Uncle Tom's Cabin

Auntie Loraine has not called to tell me about the three nights at Grand Lido Miss McPherson won from the church raffle in 2005. This is even after still suffering from the after shocks of the treatment I received Memphis. After my old New Jersey church burnt down in 1993, the only prizes that we had available to us were $100 raffle jackpots we all pooled for and complimentary nosebleed tickets for our church youth group to see Grant Hill and the Detroit Pistons play the rest of the New Jersey Nets. And Auntie Loraine still says I have never had it this good.

Keep Driving

The $3.00 Asahi Super Dry won't kill the thought of stale sushi, but a $1.25 deal for raw fish means that you get everything that you deserve. I pulled into Zushi's earlier this evening and had a bite. It was so-so. What made me do it? The Kona Grill's spacious happy hour bar never has a seat open. Of course, there is always the restaurant... One please.

Student Counsel

My great aunt Sylvia loves to send me birthday and Christmas cards in the mail with prayers from The Omaha Home for Boys enclosed. Glad to hear from someone from "home," I usually placed the cards prominently on my desk away in the dormitories in college or on the mantle in my living room apartment in law school. I never took much significance in the enclosed prayers until Sylvia hand wrote a letter dismissing my difficulties experienced since 2005. Here is a spin at two I received here at my parents house last October:

Thinking of You

This morning as I rose from

Bed and saw the sun above

I softy said "Good Morning"

God, bless everyone I love.

And right away I thought of you

And said a loving prayer

That He would bless you specially

And keep you free from care.

I thought of all the happiness

Your day could hold in store;

And wished it all for you,

Because no one deserves it more.

I felt so warm and good inside,

My heart was all aglow -

I know God heard my prayer for you,

He hears them all you know.

I Said a Prayer for You Today

I said a prayer for you today

And know God must have heard

I felt the answer in my heart

Although He spoke no word!

I didn't ask for wealth or fame

(I knew you wouldn't mind)

I asked that He'd be near you

At the start of each new day

To grant you health and blessings

And friends to share your way!

I asked for happiness for you

In all things great and small

But it was for His loving care

I prayed the most of all!

Southern Comfort

I took a dip in the tub this weekend with a few capfuls of Johnson's Soothing Vapor Bath for babies. Sometimes I light prayer candles to the angels and the Holy Saints when I soak away my ails and bad ales. A bout of the common cold in Texas? My family used to live down here for a couple of years before moving back to New Jersey. I never really became sick as a kid down here until I shared the chicken pox with the rest of Miss Cerace's third grade class in 1988. The vapor bath's "rosemary, eucalyptus, and menthol" helped dissipate my runny nose and scratchy sore throat earned from funny bottles of Bud Light and broken dishwashers. Guess, I should have stayed home and waited for another episode of MTv's Cribs err Crates instead:

Bobby Bhangra

I found a gray hair in my bangs a few months ago, but my Jamaican cum England cum New Jersey great aunt Sylvia on my father's side wears a blonde hair piece at the age of seventy-eight. She is still married to Frank with whom she renewed her wedding vows taken in 1976 almost three years ago. I was born in a Catholic hospital and went to Catholic school for high school, but perhaps I have some how acquired a more than flirtatious reputation. To figure out the origin of that rumor, the Knights of Columbus would have an easier time figuring how Bob Torricelli put the Fibonacci sequence into his voting record. ED HARDY aside, my mother Chantay and her three brothers attended Catholic school as well and eventually married college sweethearts like my father Bobby. West Indian father with no direct roots in the South or Southeast Asia, I stand accused of getting mileage in a pair of LA Gears high tops with the pink, white, and silver laces on standardized tests. When my nuclear family moved to Orange, my high school friend Camille recounted that those Ceylon rubber soled shoes were called Laugh At Jeers. Our small class used to dance to the OJ Simpson verdict and used to make up volley ball teams in physical education with names like AT&T's "All That and Thensomes" and repeat slang from music videos like "Off the hook." Our small all women's school is still holding up better than Aqua Net in South Orange, New Jersey. I was not aware until now that I "was all in the Kool Aid and did not know the Flava."

Uptown Top Ranking

I am on my second Facebook account. The first account with my first and last name locked me out and continues to accept friends. This is even from friends from college who must have at least seen my messages about having troubles with federal government since 2007. I have received friend requests from names such as "Xtra Butter" and "Ilovelamp" as part of the ongoing harrassment. Today's blue plate special was a Facebook friend request from the youth that caused my younger third cousin to die in January 2001 at a teen party. She died from the youth having a loaded weapon that accidentally misfired in another room. The New York papers interviewed the children at the party and my cousin's mother, my father's cousin, who sang in a reggae band called Althea and Donna when I was born. Asking whether the children thought that her death could be the result of rap music, the rest of mourners in the room listen to our cousins' family friend from Jamaica recount stories of Sharee's career in Jamaican commercials and the wickedness of 'gunmen.' At the time of her death, Sharee was finishing up her eighth grade to attend New York City magnet high school Bronx Science. Her cheerfulness and energy will be dearly missed. However, the youth's friend request was a unwelcomed reminder that Aunt Althea might have had worthwhile vindication of Sharee's death by pressing charges against Even's Bazile and tracing liability to the gun's manufacturer even if it may be Smif' and Wessun.

Auld Lang Syne

Looking forward to the rest of the 2009? This year's forecast hopefully will not bring any more threatening and unpleasant surprises for me.