Reservations...

I've seen too often, that people will waste their time waiting for someone to meet them at a point in a relationship, when that person has shown no progress for getting there. There's nothing wrong with having faith, but there comes a time where you're going to have to check your history and figure out whether or not you need to pick up that "Reserved" sign from the table. I've been guilty of asking for someone to give me time to get to a point where I felt ready, but do I really deserve it? No.
That's because I don't believe in "Soul Mates" or "the One." Six billion people. There are Six Billion people on planet Earth. People have found their wives and husbands overseas, in other countries and continents, or right next door, and have found something in those people that they never even knew they wanted.
That's all to say that sometimes, you can give up on a relationship if it's not going in the direction you want it to. Most of you are decent people and deserve a little happiness, and most of the time, if you're waiting around for someone to get their shit together, you definitely deserve better.
But that's not where it stops. What if you're in a relationship with someone who deliberately refuses to do something that would make you happy? What if you want your chair pulled out, and your doors opened for you? What if you like to cuddle up, and getting random kisses to show a little appreciation for you? Or even if you're a gift gal? You like to get physical tokens of love and appreciation, whether it be jewelry or an origami swan from a Panda Express napkin.
If someone knows what you want or need to be happy, but still can't or won't give it to you, there's no reason for you to wait around for them to change their mind, because for whatever it is you do for them, there's someone out there willing to make you happy being exactly who you are.
If you're the type of person who treats people like they owe you something, life is going to disappoint you. It's like any job. Sometimes people are willing and ready to invest in you, completely, but telling them to hold off and wait for you is selfish. If someone is willing to do the work that you're not, for the same amount of pay, do you genuinely think you still have a claim to that job? I'll give you a hint...

You're getting warmer...

You can't hope that someone is just going to blindly invest in you because you want them to, with a promise that it might pay off later, when you're ready. They deserve to find someone else. And when they do, bite your tongue and suck it up. Either get better, or get used to being alone.

False Sense of Equality... Pt. 2- Self Destruction

You know what the worst part about being black is? I'll give you a hint, it isn't the people with the resources and power telling you that you won't make it unless you either entertain them, or fight for them. It's the people without anything, the people just like you, telling you that you're not supposed to make it.
I grew up in an all black neighborhood from ages 1 to 12. Music videos and movies told me that I was supposed to hate white people. I didn't see why. I saw white people outside walking around, I saw them on Friends and Power Rangers and they couldn't have been cooler. Every day I went outside, it wasn't the white man burning cars or shooting people on the corner over dime bags. The police officers were never mean to me when they arrived. Because I never ran when I saw them. My friends would run because that's what they were taught. And they would get chased. I was once stopped by an officer during one of these incidences, and he asked me why my friends were running. I told him "I didn't know, I think that's what people tell them they're supposed to do. Have a nice night, officer." and I walked away. That was it. He didn't follow. He didn't chase. He didn't ask more questions.
I spent most of my life believing that if I just distanced myself from the stereotypes, I wouldn't have to deal with them. But the further I thought I got, the worse I found things got for me. I no longer fit in with black people from where I was from. I didn't listen to the same music, or do the same things. I didn't fit in with the white kids because... I was black. And when I talked, people would ask me "Why do you talk white?" And trying not to flip out on somebody for asking a question like that became something I got used to doing. I didn't get better, because it didn't get easier, but I did get used to doing it.

Oreo. 

Twinkie. 

Coconut.

You think Neil ever had to put up with this shit?

It became evident to me that humans tend to have two things clogging up our general progress pipeline. The fear of the unknown, and group/pack mentality. Learning is hard. Work is hard. The easy thing to do is to sit back and enjoy the moment where you know you have the upper hand. As opposed to working like those people who you assume have this natural ability to learn better than you. Change is hard, so instead of change, blaming the "white man" is easier than taking stock in your own actions and fighting against a system that's already rigged against you. I get it. I do. But I've seen intelligent people go down the road of the not-so-intelligent people just because it was the cool thing at the time. They were too afraid to pave their own way. 

There are a lot of things working against underprivileged minorities. The most damaging of all, being the people they call family and friend.

Politics...

I think that the worst thing to happen to the United States was the invention of political parties. In reality, it's not about uniting people. It's about dividing people into neat little groups. There's nothing people love more than hating something... well, more than being right. When you get a bunch of people together and tell them they're right about everything and that anyone who opposes their ideas or ideals, is completely and utterly wrong about everything and are the enemy, you have everything you need to rally dedicated group of supporters. It worked before...

"Comic Book Conventions?"

