I'm Sick of this SHIT

So...I generally don't show emotion, at least not publicly but today I wanted to throw some shit. Grad school can get incredibly lonely at times, especially when you don't really have your close friends nearby. And I can deal with that most of the time, because I still communicate with most of my friends regularly. But today I walk into my department and I see the administrative whatever the hell her job title is lady for my department. I wave at her, she gives me the "who the fuck are you" face. Now I really get pissed off when people who should at least recognize my face don't. To me it's incredibly rude. Everywhere I go I'm either the ONLY Black male, or either one of two black men. Now I've met this lady before and we communicate fairly regularly so when she gave me that look and ignored my greeting it pissed me off. There are only two black men in my department either in the PhD and I think the Master's level. So for her to not at least recognize that "that guy looks familiar, lemme just wave and smile" it pissed me off.

So like I stated earlier this place can get awfully lonely and last semester it got lonely but I was making good grades so it was easier to deal with. This semester I feel like I'm skiing uphill in quicksand. The harder I try the worse it seems to get. I even put in hardcore weekend hours, something I rarely did last semester. But it just seems like I can't get it right! The worse part is that my classes this semester are much easier than my classes last semester so I don't know wtf is going on! At this point I'm just trying to stay afloat and make it to summer break. Hopefully I won't get any Cs cuz in grad school those might as well be Fs. And to make it worse the weather this week is going to SUCK. COLD AND GLOOMY!

Just keep swimming...

J-Full

Why I love Andrew (Infinite Hampshire..)

After showing me Uconn's Intramural webpage...



J-Full:fuck uconn
J-Full: tell them to stop cheating
J-Full:or getting caught rather
Andrew: lolol
J-Full :obviously coach K isn't cheating enough considering how we got our asses whipped last night
J-Full: villanova went straight nat turner on our white asses
Andrew: LOL
Andrew: it didnt help that we went lily white liberal guilt on them
Andrew: better let the black men score for our past oppression of them
J-Full:lol

"It wasn't fun for me...I have nothing to say. It was bad"

fortunately/unfortunately she was talking about Duke Basketball

So I heard a rumor that I hate White people...

which I must say is erroneous on all counts. I would talk about how many White friends I have, but I feel like that'd be silly like when people say "I'm not racist, I have 3 Black friends". But seriously I have 1.5 White best friends. But that's beside the point. I guess this rumor arose because I'm in a class entitled Race and Public Policy. In that class a lot of my classmates say silly things and in a discussion I can't let you get away with that stuff. My personal favorites: Race doesn't matter anymore, We don't need affirmative action, I didn't own slaves my family wasn't even in America.

While not every White person owned slaves, White people have undoubtedly benefited from the institutional racism in our society. I'm not saying that White people should walk around feeling guilty, just that they shouldn't deny they've benefitted from the institutional racism. In the same way I'll admit that I've benefited from gender discrimination. Talking about race and affirmative action will open up a whole new can of worms that I don't care to entertain right now so I won't.

So in summary: NO i DON'T HATE WHITE PEOPLE. I'm just not going to let people get away with saying stupid shit, nor am I going to absolve them of responsibility. So bottom line, if you say it, you should be prepared to back it up. And you better come with the heat, cuz I'm looking to rip you to shreds. That goes for all races, creeds, genders, orientations, ethnicities, and every other category you're looking for.

That's all,
J-Full

"I can't see it being that long"

-Erin to Andrew
lol

"U're too hard"

i'll leave her anonymous

I havent read it personally but...

I do know a few ladies who have and so far they tell me it's pretty good. It was on Oprah, but I don't know how much weight I'd give to Harvey appearing on Oprah, considering a couple of folks she's had on there lately promoting their books have turned out to be frauds. But if you're a lady and you're wondering why you don't have a man and/or can't find one, this book my offer some insight for ya. Or if you can find men easily but can't keep them, holla at the book. If you've read it lemme know what you think. In case you want to take a gander at some of the topics check out this CNN/Oprah.com story on the book by clicking here


J-Full

P.S. If anybody knows of an equivalent book for men (preferably Black men, since I'm a Black man) holla at ya boy in the comments.

"It's amazing what those guys do between the pipes"

-sportscenter

Maybe it's just me...

