Diatribes by Joah

If I could write for The Onion...

Study Blames I-Pods For Decrease in Homeless Giving

Washington, D.C.--A study released today indicates I-Pods, Apple's popular MP3 player, is a lead source behind the continued decline in personal giving to the homeless. The study, conducted jointly by Columbia University and Villanova University, also indicates college loan interest rate hikes, increased gas prices, and the spread of New England elitism as potential causes.

Over the past decade, Dr. Gregory Tashek of Villanova and Dr. Tamra Rundt-Hunter of Columbia interviewed and studied the lives of more than 16,300 homeless people. The I-Pod was named as the primary root cause in garnering less contributions by 56 percent of respondents. The results have a three percent margin of error.

"At the outset, it appeared that the downward trend in giving was due to the burst of the tech bubble in the late '90s and early '00s," said Tashek, the Sylvester Stallone Professor of Community and Homeless Studies at Villanova. "But right around the Christmas of 2001 we  started seeing major correlation between the introduction of the I-Pod and the decrease in homeless giving."

The study came about after then-Georgetown University professors Tashek and Rundt-Hunter co-authored a book in 1997 titled, 'Homeless and Cold: Gaining Understanding of Weather's Impact on the Homeless.' The book was named homeless book club Box 'N Book's Best Read that same year.

"After Homeless and Cold, we realized there was this vast desire within the academic and homeless communities, alike, to understand the causes behind the phenomena," said Rundt-Hunter, who received a personal thank you letter from Oscar winner Halle Berry, who once lived in a homeless shelter in New York. "Many people say they don't give because they feel homeless people are going to use the money for alcohol or drugs, but I-Pods have had a more detrimental effect on the homeless."

The study's findings were announced this morning in front of a gray 1968 Ford Econoline van parked inside an alley just blocks from the White House and George Washington University. Tashek and Rundt-Hunter said the van symbolized the detachment homeless people feel from their government and college students, the leading members of the I-Pod generation.

Although Rocky writer and star Stallone was unable to attend, he did send a statement indicating he requested a meeting with Apple Chairman Steven Jobs to discuss the company's homeless policy. He also stated both the Rocky and Rambo series' would no longer be available on iTunes.

Singer Jewel, whose homeless experiences helped her make the New York Times bestseller list with her poetry book 'A Night Without Armor,' was on hand for the announcement.

"I lived in a van not too different from this one and if not for my music, I wouldn't have ever made it out," said the Grammy Award winner. "It's truly disheartening to think that some college kid may be listening to my platinum-selling debut album, 'Pieces of You,' and refuse to give a homeless woman a quarter. I mean, I want to ask these people, who will save your soul?"

Stallone and Jewel aren't the only celebrities concerned with the study's findings. Upon hearing the story, Oprah Winfrey said she would have Tashek and Rundt-Hunter on her show, adding 'Homeless and Cold' was second only to Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed' for books that make her feel guilty about her fortune. Tashek and Rundt-Hunter also said they have been contacted by Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock to discuss a  documentary.

Regardless of what comes of their research, both Tashek and Rundt-Hunter understand that their work will not be considered a success if giving to the homeless does not improve as Apple continues putting out new, more detailed versions of the I-Pod during the holiday season, often the coldest months of the year.

"I don't know why everyone is acting so surprised, I've been telling people for the last few years that these I-Pods are the worst thing to hit us homeless people since automatic windows," said Marlin Jenkins, who lives in cardboard boxes in the alley where the announcement was made. "The only thing that works with people with I-Pods is to piss on myself then walk next to them until they finally reach in their pockets. One guy accidentally gave me a hundred-dollar bill. I drank good that night."

*The story you have just read is fictional. Any references to people, both real and fake, was done for strictly comedic purposes.*

Men are the head, but Women are the neck

This is a diatribe about how men lose control of their minds, bodies, and souls. This is a diatribe about women.

*****

It’s happened more than once, but if another male waiter tries to inconspicuously hit on my girlfriend, I’m going to unleash every bit of rage this 5-foot, 10-inch, 160-pound frame can handle. And let me warn you, the last fight I got in ended with the other kid on the ground with a bloody nose and me in the corner during recess.