And it's working again. Political parties, like any intelligent enemy, has divided us up to pick us off, but instead of killing us, they herded us. The interest of the American citizen has been lost for some time now to the whims of those who control the Political parties. And I'll tell you immediately, it's not the voters. Whenever something happens, the news presents the story in a format with panels and "experts" on the topic. But you're not offered, in any way, an unbiased and purely informative view on the topic. You're given what you want, or what they want you to want. You watch MSNBC or Fox News because you prefer it. It's not because you're offered more information or options, it's because you enjoy being told you're right and everyone else is wrong. But what about hearing the other side of things? If you know your News is biased and has an agenda, why wouldn't you search for information and the opportunity to know both sides of the story? You know that your news station isn't giving it to you. 

I've tried for some time to stay out of political issues, but the more I open my eyes to everything around me, the more compelled I am to do what I can to intervene. I can't do much besides write blogs and vote. I don't have much to say here without getting into the specifics of different views and opinions, but I will say this: If at the first sign of disagreement, you scoff at how "idiotic" someone could be, instead of actually trying to learn something new, you might want to check that idiot list, and check it twice...

The Friendzoned Asshole...

So you've been placed in the infamous and dreaded "Friendzone." No fate is more painful than listening to the girl of your dreams complain about how her (much hotter than you) boyfriend is being an asshole, (as usual, am I right?) and then giving her honest, genuine advice to mend her relationship, because there's nothing more awesome than a guy who only wants to see her happy.
But you know what? The reality of it is, that ^^^  guy is an asshole. Not the boyfriend who's acting like an asshole. The friend who's being an asshole. Has that ever been you? Ever found yourself in the Friendzone? I have. And for years, I thought it was the fault of all of those women out there who seemed to be oblivious to the nice guy who bent over backwards to make her smile, and chose, instead, the "assholes" out there who couldn't help but treat her in a manner that couldn't match my dedication in a million years. And nothing was more crushing than the moment you reveal your feelings and she says those fateful words: "You're like a brother to me."
Such bullshit, right? Wrong. You were an asshole. I was an asshole. Every guy who's ever registered himself in the Friendzone database is an asshole. The problem isn't being nice and expecting her to suddenly see you as a romantic figure, or some kind of sex symbol. It's being nice and pretending you don't want her to see you as a romantic sex figure. The reason women tend to go for the "asshole" is because the asshole is the only one being honest about wanting to harpoon her through the genitals, while you're busy backing up to arms-length and pretending to care about what the hell she and Ashley were gossiping about concerning Brittany being a lesbian. You were so asexual in approaching her you were basically a talking Ken doll. Or Barbie, because she might actually think about being with a guy like Ken.

She's going to come to you for advice on how to make this work. 

And you're going to give it to her.

Most people talk down on friendzoned guys because they say you shouldn't assume you're entitled to sex for being nice. I only partly agree. I think being nice does help you in your vaginal quest, but if you've spent all this time trying to convince a woman that that's not what you want, because you're not an asshole, then what the hell do you expect her to see you as? You have to be a contender. If you didn't even write your name in when the competition started, don't be surprised when she's asking you to get some gatorade and a towel for the guy who's actually playing for the Championship (thanks to your advice, of course. You are such a good friend.)
So what do you do when you've lied and deceived your way out of a woman's panties and into her "I feel comfortable changing clothes around you because I don't see you like that" zone? Well stop being a liar, for one. Go do something, anything else with your time. If it doesn't involve you bending over backwards for a girl who isn't yours, then you're doing it wrong. Because, congratulations, my friend, you've officially lied yourself out of a future with her. Much like all of those "assholes" she was dating before. But they at least got laid first.
I don't want you to think that I'm telling you to go out and try and get into any girls' panties as your one and only intention. I'm telling you to be up front about how you feel from DAY ONE. If you think she's the most beautiful thing in the world, tell her now, and don't wait until you've "built trust" or whatever other creepy phrase might be involved in some kind of Nazi infiltration movie. Let her know how you feel. And if she doesn't feel the same way, you can continue communication, but don't let her forget that you're in this to win it. (But don't be creepy. No means no. There are other beautiful women in the world. I promise.) If she does forget, the Zone will be waiting for you. And good luck getting back out.

"Home, where I learned the truth about despair, as will you. There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth... Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy... So simple... And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying." -Bane, The Dark Knight Rises

The Perfect Match...

