Errant Pixel

The "Red House"

Kwaku — 2009-05-08T13:37:27-05:00

Now that I know about this store my life is so much easier. I had to return my last couch because it was only for Philipino children.

RIP George Carlin

Kwaku — 2008-06-23T21:32:04-05:00

I always loved his observations and his ability to push the simplest things to absurdity. We should all be big fans. Yes George, I noticed their stuff is shit and my shit is stuff He will be missed.

Shuffle, step, ball, change!

Kwaku — 2008-03-13T10:19:48-05:00

"CNN apologized today for getting on-air analysis of Gov. Spitzer's legal options from a former U.S. Attorney who resigned after being accused of biting a stripper. Boing Boing story Why apologize.. This man is obviously an expert.
Folks, they make this stuff way to easy.

Happy New Year!!!!!!

Kwaku — 2007-01-01T10:04:56-05:00

This has been an amazing/strange year! I wish you all a happy holiday season (hell, I will just say it....Merry Christmas) and a Happy New Year!

Best wishes as we breathe in 2007... Grab it by the horns and make it yours.

For the geek in us all

Kwaku — 2006-12-05T10:21:04-05:00

Being in IT I have to love this..

I am prejudiced

Kwaku — 2006-09-26T14:02:38-05:00

I am going to admit something I have never admitted before. I am prejudice! Yep me. Who'd a' thunk it. I know this because in the last 2 weeks I have caught myself being so twice. Let's start with the first instance. I was getting on a the subway train when I heard someone running behind me. This being New York City, I continued to get on the train but glanced back to make sure that no one was running after me with a knife, bat golf club bucause this is the big city I am sure that someone has been beaten to death with with a flip-flop. And there he was, a homeless man, disheveled and unclean and carrying loads of bags. By the rustling sound in the bags, I assumed they were filled with homeless mans gold. To you and me, that's cans with a 5 cent return on each. But for him, it is kind of like black gold or Texas T, found money in garbage cans. Now this is the part where my prejudices show: I caught myself wondering why was he running. I mean really where the hell does he have to go in a hurry. It's not like he is going to be late getting HOME or to a BUSINESS MEETING! I know that this was just wrong but I thought it. Do I not know something about the homeless? Are they on a tight schedule? Do they have to be at the park bench at a certin time lest they get the bad bench? I know, I know; I'm going to hell for being observant. I am obviously not privy to the life of a homeless person but I would think it goes like this. Wake up late... beg for cash.. rummage though garbage cans for cans to return, take nap (any place will do), take bottles to the drop off spot, get cash, either do drugs with it or eat - homeless persons choice, take a nap (once again anywhere will do), either from the "itis" or the drugs, catch the people coming home from work and beg for more cash, find place to sleep, and start all over again in the morning. This does not seem like this is a very regimented day to me. It does not lseem like there is anything that can not be done later. So why was he running to get on the train???

Ok. On the my next prejudice thought. I live in the ghetto and while walking home I saw a gay couple. I know what you are going to say: "Kwaku how could you dislike gays?" But let me finish with the story. I saw this gay couple and I was happy. That's right happy; but not for the reasons you think. I saw this couple and all I could think about was that I was going to get a star-bucks in my neighborhood. I know there is no logic in this association, but I feel that there is some magical unwritten law, held secret by the wizards at StarBucks you know the same ones that will put two stores facing each other. According to these sages more than two openly gay couples in a neighborhood is followed, immediately, by the appearance of a Starbucks .. like over night (tomorrow I am not even making coffee.. I am just going to have a 5 buck Latte). I told myself this is wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself. But still I am excited about the new Starbucks opening soon.

So there you have it . We all have these preconceived notions about race, sexuality and class. These are normal, even to be expected. Mine are just a little straner then most.

Ghetto Chicken

Kwaku — 2006-09-15T12:07:43-05:00

yes I call Shenanigans

Alive and Kicking

Kwaku — 2006-03-01T17:03:02-05:00

Hey folks. You probably thought I was dead. I'm not. I just lost my muse. I used to work with a guy who hardly did any work. You all have someone like this at your job. Here’s an example. During the summer, we had early dismissal on Fridays. We were allowed to leave at 2:00 p.m. One day he showed up at 1:45 p.m. NO, REALLY!! That's a whole 15 minute day. Sometimes he would even fall asleep at his desk. Now being a team player I would never bust him to management--but I would let the interns take pictures of him with their camera phones. Children can be so cruel-- the interns ... not me. Why have you never heard about this before? I never blog about people I work with.

