core dump [ * ] | 11:01 AM >

mike: Gotta go do some work--any last requests? cloud: yes. cloud: I'd like a ham sandwich. cloud: Actually, I wouldn't. mike: You just had one! cloud: I'm stuffed. mike: You're the worst Muslim ever. Some people have said that the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire took out too much, and that it's good as long as you've read the book. I half-disagree. On the one hand, the movies have to contain their own kind of continuity. For example, in the books Hermione had really big teeth until The Goblet of Fire, in which she gets jinxed and her teeth grow to massive proportions; she afterwards has them shrunken down past their original size to a "pretty" size. That never needed to happen in the movies because aside from her massive hair she's always looked pretty normal (and not at all dowdy as she's painted in the early books), so the fourth movie was more than free to cut that out. However, what about Harry's winnings going to Fred and George? I feel that's an important part of the story that has consequences over the last three books (although as the last book isn't out yet we'll have to see if they turn up in it as much). It's as much of a running thing in Book 5 (which I'm currently rereading) as Harry running into Cho in Book 4. I dunno. It was an interesting thing to cut, and it would have only added 5 minutes to the movie but could have added a very interesting and important thread to the following movies (which, apparently, are already planned. Anyway, it's good, and it's exciting, and I highly recommend you go see it. Now, on to the Boondocks. I'm trying to decide whether this show is something to be celebrated -- something that says things most people dare not say, especially in public -- or something to be removed from the air entirely for the terrible light it in which it paints black people. I'd say that Aaron McGruder is uneducated... but he's not. He's angry and he's attacking a problem in a way that seems correct to him. He's one of those guys who feels like he went through a period of negressence; this is a circumstance I've never been privy to and while I've read a bit about it (defined, essentially, as a black person waking up one day and realizing they're Black) I can't say that I ever went through that. I think he went through it hard by a lot of the stuff he says. Political commentary? Okay. Good, well-set-up running jokes? Okay. Poking fun at R. Kelly? Go on, then. But being yet another popular Black man using "nigga" in every other sentence like some sort of new article or preposition? I can't get with that. I've heard arguments that Black people aren't succumbing to racism by using the word nigger-- on the contrary, they're taking a tool used by racists and circumventing it, making it their own. By using the word nigger so frequently it's supposedly robbed of all its power. But is it? I don't think so. I think that there are some things so firmly rooted in our collective conscious they can never be removed or redefined. Nigger is one such word. I'm of the opinion that even if Black people were the only people left on Earth and English were the only language spoken, the word nigger would still hold a special kind of meaning, a special kind of pain. By using it on each other I think that Black people, instead of taking its power away, are making things worse. On The Boondocks series there's an episode where they define "The Nigga Moment" as being a moment where a normally rational Black person, basically, goes fucking nuts. My first reaction was to be highly offended. My second was to recall a number of incidents in DC when I, personally, was on the receiving end of such moments, although I'd have never called them as such. (I prefer the term asshole.) But now McGruder and co have done something stupid: they've gone and given a name to something that should not have been named in a public manner. And the public is going to eat it up because that's what the public does. How long will it be before we start hearing people say, "Man, I had one hell of a nigga moment today," in the same way people once said, "Man, I really pulled a Homer."? And for fuck's sake, there are no black nigga samurai. Ghost Dog was not a nigga-- he was a man.