Sing for the Moment

Eminem: Sing for the Moment - WikiPedia



These ideas are nightmares to white parents
Whose worst fear is a child with dyed hair and who likes earrings
Like whatever they say has no bearing, it's so scary in a house that allows
no swearing
To see him walking around with his headphones blaring
Alone in his own zone, cold and he don't care
He's a problem child
And what bothers him all comes out, when he talks about
His fuckin' dad walkin' out
Cause he just hates him so bad that he blocks him out
If he ever saw him again he'd probably knock him out
His thoughts are whacked, he's mad so he's talkin' back
Talkin' black, brainwashed from rock and rap
He sags his pants, do-rags and a stocking cap
His step-father hit him, so he socked him back, and broke his nose
His house is a broken home, there's no control, he just let's his emotions
go...

{C'mon}, sing with me, {sing}, sing for the years
{Sing it}, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears, {c'mon)
Sing it with me, just for today, maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you
away...

Entertainment is changin', intertwinin' with gangsta's
In the land of the killers, a sinner's mind is a sanctum
Holy or unholy, only have one homie
Only this gun, lonely cause don't anyone know me
Yet everybody just feels like they can relate, I guess words are a
mothafucka they can be great
Or they can degrade, or even worse they can teach hate
It's like these kids hang on every single statement we make
Like they worship us, plus all the stores ship us platinum
Now how the fuck did this metamorphosis happen
From standin' on corners and porches just rappin'
To havin' a fortune, no more kissin' ass
But then these critics crucify you, journalists try to burn you
Fans turn on you, attorneys all want a turn at you
To get they hands on every dime you have, they want you to lose your mind
every time you mad
So they can try to make you out to look like a loose cannon
Any dispute won't hesitate to produce handguns
That's why these prosecutors wanna convict me, strictly just to get me off
of these streets quickly
But all they kids be listenin' to me religiously, so i'm signin' cd's while
police fingerprint me
They're for the judge's daughter but his grudge is against me
If i'm such a fuckin' menace, this shit doesn't make sense Pete
It's all political, if my music is literal, and i'm a criminal how the fuck
can I raise a little girl
I couldn't, I wouldn't be fit to, you're full of shit too, Guerrera, that
was a fist that hit you...

{C'mon}, sing with me, {sing}, sing for the years
{Sing it}, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears, {c'mon)
Sing it with me, just for today, maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you
away...

They say music can alter moods and talk to you
Well can it load a gun up for you , and cock it too
Well if it can, then the next time you assault a dude
Just tell the judge it was my fault and i'll get sued
See what these kids do is hear about us totin' pistols
And they want to get one cause they think the shit's cool
Not knowin' we really just protectin' ourselves, we entertainers
Of course the shit's affectin' our sales, you ignoramus
But music is reflection of self, we just explain it, and then we get our
checks in the mail
It's fucked up ain't it
How we can come from practically nothing to being able to have any fuckin'
thing that we wanted
That's why we sing for these kids, who don't have a thing
Except for a dream, and a fuckin' rap magazine
Who post pin-up pictures on their walls all day long
Idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs
Or for anyone who's ever been through shit in their lives
Till they sit and they cry at night wishin' they'd die
Till they throw on a rap record and they sit, and they vibe
We're nothin' to you but we're the fuckin' shit in they eyes
That's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and
hold it
Cause we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone
Just let our spirits live on, through our lyrics that you hear in our
songs and we can...

{C'mon}, sing with me, {sing}, sing for the years
{Sing it}, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears, {c'mon)
Sing it with me, just for today, maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you
away...

Son got suspended from school

my son is a dumbass

good kid

but none-the-less a dumbass

he goes onto some teen/younger crowd internet bulletin boards. like many of his contemporaries he wants to a bit of a badass. irreverence is the word of the day...

on one board in particular the word "nigger" or "nigga" is used freely and gratuitously (and in my opinion inappropriately). the social sting of such usage is taken away somewhat by the use of the word in popular culture such as in in Hip Hop and Rap music, and in TV shows like the Boondocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boondocks_(TV_series)

"Aaron has defended the show's heavy and at times gratuitous use of the word "nigga", by arguing that the large-scale usage of the word provides the show with a level of realism, due to the fact that the word is commonly used in the everyday conversations of some African Americans."