When I get upset I get sarcastic ( somewhere an ex-girlfriend is nodding her head). I channeled this negative energy by writing blog entries. But on with my story.

I'm not dead, I'm alive. Although, right now I wish for the former rather than the latter. I'm standing as I write this because I don't want to touch anything in this emergency room. What has befallen your old friend Kwaku? Nothing, folks. I’m not sick; I brought my girlfriend here. She was not feeling well.

I hate this place. The ER is some level of hell yet undiscovered by Dante or mortal man. I have no idea how these hospital shows stay on the air. There is nothing dramatic or remotely funny about the ER. It is a nasty, dirty, and filthy place. Did I say nasty? Let’s start with the woman coughing and coughing. The kind of cough I have never heard before (and I used to have TB). She coughs so deeply I can hear her soul make the sound of rustling leaves in her chest. Am I supposed to believe that the thin curtain (that does not even go all the way up to the ceiling) separating us is supposed to protect me from her germs? If she has something that is making her cough like this, her germs are going to treat that curtain like the Kool-Aid man treats walls.

This sound becomes the base of a tragic hospital symphony. The rhythm is kept by a man visiting his friend. He sits next to his stretcher eating food from McDonald's and rhythmically sucking his teeth. I have one question: HOW THE HELL IS HE EATING NOW? I’m not even sure I want to be breathing now. He places his fries on a sink ledge so that he can open a package of ketchup. I swear I saw a nurse test a urine sample on that sink less than 10 minutes ago. This is a whole different kind of golden fries than the man is expecting. Then there is a man who looks like he finished 10 rounds with Mike Tyson AFTER he went man eater. I have never seen an eye swollen shut in real life. I want to ask him how it happened but that would be rude. I have a 50-50 chance it is either a way awesome story or a totally lame one like he tried to stiff his friend on drugs. (We’ve all seen “The Wire.”) And then there is the beeping, the beeping, the BEEPING. I understand that doctors want to be sure that the patients are alive but the beeping makes me want to kill them. I think nurses who pull the plug on patients really just want a little quiet. I have been here less than three hours and I want to pull the plug. Maybe I can scare them all at once so that their hearts stop and restart in unison. I think shooting a 12 gauge in the air would be too much--but I know it would work.

My favorite musician in this symphony of infections is the soloist three beds down throwing up from his toenails. It slowly builds to a staccato set of heaves (unn, unn , aargh, splosh, aurgh, splosh, aargh). After 20 minutes I would have made the doctors knock me out. Five hours later he is still on his Grateful Dead-length solo (ahhh the dedication to your craft). All this is nothing without the high-pitched wails of “Ay Dios mio” from an elderly Hispanic woman. They almost begin to sound like Gregorian chants. It’s like a chile cook off. Each woman tries to outdo the other with the exact same ingredients. One emphasizes the "ay" while the other emphasizes the "Dios." And my favorite--she holds the mi in MIO for like 10 minutes.

To make matters worse, It's also free-clinic night. We’ve all heard the free-clinic jokes. Now let me tell you there are people here who need medical help but don't have the money (and that's not funny) and those who clearly look like they're the reason for the free-clinic jokes. Wait, there has just been an announcement that all relatives of patients in section A must leave immediately. OK, where is section A ? Am I in it? How close is it to me? What the hell is on the loose in section A and can a brother get a hazmat suit? I would settle for the bubble they put John Travolta in (The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, 1976). Man, I must be in love because every fiber of my being is saying, "Get the hell out of this room. You can always get another girlfriend--some of the stuff these people have you can never get rid of." Am I going to hell for thinking that?

Then a lady that was just wheeled next to me tells her friend that she is done with crack. CRACK…Are there still crack heads? It’s 2006, people. I thought Whitney and Bobby were the last. They put this lady on a nebulizer (a doohickey that helps you breathe). She is comfortably holding it like a crack pipe (once again, The Wire.) I wonder if she is going to use her new lung capacity to do something healthy like jogging. (Stop laughing. It could happen.) Nope, we all know she will just be able to take bigger hits off the crack pipe (it’s puff, puff, give. You're messing up the rotation).