I mean it’s not like I don’t understand their desire to look at my girlfriend, because she’s beautiful and she has this effervescent-ness exuding from her every move, but please guys: back the fuck off. I have serious jealousy issues and I’m the last guy some unknowing waiter at Luna Grill wants to mess with.

I’m a guy. I understand. It’s hard not to be on the prowl at all times. Trust me, I’ve lived it for years…and successfully, at that. But don’t be so silly to completely disregard the fact that a) she’s obviously with a guy, b) that guy just may be her boyfriend or date, and c) that boyfriend or date may be about ready to kick your ass.

Men are often victims of an infectious disease known as attraction. This is a disease which often allows women to control our minds.

Don’t act surprised. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You see it everyday when you cross the street or get on the Metro (or Subway for my New York readers). You see it the moment you step into a bar. I’m talking about the kind of attraction that makes us men do the silliest things.

We stop, mid-crosswalk (with cars on the way) to turn around and say “DAAAAYUUUUMMM!” and look at that girl in the tight jeans with the ass as big as the ones you saw in the latest 50 Cent video. We miss our stop on the Metro because we’re too busy looking at the two women that look like Maxim models. We hire incapable interns because of that solid first impression they made that made us want to work more closely with them.

What the hell are we thinking? Oh, nevermind we’re not thinking. The disease trickles into our brain, consuming our mind, and eventually all we can think about is:

Wow, I want to see what she looks like naked.
Man, what I wouldn’t give to get it on with her?
How do I get her to come home with me?

Even the greatest of men struggle to fight off the effects of this powerful disease. Bill Clinton, JFK, Dr. MLK, Thomas Jefferson, Brad Pitt. They all failed to re-gain control of their minds before it was too late.

They fell victim to the second act of the disease’s performance: they lost control of their bodies.

I’m not one of those people that thinks men think about and want sex more than women. But I do believe we act on our thoughts a hell of a lot quicker when given the opportunity.

Women are often concerned with the social and emotional ramifications of their sexual activities.

Will I feel like or be called a slut?
What will my friends think when I tell them?
Is this guy special enough to give it up?

Men concern themselves with one thing only. How good is it going to feel?

Once a man answers that question, he’s ready to go. Case closed. Even in instances when the man has a significant other, i.e. the aforementioned men, it usually comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of how good it’s going to feel versus how likely he is to get caught and end the relationship, which happened only to Pitt.

And since our minds are already functioning at low levels due to stage one of the disease, we’re too stupid to realize that we’ll all get caught eventually. Don’t worry…it’ll happen, either while we’re still in the relationship or when we’re no longer in it and wondering if it’s downfall may have been a result of our infidelity having taken something special out of the relationship.

That “something special” is the last point I’m going to harp on.

I know it’s difficult for us men to see ourselves as emotional beings. We have not been taught to understand ourselves beyond the physical (i.e. I’m good at sports or I’m good looking) and functional (i.e. I’m going to be a lawyer or I’m good using my hands so I fix cars) arenas. We have trouble identifying with our non-physical selves…our souls.

And this, my penis-wielding colleagues, is where we must thank the women in our lives. Because of them, we are moving toward an age where it is okay to see the world through an emotional lens.

It may have started with fashion and women allowing men to dress themselves up (Metrosexuals). It may have started with music with women desiring men like Prince and Steven Tyler even though they have effeminate attributes. And it may even be the fact that the role of women in American society has changed drastically in the last few decades, requiring less strain on  men to fulfill the John Wayne-Tarzan roles of days past. Who knows.

Either way, it’s easy to see that American men have greater freedom to express themselves more now than ever before. We are allowed to have souls.

One of the best definitions for the word soul is: the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments. I like this definition because it uses the word seat.

As in, sit down in a seat. Throughout America’s history, men have been asked to stand. Stand up and fight for your country. Stand up and be a man. Stand up and be proud. Stand up like a soldier. Stand up gentleman. And be a stand up guy.

It’s about time we sit down. Thank you women, for helping us men learn how to sit down.