I have warned him about using the word and demanded that it not be used in my presence. He does not use it much in everyday usage (that i am aware of).

He is not overtly racist to my perception, and has both black and north american indian friends.

however, my dumbassed son put the subject line "niggaz everywhere" into an email to himself, when he emailed himself a school assignment as an attachment ("niggaz everywhere" is a quote from Rampage the Last Boyscout - Take it to the Streets, the ever tasteful lyrics: "Niggaz everywhere, bitches everywhere rockin to ramp’s new beat; When I hear his music I can’t help but get down like they do"). his story as to why he chose to put the line there is a little confused and will not detail it here - suffice it to say his judgement at 2AM after finishing the assignment, was lacking... i suspect it was to congratulate himself on a job well done

anyway, son was pulling up his assignment in school from email to show it to the class when the teacher projected his mailbox onto the big screen. and there was the subject line. there is one black girl in the class. one of the many ironies is that this was christian ethics class (catholic school [they're govt/publicly funded here])

son got interviewed by the administration and i got called. he's being suspended for two days, and serving a 3rd in school suspension day. i agree with the suspension and actually had the words "this will require a suspension" out of my mouth before the principal did. son will also be giving a re-approved apology to the class including the girl.

they think it was "an error in judgement" (read: dumbassery) and not overt racism as son has been in trouble in both elementary school and high school for fights and altercations where he has been intervening in racial catcalling to stop the catcalling. they want to reduce the incident to a minor one - hence the 3 days of suspension - school is out starting friday until sometime in january.

my son

the dumbass

now, the suspended dumbass...

a little pissed this morning

awhile back my son was out and didn't have the right change for bus. he walked to my parents place from where he was (about 1.5 miles). it was mild enough, only about -12C that day. he wears a cosmic winter coat i bought him this year and has good gloves and such. he could have gotten change, but chose not to.

he had called me to ask for a ride - i said no because he hadn't even informed me it was a possibility and i was busy (i was in the middle of a dinner date with Smitten) i had earlier been in the area of town where he was, and had wondered whether i should pick him up, but he wasn't where he said he was going to be when i checked - i advised him of that. when he called i asked him if he had enough money for the bus and he said yes.

back to the original discussion - it concerned my parents and i that he might show up at their place and they wouldn't be home. and that it might be really cold on such a day.

he told them he didn't have the money for the bus. either they misinterpreted, or he misspoke himself - he had been up all night at a computer gaming tournament and was less than fully coherent. la monnaie in french means change. being french immersion his whole life, sometimes his english usage defaults to french words or their exact english translation and he is slightly idiomatically incorrect.

i had yet another discussion with him about what he should do in the event of being stranded somewhere. it's not that he is being irresponsible, it's just he might make a dumb decision sometime - especially if he was out at a party and had been drinking or whatnot... (yes, i know he is only sixteen - but let's get real here people).

i discussed with him that if he was stranded he had various options including phoning me, his grandparents, his uncles and aunts and so forth. i explained to him that even if no-one would let him use a phone, he can make a collect local call from a payphone. i explained to him that if he was stranded (lets say during a blizzard or at a party gone wrong [or having escaped to a corner store after a party gone wrong]) that even if we were unable to drive him (let's say i had some wine and shouldn't be driving [not that i do it much, but i was trying to model responsible procedures in the event of alcohol consumption], or my mom or dad weren't up to driving at night), that we could either use a credit card over the phone, or we would get a cab and come to where he was to pick him up. as well as single rescuing of him, we wanted to underline once again that neither he nor his friends should be driving, and that we would make things work - even if we needed to drive friends' cars (or friends parent's cars) home so they wouldn't be drinking and driving either.