I have just been asked to leave the area after a nurse accompanied by three other hospital workers walks in. The nurse points at the woman on the gurney next to my girlfriend and says proudly in her outside voice that this patient has had constant vaginal bleeding for the last month. After hearing that I think my ears are going to bleed for at least that length of time. As I wait in another part of the ER I see a girl give me the eye. I am not quite sure this has really happened so I look again. Yep, she is giving me the eye. Eww. First of all, I am here with someone. Second, this is the most unromantic place on the planet. Third, she could be here for the free clinic. Keep it movin' sister. Man I just want to go home and wash my eyeballs with Brillo and take a bath in Listerine and bleach. Folks, the moral here is take care of yourself and be careful--not for your health but for no other reason than to stay out of the emergency room.

Girls Gone Wild

Kwaku — 2005-12-06T13:18:05-05:00

A lot of you have sent me this article because you're as awestruck as I am. This article, which was recently pulled from Teen People, has been the center of a controversy. So here is the gist of the article. (These girls are cute, white, and...oh, they're also white supremacists). WHAT…? How the hell did we let this get by? This was going to be a fluff piece for the magazine Teen People. I never thought that racial hate was a fluff piece. The Time Warner company blamed it on a junior employee who made a bad call. But I have worked at magazines before. Junior employees do not even get to insert a period without it being triple checked before the magazine goes out. America, everything sold to you by cute blonds is not good. It is not all American and it is not all Christian or kosher.

"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

This quote just shows how bad their home training is. How in the world are they going to stop being white? Look, I am black and I have never made another person black. I am not even sure how you would go about that (but I think you have to date a basketball player for starters). I am going to share a secret with you all: I love racists, especially the Klan … LOVE 'em. They say the most retarded things. I was once watching this special and they had these Klan people yelling all types of things. One of them was: "The Klan hates niggers." When asked about the nigger word, both the male and female Klan members said: "Oh, well, a nigger is just a lazy person. So we are against lazy people." Not even 10 minutes later the exact same people now with their hoods down were yelling, "Go back to Africa, niggers." So all lazy people should live in Africa? For every thugged out gangster wannabe sitting on the train yelling "nigga this, nigga that," there are two toothless trailer park dwellers that smoke a pack of Camels a day and say that black people commit all the crimes, Jews manipulate all the money and the media, and the Latinos have stolen all their jobs, while they sit around waiting for their settlement check, yelling "white power." Now, even that is not going to work any more since Dave Chappelle turned that phrase into one of the best one liners of the two thousands. Oh, and to all you racists out there, just because I said those girls were cute does not mean anything. But you knew they were cute. That's why you use them to sell stuff. You couldn't put the real racists up there. They are your gateway band, your come-on. It starts innocuously with saying that you're proud to be you. Then you say you are the best. Then comes "Others are worthless." That escalates to jack boots, cross burnings, and pick-up trucks.

So let's just get down to brass tacks. I am going to tell you something that these bands and these racists will not. It is OK to be proud to be you and it is OK to be proud of your heritage. But it is never OK for you to think or feel that you are better than someone else just because you have a certain type of heritage. That’s like saying, "I know I am special because my MOMMY told me so." And we all know that kid was special in a whole different way than he thought he was.

PS: Like most kids, Prussian Blue has a favorite video game. Here is the game's basic premise: article

"The Race War has begun. Your skin is your uniform in this battle for the survival of your kind. The White Race depends on you to secure its existence. Your peoples enemies surround you in a sea of decay and filth that they have brought to your once clean and White nation. Not one of their numbers shall be spared…….."

Oh yeah. Thank you God for once again making it WAY too easy to make fun of these white supremacists.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Kwaku — 2005-12-05T17:49:08-05:00

In my quest to ever expand the reading audience of Errant Pixel, I present a new category: Signs of the Apocalypse. Why am I coming up with this category? Well, I have been noticing things just going askew as of late and thought that maybe I would point out the really weird stuff--stuff not really fun enough to make a post out of but worth mentioning. "What brought this to a head?" you might ask. It was my experience this weekend. Let me start off by saying that I am a little bit obsessive and sometimes it just takes me. So, with that as a basis, you will understand why I do not take too many things seriously.