So back in high school my best friend at the time was a girl we'll call GG, it sounds silly yes, but I didn't ask her permission to use her name in the blog. But that's really beside the point. I remember one day on the bus we were talking and she said "Jeremy you know what, you're a really good friend. I feel like you treat all of your female friends like your girlfriend and your girlfriend like a queen". And that was probably true at the time. I did hold a high regard for women at that point in my life. I would say it was my naivete that put them up on such a pedestal that they couldn't possibly live up to. Then in high school I got my heart broken. This girl I thought I was in love with unintentionally (she says) broke my heart. I got over it eventually though I'm sure the scar is still visible. Again that's another tangent...

But I got to college and to put it frankly, life taught me a lot of lessons. I soon learned that women are opportunist just like men and if you're on the wrong side of the opportunity you can get your feelings hurt. So my outlook on women changed. I wouldn't say I developed disgust for them but I'll say there was a marked difference in how I treated them compared to how I treated them in my more naive days. I stopped over extending myself to be kind to women I had no romantic interest in. I wasn't mean to the ones i wasn't interested in, I just treated them like they were my homeboys. And now I suppose it's caused me some problems. I have a few female friends say that I'm an ass, a jerk, (anything but a child of God) and few other things that involve me being mean to them. And I wasn't intentionally being mean to them but I guess I wasn't being sensitive to their feelings either. And i soon found out that nobody's as hardcore as they seem on the surface (me included). So even the girls who can go diss for diss with the best of them has a threshold and I guess I like to cross that threshold rather often into the land of hurt feelings. And I do value these friendships so I'm willing to change and be a little more compassionate and considerate of their feelings. It might not be as fun but hopefully it'll be worth it.

J-Full

Getting my swole on...

So back when I enrolled in college I was about 5'11, 145 pounds. Needless to say I was a tad skinny though I had muscles. I was determined to "get my weight up" so I used to work out twice a day 5-6 times a week. By thanksgiving break I was 175 pounds of muscle and couldn't fit any of my old dress shirts (I couldn't even button the shirt, not the front buttons or even the sleeve buttons). I pretty much stayed at that weight and build until the fall of 2004. After I joined my frat I stopped working out as much. I guess you can say I had other priorities. I worked out casually for the rest of my college career but not with the same exercise discipline that I started college with.

Now I'm 24 same height approximately 165 pounds. But I have not worked out consistently in ages. I started out the semester on a good path but when school picked up I dropped off. This spring break I've been trying to get back on a gym schedule where I exercise 3 times a week in the gym and 2 days a week at home. On the gym days my goal is to be able to run a mile before I lift and still be able to complete my lifting workout. I'm not a fan of pounding the pavement for miles. But my cardio endurance sucks so far I've managed to complete 3/4 of a mile, then i get annoyed and quit. But I must tell you every movable part of my body hurts like hell. But hopefully I'll be able to keep it up so I can get my body right for the summer. I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination but I don't have the body image that I want. Perhaps I just have low self-esteem or something but exercise is supposed to help with that kinda thing right? Oh well I'll keep you updated on how it's turning out.

By the way, I'm using LL Cool J's Platinum workout book. If i can get on his level or anywhere close I'll call it a great success but he talks about dieting too much and i'm too broke to be on a diet lol. Oh well we'll see what happens from here.



J-Full

"Keep Your Hands to Yourself"

"Keep your hands to yourself." That's something that we all learned as young children. To put it simply, you can't just go through life hitting people without consequences. In the wake of the Chris Brown-Rihanna fiasco, the buzz words have been "domestic violence". Lots and lots of people want to crucify Chris Brown, slightly less people are upset at Rihanna for taking him back; although recent reports claim they've gone splitsville. But I've reserved comments for this situation, at least publicly, because I know I'm not out their marching in rallies against domestic violence. That being said I do find domestic violence and what Chris Brown did as the police report alleges, to be totally reprehensible.

But as this situation emerged I've been in a rather intense debate with a good female friend about domestic violence. And she's in the school of thought where she thinks it's okay for women to hit men but men can't hit women. Because the only thing women hurt is "a man's pride". And this reminded me of when I was younger and I used to fight with my female cousins and their friend from down the street. Those girls used to gang up on me and kick my ass (I was 8 or 9 and they were all about 4+ years older than me). Then one day I got tired of it and kicked all their asses but I ended up getting a beating from my aunt. And I was like wtf? Where was everybody when they were ganging up on me beating me up. It was then that I realized there was a double standard when it comes to violence between genders. So that being said I pretty much knew that for the rest of my life, I wasn't allowed to hit a woman even if she hit me first.