You ever wonder what your perfect match would be? Dominant or submissive? Good looking or ugly? Rich or Poor? A mirror image or a polar Opposite? I've been through plenty of articles and so-called relationship "advice" columns, and I've never seen one give a true answer about finding you a "soul mate."
I've seen it said that you need to find someone with similar interests, and I've heard it a million times "Opposites attract." Even those completely different view points fail to cover the actual reality of being a match made in heaven. The truth is, the important thing when it comes to hobbies, likes, and dislikes, is that the person you're with accepts them. They don't have to adopt them, they don't have to like them, they literally have to be okay with them. And not everything. Just the big stuff. For example, I'm all about comic book related cartoons and movies. I'm also into weightlifting, and fitness, and music. But what's important is that the girl I find myself with is okay with me and my comic book nerd-life. Everything else is second fiddle and can be put off. But you go telling me we need to see The Notebook 2 instead of Batman: Darkest Knight Rises to Begin this Dawn 3, and I'm just going to recommend you go ahead and reopen that Match.com profile and get those tickets for 1.
People who think that their soul mate has to be some kind of sexually attractive doppelganger, are missing out on the best parts of dating. You have the opportunity to intimately know a complete stranger and everything about them. The best times I've ever had dating were finding out that a person who, on the surface was COMPLETELY different from me shared so many little interests with me. Wasn't good or bad, and sometimes it helped the relationships, and other times it didn't. But it was the adventure of getting to know someone new and different and broadening my horizons to find out things I never knew about myself. And them, as a person, their mannerisms, personality, and every day character traits drew me closer to them. Not our mutual love for rock collection and organization.
And when it comes to the whole opposites attract scenario... I don't know. I'm a fairly intelligent and open minded person, so my opposite is basically...

Nah, I think I'll just jerk it.

Not saying that the opposites attract theory of operations can't work. I'm just saying that the number of relationships that I've seen where the couple's complete lack of compatibility was justified only with that bullshit phrase is TOO DAMN HIGH! (I'm not really that passionate about the subject. Not capslock passionate, anyway.) The truth of the matter is the opposites attract theory only works if it's something neither person actually notices until someone else brings it up. It's not something you say when you notice that literally everything your partner does outside of the bedroom makes you want to murder them with a shovel put them in a wood chipper, and feed them slowly to your sea turtles.

The worst thing I've noticed about people looking for that perfect match is that they piece together this image of some girl with medium breasts, a slim waist, and a big butt, with brown hair and green eyes, half Italian and half German, 5'7" tall, who cooks cleans, and dreams about being the first grandmother on Mars. That's how you get hung up on the wrong things, and end up with the wrong person for the wrong reason. The only thing you should bring from your past experiences are what you don't like, because you never know what amazing things you're missing out on when you limit yourself to the same types of people for the rest of your life. The world outside of your bubble is actually pretty amazing.

Conspiracy Theorist...

There's been the weirdest trend in media in American movies. The simple premise: Government is bad, m'kay? I've noticed this in a number of movies, but basically to narrow it down, any American made movie that involves an explosion. To narrow it down even more, let me name a few for you. The "Bourne" franchise, The "Hulk" (both movies), "Avengers", "Captain America: Winter Soldier", all of the "Mission: Impossible" movies, "Die Hard" franchise, the new "Godzilla", and every buddy cop movie ever created ("You're off the case!") Any time you see a "General" in a fictional movie, he's not listening to reason, and always ready to explodificate everything despite all of the "experts" pleas and their "so-called facts".
Then you have your appearances from senators and congressman or whatever, who's role is usually to bring in that "nuke it all" General to force the "expert"into some kind of corner and add unnecessary tension to the plot. Even in movies where the hero actually works for the government, (Captain America: WS; Avengers; Mission: Impossible) the government still turns on the hero, doesn't listen to the advice of their ESTABLISHED employees or agents, they just want to nuke everything.
What's interesting to me is that whenever you see a military movie "based on real events", you see a level headed leader deferring to the experience and expertise of his subordinates, or in laymen's terms, making logical and thought out decisions to preserve as many lives as possible while getting his men back alive. If the movies were to be believed, the same man would just as soon send one of his men in with a bomb surgically implanted into his spine and an irreversible timer counting down.
Why such a big difference between the "based in reality" and the fantasy?
What really caught my attention on the subject wasn't exactly American movies. There's a British made movie coming out called "Kingsmen: The Secret Service" and it just adds to the number of British movies I've seen based on people working for Her Majesty. Of course the most notable being the long running James Bond Franchise. In the new Kingsmen trailer, the bad guys are... bad guys. Terrorists... No moles in the government, no evil doppelganger Queen or Prime Minister, just good old fashioned Government protecting it's citizens.
Why is that? We watch James Bond movies in America, and it actually does pretty well in the Box office, as good as any American made secret Agent flick, but our version, Mission: Impossible, literally every movie in the franchise involved someone inside of his own agency forcing  him to go rogue and tear apart his entire organization to clear his name. In every. Single. Movie.
Some people say it's because it's what the American people want, but I wonder why we still line up to see those "based on true events" movies, or every Bond movie that comes out? In reality it's not about what the people want, but what the people have access to. If you want to watch some secret agent guy go kick ass on the big screen, if he's American, the first thing established will probably be that he's an EX-secret agent, and the second thing will probably be he got out because of some mission where his boss told him to punt a room full of babies into an active volcano and he wouldn't do it.