On Saturday I found myself taking something too seriously (a video game). It just sucked me in. Have you ever forgotten about time? Well, it happened to me. The only thing that saved me from several hours of thumb-wrenching agony was the fact that my dog was crying. I told her to leave me alone but she persisted. At this point I look at the clock and realize that it was 2:00 a.m. and I had missed the dog's walk time by several hours. I decide I should be a good owner since my dog was a good dog and warned me before she soiled the floor.

I put on my winter gear and took the dog downstairs to do the puppy do. The night was cold. It was far too cold for me, but my dog loves cold weather. I decide to take her for an extra long walk so that she could really clear out her pipes. When the long walk wass over we headed back toward the house. As I got to the corner, a large dog briskly trotting in the middle of the street spotted me and my dog at the corner, and stoped and turned. It took me a second to notice that this dog did not have on a collar. I looked in the direction from which the dog came, hoping to see an owner running after him with a dog leash in hand--no such luck. OK... this is a stray. Not a huge deal. He could have recently been lost and I may look like the kind of person who carries dog treats. (I am, you know. I carry them so that I can give them to homeless people's dogs. Hell, it’s not the dog's fault that his owner is homeless. Most of them have these signs that say "Help, my dog is hungry and needs an operation." Blah, blah, blah.

I bet you have never seen a more pissed off homeless man than one who sees your hand go into your pocket and come out with a handful dog biscuits. You see, for a second the homeless man calculates the street value of a milk bone...but back to the street at 2:00 a.m. This stray is not overly aggressive but I think it's better to stay still and hold my ground. As soon as I started to get comfortable, another dog comes from behind a car--then four more.

"Oh, look--dinner, " I hear echoing in the back of my head followed by hysterical laughter... God is that you? The lead dog is then flanked by the other dogs, forming a really nice semicircle. What the hell do you yell in a situation like this? Dogs!! Dingos!! Fire!! My dog realized that her need to doo-doo had left us in deeper doo-doo. She bristled and began to bark insanely. Taking her cue, I raised my arms, stamped my foot, and yelled "hya." Stop laughing. I saw it on a nature show. The dogs obviously were frightened by an insane man and his rabid dog. One at a time, they turned and trotted up the street (and I swear one of them gave the that "Next time, McFly" look) as he went off into the night. Maybe they thought they would get some insane human disease from biting me.

I felt like I had just been in a scene from one of those post-apocalyptic movies for 30 seconds later the street is flooded with seven people who just got off the train and a cab pulls in front of my building to let a drunk girl out. (This is not a lie and has not been embellished in any way.) WILD DOGS!! Who the hell is writing the script for my life? They need to take it easy on me. Cut the cliff hanger bullshit and let me be for a little bit. WILD DOGS!! In the city. In Manhattan. WILD DOGS. I call foul and shenanigans and say yes this is a sign of the apocalypse. WILD DOGS.

Karate Kid

Kwaku — 2005-11-28T00:37:23-05:00

Pat Morita died this week thus ending my once eternal dream of becoming a Karate Kid. Don’t laugh; I figure Ralph Macchio did the second movie in his thirties. I remember reading that during the final fight when he did that drum move he broke his hip and missed pudding night at the home. I figured all I needed was a montage and I would be up to speed in like one Depeche Mode song. Now, who is going to give those bullies at Tiger Schumens Karate their comeuppance?

Pat, you will be missed.

Getting Older

Kwaku — 2005-11-27T00:36:12-05:00

I think I am going to have to get a bathroom shower mat. I'm getting old. When I was a kid I never needed one--but when I got out of the shower today I slipped and busted my ass. It was a really strange feeling on the way down because this is what I was thinking: "Someone is going to find me nude and dead. Will I be affected by shrinkage? Please God; do not let me grab onto the toothpaste or anything else cylindrical. I do not want it written in the annals of my family that I died in some perverted bathroom accident. I really don't think a porn buddy can save you from that kind of mishap. Oh...is there still some sorbet in the fridge? My dog is a good dog--she's like Lassie good. Not in the saving department but on the getting help thing. Would Lassie know how to deal with my Medco deadbolt? Will I fall and truly not be able to get up? I wonder what Janet Jackson is doing right now...and now...and right now? What are people going to say when they find me? I'm not wearing clean underwear. Why is one hand reaching for the towel to hold it up while my right hand is desperately looking for a hand hold? Why aren’t these two hands on the same page? Either I'm a prude and need to grab for the towel or I want to live and I need to grab for more support. I wonder how much sorbet is in the fridge."