Because of you, we may one day look at that hot blonde at the bar and think “you know what, I bet she just came here to have a drink and not be hit on by a hundred guys.” Or maybe we’ll make it down the road without gawking at the women with the J.Lo-inspired rear-end. Or maybe, in moments of temptation, we’ll be thankful that our girlfriend or wife is just as beautiful fully clothed as she is in the nude.

And, just maybe, I won’t have to kick some guy’s ass the next time I order wine with my girlfriend.

I Need More (People) Energy

I promised open, honest and insightful. Here you go.

Althea (my girlfriend) and I have been having this ongoing conversation about life and all its moving parts (see last week’s ‘tribe about The Odyssey). Amongst them, she tells me, is this element of energy…you know, positive/good energy and negative/bad energy. It’s constantly moving, changing, pushing and pulling, she says. Maybe that’s not exactly the way she puts it, but that’s the way I interpret it.

And I’m starting to believe her. Not simply because she’s my girlfriend and I may get brownie points for believing everything she says, but because she’s probably the most intuitive (and heady) person I’ve ever known, which still sounds like an understatement, and has a weird understanding of these mythical/mystical concepts in life.

Regardless, this diatribe has little to do with positive and negative energy, good and bad vibes or anything of that sort. Instead, it has everything to do with something that’s near and dear to my heart: people.

People make the world go ‘round. So says The Stylistics.

“But that's what makes the world go `round
The up and down, the carousel
Changing people, they'll go around
Go underground, young man
People make the world go `round”

It’s true. Climate change, inflation, music, terrorism…these are people-based concepts meaning they depend on people more than people depend on them. You can chalk me up on that list. I have serious co-dependency issues with people…not person, people.

My childhood memories involve band practices, dance contests, track meets and all kinds of other events that are remembered not because of what happened, but because of who was there with me to experience it. Fittingly, the most important people in my life, my family and my great friends, have been present for just about every one of these major events.

People make my world go ‘round. Thankfully, I recognized the importance of this from a very early age. I routinely wanted to be around adults, even as an elementary school kid, in order to learn from them. In middle and high school, it wasn’t uncommon for  me to spend hours talking to the parents of my best friends. When I started working, at age 10 mowing lawns and age 15 at Pizza Hut, I would look forward to the time I got to spend conversing with grown ups who I serviced and worked with.

This is not to say that grown ups/adults are people and my childhood peers were not, but it’s really to say that I always had this understanding that life lessons come from those that know the most about life and its “moving parts.” And my teenage friends hadn’t exactly experienced that many of those moving parts just yet. So there I was, talking about the world and current events with people 20 and 30 years my senior.

The reason I bring this up is because, as I work on completing the manuscript for Real Role Models, I have had the wonderful opportunity to talk to some amazing people. People from all over the country. People who have traveled the world. People who have succeeded tremendously, both personally and professionally. These are people that didn’t need The Stylistics to understand the importance of others. They have inspired me to take a more active approach in looking at the person I am, why I am this way, and how I can continue improving upon myself by identifying and reacting to life’s moving parts more effectively.

When I say “others” I am not referring to other people. This diatribe would be fruitless if all I was saying was meet and befriend as many people as possible. Because, unlike say…money, it’s about quality, not quantity.

To handle life’s moving parts, I believe, you need great, constant, people in your life. But the path to quality relationships/people is seldom discussed in our pop culture-driven society. We know Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton hang out, but do we know what kind of relationship they really have?  We know everyone wants to work with star producer-rapper Kanye West, but does that mean they like him as a person?

We, as Americans, love this idea of popularity and friendship. Somehow we think that the more popular someone is, the better their friendships are and the better their life is. That’s just plain silly. Perhaps, instead, we should de-emphasize popularity and quantity (which is increasingly difficult in the G-Chat, Facebook world) and emphasize quality of friendships and interaction.

I don’t concern myself with stories about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton spending a million dollars shopping on Rodeo and partying like coked out models in Vegas. Do Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton ever talk about failed relationships? Similarly, I don’t care about Kanye West freaking out at the MTV Awards. Does Kanye have dinner with Jay-Z or Common on a weekly basis…what kind of conversations do they have? These are the things I want to know.