But the thing I kept trying to explain to my friend was that not all men think like I do. They feel that if a woman hits them first they are well within their rights to hit her back and there are even some that feel that they don't have to exercise restraint. Now let me make this clear, I DO NOT AGREE with this train of thought, but I will acknowledge that it exists in our society. So what I was trying to tell my friend was that if she doesn't want to find herself on the wrong end of a beatdown it's best to not hit men at all, because frankly, you don't know how that man might respond. So then we started talking about women getting in men's faces aggressively, at which point I told her I wouldn't advise that either because you shouldn't get in ANYBODY'S face in an argument unless you're prepared to get punched. I don't not get in people's face cuz i have great respect for their personal space, it's because I'm not prepared to get punched in the face. Now somehow she took that to mean that I think women should be docile and not speak their mind against men (I'm not sure where that came from). I merely pointed out that if you're gonna argue with someone do it from a safe distance, because if you get in their face you just don't know how they'll respond. That holds true on same gender confrontations and cross gender confrontations.

Lastly I want to talk about those guys who say: "I'll never hit a woman". To them I say, you HOPE you'll never hit a woman. Lord knows a significant other has made me angry to the point where all i can do is pray: "Lord please give me strength and self control, cuz if this woman even looks at me wrong I don't know what I'ma do". Fortunately I do have great self-control. But to those "I'll never hit a woman" people, I say never say never, just pray that if it gets to that point you have the wherewithal to realize you're at that point and restrain yourself and know when to walk away. Also I do realize there are woman/man- beaters in the world, I do find those people detestable.

The point of this post is this, if you don't want to be hit, don't hit anybody. Like your momma said "Keep your hands to yourself!". It doesnt matter if you're a man or a woman, keep your damn hands to yourself

J-Full

"Porkchops be on Sale"

Growing up we never really ate pork because it's supposed to be bad for you. Well too much pork is bad for you but so is too much of anything except Jesus. And then there are those who don't eat pork for religious reasons. Well unless you're Jewish or Muslim you probably shouldn't have a problem eating pork (that's for the Abrahamic religions). Deuteronomy says pork is bad (I think they termed it split hooved animal that does not chew the cud) but Jesus came and cleared it up saying that it's not what you eat that makes you bad it's what you do, or something to that effect. And unless you're a Jew and jealous of Jesus (inside joke, i don't want to be labeled an anti-semite) you should believe that Jesus is telling the truth.

But anyway funds are a little tight and pork is cheaper than chicken; so tonight I used what i had in the cupboards to put together a dinner. A friend of mine sent me a recipe for porkchops I didn't have all the ingredients so I improvised. I never follow somebody's recipe all the way mainly because I don't like their seasoning, I like everything spicy. Here's J-Full's version of stuffed porkchop for one

Ingredients:
1 half inch thick porkchop
2 Tbsp of Butter
a peeled apple
salt and pepper
cajun seasoning
Garlic Salt (optional)
McCormick's Spicy Montreal Seasoning (optional)
Mashed Potatoes

Directions:
1. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and preheat oven to 425 degrees, now's a good time to season the porkchop.

2. Drop a tbsp of butter in the pan

3. Saute porkchop until done (4-5 minutes/side for medium temp)

4. While the porkchop is cooking chop up the apple into small pieces and start preparing the mashed potatoes.

5. Take the porkchop out of skillet put them in a baking pan

6. Add another tbsp of butter in the skillet and saute the apple slices add garlic salt for about 5 minutes until the apples get soft.

7. When the mashed potatoes are done mix a scoop about (1/4-1/2 cup) of mashed potatoes with the sauteed apples and top the porkchop

8. Put the porkchop in the oven for about 5-6 minutes until the outside of the scoop starts to harden.

9. Remove from the oven and enjoy the deliciousness

Total Time (Prep+Cooking) approx. 25 minutes

Now if you're southern like me you might want to pair the porkchop with some mixed greens (if you're into canned greens look for the Glory brand, Kenzel put me on to those). Also if you made too much mashed potatoes like I did, you can place the extra mashed potatoes on the plate then put the porkchop on top of them. You can also circle the porkchops with the greens if you're not one of those people that's afraid of their foods touching. Also the best part of this recipe is that it's relatively cheap. I think it costs around 10 bucks and can last for two dinners (4 bucks for 2 porkchops, can of greens 2.50 for the big size, mashed potatoes $.99 if you get the individual packs or about 3 if you buy a box, an apple is like a quarter) And if you don't have all of the same seasonings you can improvise. That's that. Lemme know if you ever try it out, I promise it's good. Oh and in case you're wondering what I changed from the recipe my friend found online, pretty much everything except the apple and the cooking directions.