Good Night, Sweet Prince

Kwaku — 2005-11-17T16:01:20-05:00

OK, folks. I have been remiss in my duties (the whole bogging thing). I am in the midst of some changes. Well, I quit my job. I told my employer that I was moving on. Why is it that they always act like it is a shock?

Well, I want to thank all of you readers for the great upsurge in readership. We had 3,176 hits. That is something like 100 a day. So you like me-- you really, really like me. I am hoping to give you more of the same. I know that this month has been a little bit of a wash, but I am here for you.

I do not know if any of you have left a job before, but it is strange on so many levels. Co-workers come by your desk to shake your hand and say goodbye. But they are not really looking at you, they're looking around. Maybe it's because they're sad. Maybe they're going to miss me more than they thought they would. Maybe they don't want the tears to well up in their eyes and for me to see them cry--then one person says what is really on his mind. He breaks the silence and says,“You takin' that with you?” LET THE FEEDING FRENZY BEGIN. They are not sad to see me go, they are looking around at my stuff and taking a mental inventory to see what they want to take. VULTURES! Let my seat cool off first.

I am not saying that I have not been one of the vultures, but man, it’s tough-- "So you takin' that with you?" It’s a gold pen, of course I am. Even the stuff that is not mine it being picked over. It's one of those chairs with the lumbar support. I am now sitting in an office with a box of paper clips and a picture of my dog. And I have one question, "Who took my action figures?" No, they are not toys-- I am over 30-- they are collectable action figures.

People pick over the carcass of the dead. Let my passing give you new strength, but like I said before, wait until I have died.

iPorn

Kwaku — 2005-11-03T11:06:00-05:00

Alright, you have all heard of the new iPod by now (the one that has video playback). Well, to prove to you how depraved we are as a people, as soon as the Video pod had been announced, services popped up pandering porn to it. Before I really get into it, let me tell you about porn. I do not care what you say--it is not all bad. It does not turn all people who watch it into raving sexual predators -- otherwise 80% of the men you know would be in this category. It is titillating visual imagery that has been with us throughout time. Look at the Venus of Willendorf, a statue small enough to fit in the hand.

[It does not seem as if] she ever intended to lie in a supine position. In fact, her most satisfactory, and most satisfying, position is being held in the palm of the hand. When seen under these conditions, she is utterly transformed as a piece of sculpture. As fingers are imagined gripping her rounded adipose masses, she becomes a remarkably sensuous object, her flesh seemingly soft and yielding to the touch.

It's obvious that this researcher needs a girlfriend, but he does have a point. While it may be an object of fertility, it is not so hard to belive that this was borrowed from time to time by a male caveman who, we'll just say, did not need it to help him be fertile. Porn has been around for a long time and it has not destroyed the fabric of our society. I think 25,000 years ago when this object was carved, society, still new to the earth, had a better chance of derailing than it does now.

This brings us back to portable porn and the market for it. Folks, the cavemen carried their porn with them because there was no 7-11 where they could buy Playboy, and they lacked closets, so they couldn't hide it from their wives. The modern home is full of advances that our predecessors could not have even imagined. And one of them is a place to put your porn. Dude, if you need to carry porn on your iPod you have an issue and you need some help. I mean you really need some help, the kind where you lay on your back and talk to someone about your relationship with your parents. Where the hell are you going to watch it? The train is already a wasteland of hyper audio stimulation filled with the sounds of video games, cell phones played by idiots who have forgotten how to turn down the sound on their game of Tetris, audio overspill from headphones played by people that two years later are going to to be asking you to speak up because they cannot hear you, and the occasional portable DVD player.