"They're a threat to National Security!"

If not, get ready for that unofficial "The Notebook" sequel you've been dying for.
Seems more like it's what the writers want. To insert their personal political views into every bit of their work. It annoys me, as a soldier to see the military always portrayed as the "we need to turn everything into a weapon" or "nuke it all" mentality. I'll tell you what happens when someone is found to have an extraordinary ability. They are NOT kidnapped and throne in a cell somewhere to be experimented on. They are paid (very well) by DARPA (the people who brought you most of the technology for synthetic limbs, microwaves, GPS, the technology for Siri and Google Now, the INTERNET and even Internet Privacy) to do, yes, performance tests, blood tests and probably stress tests depending on the results, but there will be no cells or attempts at immediately weaponizing something that isn't even understood yet. That's not how this works. We're not a legion of brainless drones ready, willing, and even hoping to destroy things.
With the media having such a strong influence over the mindset of the people, what does this mean for us?

False Sense of Equality...

Race (being black isn't the greatest thing in America)

Apparently, my brain won't let me get a good night's rest unless I write something about this subject (no matter how much masturbation is involved). This subject is, as of late, one of the hottest and most controversial topics in the country and has spread to most parts of the civilized world.

I've spent my entire life listening to people tell me that I'm "not black" because I don't fit into stereotypes of what... I'm supposed to be? The weird thing about being told that, is that it's either meant as a compliment or an insult. The reasons often vary, from the fact that I pronunciate most of the words I say the way that I read them (so I don't have a "hood" accent most of the time) to the fact that I like books.... okay, comic books over sports. I don't know what the color of my skin has to do with enjoying the art of the printed word, but apparently it's a big factor.

Coming up, I noticed how white people looked at me with a verdict already in mind about me, and I longed for them to understand me. My friends in the hood saw the enemy because that's what we were taught. The white man was the cop, the white man was the judge, the white man was the boss who fired you, and more often than that, the boss who wouldn't hire you in the first place.

And as I got older, I came to grips with that, but knew that if I just brushed off all of the racist undertones and forced myself as an individual onto the people around me, they would have to see me as a PERSON and not "Just another". I dreaded that title.

JUST ANOTHER

Just another poor black kid, just another criminal, just another charity case, just another lost cause.

But beyond all of that, I had no idea how much was really working against me. I had sized up the poverty, and had a plan to beat it. I had sized up the peer pressure, and figured, no sweat. I had sized up the stereotyping I would endure and saw how to get around it. But I didn't factor in all of the reality of the "System" bearing down on every single person who wants something different for themselves.

Here's the truth about why black Americans still need help. Why black Americans are still targets, and still need protection.

Years ago, the ACTUAL government introduced a highly addictive, highly destructive drug into black neighborhoods. Crack cocaine. The first men to cry "conspiracy" were silenced, as they often are, and crack cocaine became, and maintained as an epidemic in black communities. in 1986, the Iran-Contra Affair came to light, showing 

Even further back than that, plans were laid to ensure that plans to target black Americans would be made much easier by having them in close proximity to one another. So plans were made to ensure that blacks would have a hard time getting out of the neighborhoods they were in, with real estate agents EVEN TODAY still making it harder for black Americans to move into predominantly white neighborhoods. The neighborhood options that were available being poverty and crime stricken with poorly supported school systems, resulting in more poorly educated black American youth. This meant that even when presented with the opportunity to compete, black youths come up short, in the fact that their education just wasn't there.

After black Americans were concentrated and their neighborhoods ravaged by crack addiction, the penalty for possession of crack was raised exponentially, meaning more people in jail for less of an amount of the drug. This obviously means more black Americans in prisons. And the news covers it all.

Poorer neighborhoods naturally see more crime, and through decades of media white-washing  and general "black people are lesser human beings than whites" air about things, that still has a strong influence in Hollywood and almost all forms of media.

I'm sure this obvious Egyptian man wouldn't know anything about that.

I'm not going to give you a 100% run down of how hard the government has fought to screw over so much of its own population, but I mean, should they care that much? According to the 2012 census, white people are still over 71% of the ENTIRE American population. 

But coming up as a black kid who wanted to do nothing but be a hero, and seeing, everywhere I went, consciously or subconsciously, people were always going to see me as JUST ANOTHER wasn't exactly the greatest encouragement to do the right thing. Especially when everything I see on TV depicting a black person either has them as a side kick only around to help some white guy achieve his goal and get his girl, or waving guns around and pouring champagne down some girls' asses, you really start to wonder if going into Wendy's for that follow up appointment is even worth it...