A Fool's Dream

So I found a way to post my brackets. The one directly above is my more realistic bracket. The one all the way at the top I call my super optimistic fool's bracket. Let's see how this stuff shakes out.


J-Full

Eff March Madness!

Unless you live under a rock or don't give a damn about college basketball you probably know it's tourney time. Everybody fills out their brackets, enters their pools, and then we just wait and see what happens. I'll admit that I'm down right terrible at picking these things. The best bracket I've ever had was my freshmen year of college when I picked Duke to go to the Final Four, we made it. I think I got like 3 out of the 4 final four teams. But since then my bracket has been downright terrible, or as my man Charles Barkley would say: Turrible! But every year I continue to fill out a bracket. There's no real method to my madness. Most of these teams I've never heard of or seen them play. So I generally can't pick the upsets. I mostly only watch the big conferences in basketball so I cant say that I ever saw George Mason going far that 2 years ago, or VCU beating Duke for that matter. But hey I guess that's why we watch. Hopefully my brackets turn out better this year (Though I wouldn't mind Duke going to the final four, which I didn't pick). I wish there was a way to upload my bracket on here, so you can share in my triumph or agony. That's all for now, countdown to thursday...let's get it

J-Full

"I don't like putting things in my mouth!"

2 Quick Things...

1) The people working at the grocery really annoy me. They never bag my groceries properly. Don't put my bread in the same bag as my soup cans. I thought that was pretty instinctive. But I don't say anything because nobody comes and yells at me when I'm doing my job. And some of them don't seem to have all of their marbles. Also when I'm driving they want to put all my groceries in one bag. But when I'm clearly walking home i.e.: bookbag, ipod, coat they want to give me a million inconvenient bags.

2) So I was driving home the other day and I was thinking about note one of my Facebook friends wrote. Something about 15 albums that changed their life. So I was thinking that I should check it out when i got home (which I never did lol) because this is a person that I can genuinely say loves and appreciates music. But then I started thinking about how everybody claims to "love" music. And it's just seems cliche to me. It's like saying you like ice cream or not being broke. How many people do you know that don't like those things? The most annoying thing about those music "lovers" is that a lot of them are young and their scope of musical tastes are limited to very few genres. The worst part is that they often think of things made post 2005 as "classics". Pardon me, I'm no musical expert, but I think a classic has to be able to withstand the test of time and I dont think "Kiss me thru the phone" falls into that category also for other examples see: Mane, Gucci; Lo, Shawty; Boy, Soulja; Browz, Ron; etc.
That being said I'm not one of those people that claim to love music, because I know I don't "love" it. I merely like what I like, I enjoy music.

J-Full

"It's huge today, it's normally not this big"

Life After the Bible Belt...

So yesterday was a pretty crappy day but it did have it's high points. So I happened to be talking about pastors with one of my friends and during our conversation I happened to youtube "World Overcomers Christian Church". Most of my Durham/Duke folks know it as the WOCC. Well I never realized just how much I loved that church until I came to Ithaca. I just haven't found a church that inspires me the way Pastor Andy did. Some people may think of the WOCC as a cult mainly because of the drastic changes the church has been able to enact in people's lives. Honestly that's what I loved about the church and Pastor Andy. Pastor Andy has an awesome gift to relate Bible principles to everyday living. The thing that I loved most about him was that he didn't pretend like being saved was easy. I remember when I first found Jesus, (sidenote: I used to go to church 5 out of 7 days when I was in foster care as a child but considering my circumstances and other things that happened in my life, I soon grew to resent God and certainly strayed from His path.) I was certainly underwhelmed. I was like, man, I did all this come to the alter being prayed for etc but I still feel the same way I did the day before. I still had the same sinful, lustful thoughts and actions.

But then my sophomore year of college I started going to WOCC. And Pastor Andy really made me feel like I could be a Christian. He stressed the being "saved" wasn't easy, it doesn't happen overnight and it requires lots of hard work to remain saved. So to get back to my original point yesterday I found his youtube channel and watched a couple of videos. Needless to say I subscribed.