Please do not pollute this already crowded landscape with Debbie Does Dallas on your iPod. It is hard enough for me to enjoy my reading while trying to tune out the oh-so-intellectual conversations of the school kids around me. I'll tell you right now that “Nigga, that nigga is a nice nigga” is not a sentence in any language. If I hear a kid say it again I am going to have to show him what a REAL angry nigger is. I do not want now to have to tune out the porn being watched by the passenger next to me. Of all the things I will put up with on the train, a dude getting a stiffy next to me is not going to fly. How pent up are you that you cannot wait until you get home? The only people I can see this possibily being OK for are prisoners that have just been released after 10 years. You, you perv, have only been at work for eight hours. You should know that this is not appropriate for the train. One last time. If you cannot wait 'til you get home, seek help.

Do we all get it? Porn--not inherently bad. People that need to watch it on their iPods--sick, twisted, and really creepy.

A little note to men: Get yourself a porn “buddy.” This is a little invention from the British comedy Coupling. What is a porn buddy? It's a guy who has a key to your apartment and upon finding out that something bad has happened to you, swings into action, goes to your home, and cleans out all the pornographic material that you own. Then, whatever family member has to pack up your apartment will not think that you, the dead guy, is a perv--and the friend gets a new porn library. This is a win-win in my book. I will be accepting applications to fill this position next week.

Halloween's up Ho's down.

Kwaku — 2005-10-31T08:40:40-05:00

So here we are at another holiday, Halloween. I remember loving this holiday. I would get dressed up and go from door to door, trick or treating. This is a totally unique holiday. For kids, candy (sugar) is like crack to them. So it is really like a drug addict going from door to door and begging for crack. Can you imagine:a bunch of junkies walking around, begging to get a fix, and the households stocked with uppers, downers, crack, and whatever else floats the junkie's boat. Of course all the junkies would come dressed as zombies. Hey sometimes you wear what you got. Well, it's just a thought...

I really want to talk about the costumes. Do you remember dressing up as Dracula or the Wolf Man? How about my favorite--a ghost. I think this is every parent's standby: "Oh my goodness. I forgot to get a costume for my kid. I don't want to damage them for the rest of their lives so I'm willing to sacrifice a bed sheet."

I was a ghost on more than one occasion--once in a blue sheet. (Maybe I was a sad ghost.) Costumes are the fun part of Halloween. They make it worth the above average chance of being hit by a rotten egg while you're out late at night. However, there is a time when you grow out of the costumes and all the joy of the Halloween holiday disappears. It stays gone for several years and you begin to think of Halloween as a bit of a lark just for kids--provided that you have not moved into the thug life of robbing little kids for their candy bags (you bastards). Halloween is also a time when you get to eat all the candy that the kids do not get. What is it with these kids? When I have candy they stay away like I am an ax murderer. When I do not have any candy the little S.O.B.s give me the stink eye like I didn't do my job. Where were you last year when I had to eat two bowls full of candy? Shut up; I had to eat it. Giving handfuls of candy to the kids after Halloween makes you feel like a pedophile.

The Halloween apathy lingers for a few years until on one miraculous day you are invited to a party; not just any party, a Halloween party with costumes. All of a sudden, the holiday receives a new makeover. This new Halloween revival turns the mildest mannered of church mice into street walkers. Well, maybe it's the costume that does that.

What is the impetus for grown women to turn every costume into a slutty outfit? Raggedy Anne has become Slutty Anne. And an innocent bunny turns into a Playboy bunny. It's amazing. Hell, I like to go sit out on my porch and watch the kids in their costumes escorted by their super hot moms in costume ( I am always like "Wow miss Joan who knew you filled out a French maid's outfit so well?"). Ladies, a pair of devil horns does not make the ho outfit a costume, you have become a ho in horns and fishnets (but go on with your bad self). Some mothers do not even try to fake like they are wearing a costume. They just put on that hot little dress that they never get to wear and walk their kids around the neighborhood in the highest pair of heels they own. In this case, it is not about the candy--it's about the CANDY. I wonder how it is to be a hooker on Halloween when half the women walking around the neighborhood are wearing your outfit. Is this confusing for the Jons? Well, I do not know any of the answers to these questions. Oh, almost forgot. To all you hot mothers or church mice who only need to take your hair out of that bun to be hot, I call the nicest of all shenanigans on you and wish you a happy Halloween.

Don’t believe me? Here is just a sample of the costumes available online, not from a Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalog but in the Halloween costume section of Halloweenmart.com. Ladies, if you have the first outfit on the upper left send pictures.