I want to know if these celebrities have great people and relationships in their lives or is this just a façade that mirrors the truth for millions of Americans that have 1,000 MySpace friends and a dozen people to get drunk with, but no one to call when they’re in tears?

People make the world ‘go round and you can either have great people spinning your axle (and making you smile in tearful moments) or meaningless people controlling your orbit. This is my positive energy vs. negative energy.

It’s not easy though. Great people don’t put out flyers or press releases. They don’t wear nametags and they don’t come into your life on a daily or even monthly basis. They’re those needles in life’s haystack.

But when you get poked by that needle…I mean when you get stabbed in the finger and the blood is rushing out, figuratively of course, you don’t worry about getting a Band-Aid. You just let it flow. You may even suck on it. Anything to absorb it all.

And you know what…more often than not, these people aren’t just like you. Sure, you have shared interests and characteristics, but they’re typically people with life experiences, idiosyncrasies and mannerisms different from your own. If you’re white, he/she may be black. If you’re a guy, she may be a girl. If you’re a Republican, he/she may be a Democrat. If you’re into rap, he/she may be into rock. If you’ve traveled the East Coast, maybe he/she has traveled the West Coast. I could keep going, but you get the point.

I am blessed to have great people in my life. But sometimes, I admit, I get upset that I don’t have more control over my interaction with them. I mean, weekly phone calls and a handful of weekend visits per year isn’t quite doing the trick because my best friends live in Boston, Kansas, Kentucky, and Texas. Even my mentors/role model types live in South Carolina, Texas and Utah thousands of miles away. I have a serious people quality issue here in D.C. and I find myself wanting for more.

I’ve made some really good friends over the last two years in D.C. and neither my love life nor my professional life is lacking for substance. But there’s still this void, this energy gap and its too much to expect either to fill the void. Of the 10 most important people in my life right now, only one of them is in D.C. And it’s not as simple as moving somewhere else, because at best I would be in the same city as two of them.

Each day, I feel what my girlfriend was talking about more and more. I’m starting to think, over the first 22 years of my life, I became accustomed to a certain amount of “positive/good energy” thanks to the wonderful people in my life on a daily/more regular basis. Even during my roughest life point, junior year of high school when I moved from South Carolina to Texas, I met my best friend Colby in the first few days of school.

Perhaps my writing this demonstrates both my gift and my curse. I have the gift of great friends and people in my life, who are different from me in so many ways, but still click like close kin, yet I am cursed with my knowledge of the importance of great people - people that bring true value to me as a person on a regular basis - in a society that tells me I can fill whatever void I have by going to a happy hour, working out at a fancy gym, spending money on cars and clothes or falling in love.

I’m not an alcoholic, gym rat or trust fund kid, so that leaves the latter. And, trust me, I’ve tried. But my girlfriend knows better than me that she doesn’t have the energy (positive or negative for that matter) to keep my world revolving the way I want and need it to.

So here I am, with plenty of events and moving parts in my life. Yet searching for the people, here in my D.C.-based daily existence, to help me appreciate, experience, handle and remember them.

For Halloween, I’m thinking about being a blood-thirsty vampire. It’s not far from how I feel as I write this.

Odyssey: The Game of Inches

Last night, Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo threw five interceptions, including two for Buffalo Bills touchdowns, and lost a fumble. There's no way on Earth you win a football game after making such costly mistakes. But one 80-yard drive, an on-side kick return and two 53-yard field goals was enough to save the day for my Cowboys. This diatribe is about how, even after those immature mistakes by Romo, the Cowboys still won the game...and how we can do just the same. Only it's the game of life we're playing.

"You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that's... that's... that's a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin' stuff. You find out life's this game of inches...the inches we need are everywhere around us...when you add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this, in any fight it's the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch...because that's what living is, the six inches in front of your face." - Al Pacino, Any Given Sunday

This week's diatribe is partially about this concept of "inches." More often than not, I have no idea what I'm going to write about until I start writing, but sometimes there's an idea brewing in my head for days. This one has been in my heads for what feels like years now as more and more of my friends navigate what New York Times' David Brooks describes as the odyssey.