Last night I went to a bible study to which my friend Reggie invited me. It was a really relaxed atmosphere, it wasn't all holier-than-thou churchy, which I like. So we started reading from Romans Ch 3:1-13 and my whole day came full circle. This was a scripture that Pastor Andy always referred to during service and often preached on. These verses seem a little contradictory on the surface, in the middle verses (circa verse 5) they reference Moses's reference to the laws of righteousness but then it later says that all you have to do to be saved is confess with your mouth and believe with your heart that Jesus is the son of God (and died for your sins). So after reading the passage, we started discussing the text; and then a light bulb went off in my head. Pastor Andy always said "The bible says all you have to do is believe with your heart and confess with your mouth and you'll be saved, but when you get to heaven do you want God to be happy with what you've done". So the key question of the night was: if you are saved, does it mean that you can do whatever you want as long as you believe in your heart that Jesus died for your sins etc.? The group consensus was that if you are indeed saved you won't be able to blatantly disobey the laws of the bible without feeling some sort of contrition. Then are group leader Matt, referenced something a Preacher told him: The path to God's grace isn't a straight line, it just matters if God is looking at your face or your butt.

This spoke volumes to me, because Lord knows that since I've been saved I've strayed from the path many many times, but my goal is to keep striving to better Christian. I know that it takes time and lots of discipline. I just hope that when I look back on my life I can say that my faith has certainly increased with time. And one day I hope that when people think of Christians they know, I'm one of the first persons they think of. I know I'm not perfect and that I sin all the time but I just hope that my path to God keeps Him looking at my face and not my back.


To end with one of my favorite rap quotes:
"Life ain't about who straight, who real, who fake, or who's gay, it's about who pray[s]"
-Field Mob


J-Full

Fuller's looking wobbly on his feet...he could go down any minute now!

The title is a reference to the greatest boxing game I've every played "Fight Night: Round 3". But yea it pretty much sums up my day. But I should've seen this one coming. So I woke up at about 4:45 this morning, why you might ask? Because I was having a dream about golf and in my dream I kept hitting bad shots and I got mad and started throwing clubs which eventually woke me up. So I'm awake at 4:30, I have an exam today. I need to go back to sleep. Unfortunately I can't. So I watch the rest of SVU on DVR and about half an hour of sportscenter. I eventually fell back asleep. My alarm clock goes off at 8. I turn it off and go back to sleep. Which I NEVER do. I wake up at 8:20 but I couldn't manage to get myself out to of the bed until 8:30, then out the shower by 9. My original plan before I went to sleep was to get on the 8:56 bus. So i didn't get on the bus until 10:26 and my day is going terribly so far. But outside it's nice and bright and about 40 degrees (which is damn near hot for this time of year). So i'm like well maybe today won't turn out so badly. So I get to campus do a lil bit of studying. Mostly trying to relax. I go to the exam and on the way it's 55 degrees or so and my ipod is playing some of my favorite songs (Can I Live, Look What I Got, Cherish the Day, etc) so i'm feeling real good. The prof hands out the exams I see the first question that has 5 true/false 4/5 i recognized from the old exams so I was excited. I finished those in a hurry. Then just when I was getting excited, I drop my hands and out of nowhere I get hit with a haymaker. The second page was brutal and it got worse from there... that ladies and gentlemen is why i'm wobbly on my feet. I wont say i got knocked out quite yet because I haven't seen the average, but hey at least spring break is coming up right? Right?

J-Full

J-Full's on the ropes...

I have an econometrics exam tomorrow. I like econometrics but I hate the exams. I never know quite what or how to study. This shit can come at you in all kinds of crazy forms. I really just want to shut my mind down for a few days and go on spring break, but this exam is standing in the way. So far studying is kicking my ass...I'm just praying that I'm gonna hit it with the ol' rope-a-dope and emerge victorious. Either way, I'll be on spring break at least mentally by 4:15 tomorrow. Oh but there's two things stopping my mental shutdown: I have classes and office hours on Thursday. Needless to say I won't be interested in listening to these kids whine about two extra points. Oh well back to the books.

In case you're interested in finding out what econometrics is here's the wiki

J-Full

Welcome

Welcome everybody to my new blog. Hopefully it'll be a little different than my other blog at j-full.com . That one is more ranting and requires more thought. I hope for this one to be more "bloggy" whatever the hell that means. Stay tuned.

J-Full