This game is rigged....

*I am a beast, I can (and have) won a book with this bama a$$ card! *

No old school video today.
I have been trying to find a way to put "The Wire" in every conversation this blog and finally I have succeeded. (don't judge me) A conversation Tiha and I had yesterday about HBCU's led us to talking about our favorite college past time: drinking Spades. Then out of the blue we started talking about how life is a lot like a game of spades. The clip below is D'Angelo Barksdale explaining chess in terms of the drug game. I will attempt to break down the game of Spades in a similar but different fashion. Please enjoy the clip of my favorite show of all time:

Now that we have gotten "The Wire" formalities out the way, here goes:

*Partners Matter : The key to winning the game of Spades is having a compatible partner. Pay attention to the company you keep, it will definitely make or break you. Can't have partners that cut your books, not cute, that can get you cut in my hood. (I don't live in the hood, but suburban folks are gangsta too!)


*Bidding your hand: You have to know what you are holding (talent, knowledge, drive) and its worth. You have to evaluate in your head that some of those Kings are going to get in but you also need to know you can't always depend on those cut books, because your competition may flip the script and pull your trump.

*Just go 10, 8 is for suckas! : You have to take risks. Haven't you heard that scared money don't make money? That is the truth and right now I am going 7 and 8, knowing I am holding a monster of a hand. If my life were a Spades hand I would get ridiculed by the whole table for sandbagging and underbidding!

*Talk Some Shit: Not literally, you can't ridicule other folks all the time and get ahead, but you need to exude confidence. I have done successful "on the fly" presentations at work or have been part of last minute projects, and 90% of the battle was being confident, not letting the folks see me sweat.

*Renegging is Counterproductive: Integrity is key. You can scheme, cheat, steal, and lie, but when you get caught please hand me the paper and allow me to subtract your score. Have you ever seen the look of disgust on the partner of someone who reneges and the roasting that ensues. Life is the same way.


*The Game is Rigged: Sometimes you just have to realize the game is rigged, folks have been known to set decks and talk across the table. My advice to that is just keep playing, you will win eventually. Word.

And I also want to leave you with one more "The Wire" clip.

No Adult 'Left' Behind

This blog will be short and sweet just like the author (*wink*). I'll introduce it with a short convo with myself and the devil Tiha:


11/17/08 11:00 am

Alise: In school they forced me to write with my right hand
Alise: and that explains ALOT
Alise: i do EVERYTHING else with my left hand
Alise: so my blog tomorrow will center around that
T 2U: how the MAN has tried to mold us into being right handed hoes?
Alise: there are so many diections i can go with that..... maybe i'll go left, lol
Alise: AND my first grade teacher was a MAN
Alise: coincidence? no sucha thing
T 2U: ha!

I was telling the moody Gremlin Tiha about a conversation I had with my mother yesterday about my younger school years. She informed of something I never knew, that I was left handed. She said that when I was in kindergarten and first grade that "those people" forced me to write with my right hand. So basically I have been getting "cubed" my whole life. A lot of things started making sense: so much of what comes natural to me has been attacked and labeled as "not normal" or even freakish ( as in a sideshow). The labeling starts early on in life and continues on through adulthood. I let people take things that are a part of me and convince me that I was the strange one. My goal is to let the buck stop here and just do me. The moral of the story is: Don't let a right handed world determine your future or you will surely get left. Word.Is.Bond.

Left handed people rock, here are some famous lefties:
Barack Obama
Leonardo da Vinci
Robert DeNiro
Joan of Arc
Naturally Alise

Inspiration and sh*t comes in strange ways.....

* Sometimes lightbulb moments happen like this.*

T 2U: Never let your dilemma define you
T 2U: would you like to blog on that subject for today?
Alise: sure....

Well, nothing ignant about that IM, we talk about some things of substance from time to time. According to probability it is bound to happen. With that being said; Tiha wrote a blog over at Artistic or Just Plain Crazy today about inspiration (read it to understand the post a little better) . The particular inspiration she was speaking of was about those bad or strange things that happen to you that can turn into something that inspires or "kicks you in the butt" to accomplish your dreams. (Damn, that was the run-on sentence from Hell). So today I will get a little personal and delve into a situation that changed my world.... for the better in the long run.


Here's my sobbish story:
Picture this: Morrisville, NC and leaving work at about 5:45 pm, excited about the Poetry Slam Finals going down a little later that evening. The first part of the drive I am reciting one last poem that I was stuck on memorizing. I finally get it right. Sweet! So, I am driving along listening to Little Brother's Mick Boogie Mixtape jamming to "Never Leave" and screaming "Krispy Kreme will never leave the street!" (I am silly and so is Little Brother).

Soooooooooooo, I get off on my intended exit , 540 East to Hwy. 70 to go to the crib and change clothes to be fly for the performance that evening. This was a special night because:

* I made it to the finals
* Friends who had never seen me perform before were coming out
* I hadn't been performing regularly so this was exciting

Well, I stop at getting off at that exit because that is all I remember. I woke up in an ambulance. (Thinking it was dream) Lose conciousness. Wake up in ER. Then the wittiest, most Alise-ish thing in the world happened (I had to throw this in here):

When they brought me in ,my friend who was in the emergency/trauma room with me said that the doctor was explaining my injuries to me and says, "Oh yes, you have multiple contusions on your lungs, a contusion is.....", My friend said right at that moment I cut him off and said, "I know what a fucking contusion is, went to college!", and that the doctors and nurses laughed, and she said at that moment she knew that I was going to be alright bc she got a glimmer of my personality even though I was in pain.....

Lose conciousness again. Wake up in hospital bed with the following: broken ribs, cracked sternum, hella bruises, bruised lungs, 2 black eyes, and broken spirit (and upset because I didn't get to go perform, lol) . Well after a week long stint in the hospital, I go home, but I must recover at home for a month (Thank you Hay-Seuss for short-term disability). Due to financial reasons I make the decision to move back home with Mom Dukes and have been forced to do a Brand Nubian and slooooooooow down...

The result:
* Gained time to reevaluate where my life was going
* Facing possible death opens your eyes to a lot of *ish
* If I wouldn't have slowed down I would have possibly missed out on getting to know a fabulous human being who has touched my world in a million ways.
* Probably would have been no blog
* Able to repair a 29 year tense difficult relationship with my mother
* Oh yeah and I got hella savings in the worst financial time of our lifetimes
* The accident must have knocked some creative lever back into gear, because I have been a writing machine as of late!

So basically, I give thanks to the hard lessons, because with hard headed folks like myself, sometimes that is the only way to make us take notice.
Word.Is.Bond.