Brooks writes, "there used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood. During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another...what we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase."

So what does David Brooks' op-ed have to do with Al Pacino's speech from Any Given Sunday? More or less, that's what I've been trying to figure out for the last few days. Ultimately, I was led to the belief that Pacino's game of inches and Brooks' odyssey intersect tremendously during our 20s and the better we understand these concepts, the better we'll understand this period of our lives.

I know a lot of older Americans, especially those from Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation, think our generation is not holding up our end of the American bargain that says we must improve the country beyond what our parents did. I-Pods in our ears playing some mumbo jumbo like Kanye West's Graduation, BlackBerry's in our hands text messaging our not-so-significant others, Red Bull and Vodka (or worse) charging our veins, MySpace and Facebook on our computer screens, and sex on our brains. They think our senses are being blocked by ignorance and the result is less focus on what truly matters. They're waiting for our Yuppie-like wake up call to kick us into career/family/picket fence mode.

But I'm not so sure it's ever going to come. What's lost on these older Americans is the importance of those "inches." You see, our parents' lives were exactly what Brooks says..."childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age." Childhood to adolescence is a pretty big jump in one's life and is spearheaded by our physical (puberty), social and educational (high school) developments. Adolescence to adulthood is an even bigger jump because it's supposed to entail residential and financial independence, marriage, and parenthood and Brooks points out that "in 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same." Adulthood to old age, for our parents, is a jump that is often matched with conservatism (being afraid of new concepts), minimalism (living very simple lives), and retirement (from careers, not parenting...they do more of that, it seems, as the years add on).

On the other hand, our generation has shown a resistance to such broad strokes and big jumps from one life stage to another. Instead, we're taking Pacino's concept literally and approaching life as a game of inches. We seem have have already figured out that life is the six inches in front of our faces. True, we often encounter moments of uncertainty and fear and self-doubt, but rarely do we try to break our lives down to less than a handful of boxes remaining to be checked. For those that do embrace the life models of Baby Boomers, I find that it's usually the result of them having grown up in very structured, simplistic, and often-times conservative two-parent households and often have serious co-dependency issues (either with their parents or with their significant others). The rest of us live by those inches. (Or feet, if you're anything like me.)

We've been misled all these years. Misled by an older generation that spent their whole lives acquiring things (i.e. spouses, house, two cars, kids, retirement funds) and then losing them (first kids, then jobs, then spouses) as Pacino says. Meanwhile, our generation, especially as a 20-something isn't about walking through life like it's a shopping mall, stopping by the relevant stores to purchase a spouse (or three), house, cars, and children. The idea of those "major purchases" in life are drastically changing, if not disappearing altogether. In reality it's not about one critical juncture after another; it's about one inch after another. Each inch, each life choice, is followed by another inch, another decision, another job, another relationship, another degree, another apartment, another vacation, another career change.

This is the way of the 21st Century Kid as Jamie Cullum would say. It's not about those turnovers, those interceptions, those fumbles and those mistakes. Football analyst would have you believe a football game's critical junctures are turnovers, but last night disproved that theory. Winning football games is  just as much about taking care of the football as it is about resiliency, persistence, putting good people around you and holding on...for those inches.

Life, like football, doesn't have to boil down to those critical junctures or mistakes...more and more, our generation is proving that it really comes down to those inches. The inches between success and fulfillment. The inches between true love and convenience. The inches between uninspired and yet-to-be-inspired. The inches between settling and striving. The inches between contentment and enjoyment. The inches between what is easy and what is worth the hard work. And the sooner we all realize when we encounter those inches in life, the sooner we'll all start winning like the Dallas Cowboys instead of losing like the Buffalo Bills.

U.S. Senate vs. B-Boys

Thanks to my girlfriend's knowledge of cool happenings in D.C., I went to a B-Boy competition on Sunday. For those of you not familiar, B-Boy refers to breakdancers (yes, there are B-Girls too), B-Boys are some of the original contributors to hip-hop culture. Before Run-DMC rocked shelltop adidas and before LL Cool J sported the Kangol hat, B-Boys were the style kings of hip hop. Hip-hop heads know that hip hip isn't just rapping lyrics, but its roots also extend to graffiti and breakin'.