blah, blah, blah

one of the things i did was make a zip-lock bag with coins and bus tickets - for emergencies. that way, he would have 18 hours of public transport and coin always available.

he put this coin into one of the many pockets of his coat (it's a snow boarding coat so it has a gazillion pockets)

the winter coat is white nylon.

it was getting dirty

his mother decides to wash to coat

like she has for the last 20 years, she doesn't go through pockets properly when she pulls something off the hanger to wash it.

she washes it without checking all the pockets.

the bag of bus tickets gets washed and for whatever reason the bus tickets get wet - probably because son opened it and didn't seal it right.

the bus tickets are wrecked

i know it's only $12.50 but it pisses me off

it pisses me off that my careful preparation is casually ruined by her bad habit of not checking pockets properly. it pisses me off at a bunch of levels.

and it's not like it's the first time. she's been doing it for years. one time (while we were still together), she took a cardigan that i had hanging on the chair in my room and decided to wash it because she need another green item. not because it needed washing, but to make a load big enough to justify washing it in her mind.

i had, the night before, put about a year's worth of massage receipts in my pocket to take to work to file the medical insurance paperwork. that was about $1200 worth of receipts. i had to go about getting official duplicates, and get special permission to file duplicates with the insurance company. a big hassle. over the years she's washed my checkbooks, my pens, my wallet, letters, bills, notes... and in items that were not in the laundry basket. several of the times with the pens, she took my shirt from the chair i had hung it on - i was doing yard work, and had changed into work clothes, but intended to change back into my original shirt later.

aaaargh!

and once again, because of her total self absorption, her focus on only what she is doing, she fucks up some plan or preparation of mine. and if i hadn't quizzed my brain-dead child about the survival of his emergency bus tickets he wouldn't have even thought of it himself. that irritates me too.

i know she was doing it to be nice, but it is still all about her. she quizzed him for a half-an-hour last night about wasn't he really happy she had washed his coat for him, and didn't this prove she was a good mother. that she was fixing the problem i had made by buying him a white coat. that i might make the "grand gesture" (her words) of buying him the coat, but she was the one who had to do the work to fix my mistake of buying that coat... "because your father never thinks about things like washing and care".

(she has had the issues with son for awhile about clothing. son wants a particular item and she doesn't. so she uses one of her many styles of trying to alter the choice, leading up to simple imposition of her own will as a last resort. both kids have complained about having no choice about their clothes)

anyway

that's my rant

i'm irritated

telling you this story has helped me understand why i'm cranky to this level over $12.50 - hell, it's only the price of a couple of premium martinis, or slightly less than lunch out (not that I do either often).

but now i have to (or son will have to) peel apart bus tickets, and then go see if the transit authority head office will accept the damaged tickets back and exchange them for good ones. or it will just be a loss of about $12.50.

i'm a little pissed this morning

will there ever be time to blog?

yeah

so everyone that had their eyes glaze over on the Canadian Politics primer and breezed past it...

read the last section of that post

----

my dad went into the hospital again this past weekend

he had a seizure in about 2AM

my mom tried to reach me and couldn't

my sister-in-law did

Smitten and I had just had a major shaker Christmas party

for the first time in a long time i was so sloshed i could barely walk

i decided that i would not go to the hospital

my Mom won't say it completely out loud, but she's pretty choked i didn't come there

i told her that it would have done no good for me to come over if i couldn't maintain myself upright in a chair...

----

stbx-Mrs_C is losing her marbles. the kids are complaining that she is REALLY unstable

----

the counter-petition from her lawyer arrived

it contains a number if shitty untrue statements - luckily i have written documentation to rebut them

----

work continues to be non-stop from the moment i get here until i leave - often quite late

the new set-up is quite an adjustment for everyone involved

bumping egos and old processes/attitudes that do not fit our new station in the universe are casing problems

----

balh, blah, blah

i will actually detail some of all of this when i have some time, or i'm not too exhausted to do it