"they say jim crow, we say hell no"

What? What on earth is going on? Sometimes it just hits me, the surreal craziness of our times, and all I can think is What is going on? Is this for real? Color-coded terror alerts? This is real? How was this accepted to anything other than a chorus of giggles? These What? moments come upon me randomly and last for a few minutes before I again step back into whatever the ideology is that I believe (hope) I stepped out of momentarily. It's like those moments where you are getting drunk for the umpteenth night in a row, hanging out with people that are lame, and you step back from the scene and ask yourself, "Wait! What am I doing? Why am I here with these people?" And then a song comes on that you like, maybe even an Outkast song, and you start shaking your limbs in sync with the music and the thought, the moment is gone, replaced by good tunes and more liquor.

I am listening to old Outkast albums, and it sounds right. The low-key funk is the mood I am feeling, a mild funkiness, the good kind, and then I read the news and it just doesn't jive at all. It is so jarring, the fast tense drumbeat of it, the fucking insanity of Tom Ridge. Today could very well be the end of affirmative action, and it is a constant attack. I am ready to come out swinging, saying no more of this bullshit. Outrageous disparities between the K-12 education that most whites recieve compared to that of most minorities, and some white broad doesn't get into her dream school, Michigan, and boo fucking hoo. If it isn't that terrorist Tom Ridge, it's giving Haliburton contracts to rebuild Iraq, or this Michigan mess. What the fuck? How did we get to this point? Why can't we just listen to old Outkast tunes and feel this mellow funk?

One of my favorite writers, Hank Stuever, wrote a fairly good piece about all this government induced terror. And it is somehow optimistic, well-written, and funny considering what the subject is. And this is why Stuever is one of my favorite writers. Read it, read it, read it. His writing is what I want to be capable of.

Outkast is still playing. "Crumblin Erb." And I got to dance. Because it's that or being frustrated and full of rage.