Over the last two decades, rappers have become the torchbearers (or denigrators) of hip-hop culture - think A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West, and Lupe Fiasco - while being a B-Boy has lost a little bit of notoriety in pop culture, although they remain a true hip-hop scene staple and have seen a revival in recent years. It's now typical to see elements of breakin' in award show performances and movies with R&B singers like Usher, Chris Brown and Mr. SexyBack himself.

So what does all this B-Boy talk have to do with the U.S. Senate? Well, long story short, it's a lesson in diversity and going against the grain. Presidential hopeful and Senator Barack Obama said the Senate forces Senators to make tough votes that they don't want to make. In other words, when that $190 billion Iraq war spending bill comes across his desk, and those of his Democratic counterparts who are adamantly opposed to continuing the war, they're forced to vote for it because they don't want to come across as not supporting our men and women in uniform.

No offense Sen. Obama, but that answer doesn't cut it for a B-Boy. A B-Boy, who represents true hip-hop culture, isn't about doing things because that's what the rest of their crew I mean Party is doing. Nor would a B-Boy be concerned about his reputation if he decided to go against the grain. But that's what half of the Senate, i.e. the presidential field, is doing right now. They need to have a hearing and invite the Rock Steady Crew to show them how it's done. Or they could just watch Breakin' 1 and 2.

On another note, the B-Boy scene, unlike the U.S. Senate, is incredibly ethnically diverse. One would assume a hip-hop event would be overwhelmed with black participants, but that wasn't the case. I would put the black participants at the event around 30-35 percent with another 15-20 percent being Latino, 35-40 percent being of Asian descent and 10-20 percent breakers being white. Contrast that with the fact that, Sen. Obama is the lone black member, Hawaii's two Senators are the only Asian-Americans, and Colorado's Ken Salazar, Florida's Mel Martinez and New Jersey's Robert Menendez are the only Senators of Latino heritage. The only saving grace for the Senate are the growing number of female senators, up from two 15 years ago to 15 women in the Senate today. Of course, we have to make small strides, all of them are white.

And my last point speaks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Personally, I have seen too many occasions where the Executive Branch has dictated our nation's foreign policy without the checks and balances of the U.S. Senate and this important committee...Cuban Missile Crisis in the early '60s, genocide in Rwanda in the mid-'90s, and most recently with our nefarious terrorist-detainee policy that allows us to maintain Guantanamo Bay while bad-mouthing countries like China for their cruel human rights policies. Again, this would never fly if B-Boys made up the Foreign Relations Committee. They'd probably start by doing the most obvious thing and changing the name to the Senate Foreign Policy Committee (and starting every meeting between Israel and Palestine like this), which would be a public demonstration to the President (whoever it is at the time) that he/she cannot lead our nation into foreign policy abyss. And that B-Boy revival I mentioned earlier...it's largely attributed to breakdancing's expansion to Germany, Japan, and other countries away from the Western Hemisphere.

B-Boys don't need hearings or campaign funds to be seen and heard, they only need some cardboard and a backbeat. The U.S. Senate, our U.S. Senate, may not be able to mirror the principles and values of the B-Boy scene, but they can certainly take some cues. Stop being so calculated and start taking action. It's pathetic that 100 men, consisting of Harvard and Yale Law grads, multi-million dollar businessmen and women, former long-time Congressmen and women, and public servants can't do something as simple as create a piece of legislation that won't need to be revamped during the next Congressional session due to short-sightedness.

For the remainder of this Congressional session, I either expect to see the Senate pull off some meaningful and sustainable legislation or all 100 of them able to do this by the end of the year.

In the next installment of Diatribes by Joah, I'll discuss my recommendations for revamping presidential debates in order to include vice presidential candidates to more closely mirror this method for determining who's best.

And why not settle international disputes like this? Could you imagine that being the way we determine who gets a permanent UN Security Council seat.