’ve become addicted to Facebook, but that’s not an excuse. I just don’t have much to say.

Maybe my feelings will change next week.

I need a life. Seriously.

If my personal life had the structure and responsibility I have in my professional work, I could be hell on wheels. I have lots of great ideas and things I still want to accomplish, but the minute I enter my apartment after a day at the office, I become a vegetable. I park my increasingly ample ass in front of my computer, with the tv set on to my left, and stay there until it’s time to go to bed. I manage to answer maybe half of the hundreds of emails I get a day, skim most of the hundred-plus blogs I subscribe to, and surf dozens more other websites.

Yesterday, I got sucked into the Facebook black hole. I promised myself I wouldn’t but I have succumbed. A friend invited me to become his friend and since I had already set up an account but never done anything with it, I decided to accept. Then I spent the rest of the night updating my profile and signing up new friends.

I already have a Linkedin profile, two in fact. One for my 9-5 career, another for my dormant yet still hoping-to-be-rekindled acting career. I have a Flickr account, and a page on MyBarakObama.com. I created the family tree we all contribute to on Geni.com. I run several listservs and this blog, which even got a mention on Ramone Johnson’s About.com blog.

I surf the sports sites, the adult sites, Youtube (I’m hooked on Derrick L. Brigg’s video show ADTV) and of course the entertainment sites with news and ticket offers for things going on around New York. But I haven’t been to a show of any kind in ages because I spend too much time online.

The internet was supposed to connect people. No doubt it has, but the question is, what is the quality of those relationships and how easy is it to conduct them solely online with no impetus to ever engage each other face-to-face?

Work has been long and tiring as we prepare for a conference in the nation’s capital, that’s going to bring even longer and more tiring days while living out of a suitcase. Yeah, I know some really important stuff is going on in the world but you can read all about it on other blogs or even the mainstream media. When this busy phase is over I’ll start devoting some brain waves to the election but for now, it’s all I can do to turn the computer on and vegetate in front of it.

Shortly after it was announced, I was talking about the Sean Bell murder trial verdict Friday with a co-worker. She’s a young lawyer, whose family fled political unrest in Afghanistan when she was a child. Every day she works on cases related to the detention of Iraqi nationals at Guantanamo, so she knows a little bit about injustice. She was shocked by the acquittal of the three New York City Police officers. I wasn’t.

I’m 48 years old and I’ve been a black man living in America my whole life. I’ve seen this all too many times before. As I told her, the judicial system always gives police a free pass in wrongful death lawsuits. Always. It always gives them a free pass when the victim is black. Always.

Judges, district attorneys and police are all part of the same criminal justice system that is aligned to put so-called criminals behind bars, but rarely each other. After all, when the case is over, they still have to work together.

Remembering that in 2000 a jury in upstate Albany acquitted four police officers of the murder of an unarmed Amadou Diallo—after shooting him 41 times—I had mixed feelings when this case was to be tried in front of a judge and not a jury. Part of me said a judge might actually view the evidence objectively, understand the law and do the right thing.

Playing Saturday morning quarterback, the three defendants, Detectives Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper probably should have been tried separately. They had varying degrees of culpability. Of the 50 shots fired by all three, Oliver shot 31 times, including a reload.

Despite whatever threats they thought they faced, the facts are clear. There was no gun in the Bell car and no shots fired by anyone in that car. Any threatening action with the movement of that car was predicated on the fact that Bell and his companions had no idea who the three men were who approached their car. Finally, through all the gunfire, at no time did the officers attempt to determine what the real dangers were. I reiterate, Detective Oliver even stopped to reload.

This morning my feelings are best described as a controlled rage. White people wonder why we have no faith in the criminal justice system. It is because it so seldom protects our interests. We are victimized by crime then victimized again by the system.

I wonder if the sitting junior Senator from New York will have the intestinal fortitude to comment on the outcome of this case?

Capricorn Horoscope for week of April 10, 2008

Want to know a secret? I “predict” the present, not the future. In other words, I discern unconscious patterns and invisible influences that are affecting you *now.* I also try to inspire you to read your *own* mind so as to uncover feelings that you’ve been hiding from yourself. So I can’t necessarily tell you what specific events will transpire in the coming days. But I do suspect the following things are true, although you may not be aware of them yet: You are in the midst of redefining what home means to you. You’ve been neglecting a deep need that’s a bit embarrassing to you. And there’s a place in your foundation that’s in disrepair and requires your immediate attention.

From Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology.