The Corporate Rebellion

PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for
the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person
to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures
in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call
Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.
There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like
Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they
circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works,
without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the
studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being
able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.
If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing
other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the
rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow
people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take
over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It's all based on the fact that we're competition.
We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.
We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws
should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the
USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:
The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence.
They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers. 
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with
trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that
you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the
hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to
mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're
creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls
become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching
movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones
is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had
no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy
in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more
honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information
when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

Let’s talk success rates. What is a good success rate? Pick a number between zero and one hundred percent. If you have a piece of paper, write that number down. If you asked me that question with absolutely no background, my number would probably be about 93. What can I say? I’m a real go getter!!! Anyhow, now that you have your number, hold on tight to it. You’ll need it where we’re going. 

So now that we’ve established our number that we equate with success, let’s go down a few paths. At my job, a testing cycle is considered a success if 95% of the tests are both executed and passed. So for the Firm, 95 could be a number equated with success in many scenarios. Pretty good. Generally speaking in academia, 70% is passing and if passing is considered success, then 70 may be a good number for those nerds. Let’s see, winning percentage in football. My Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers went 10-6 in the regular season and it was OBVIOUSLY (Antoine Dodson tone) a huge success. That makes their number for this past year 62.5. So the numbers are getting lower. Now let’s do something with a really high number, like saaaay…skydiving. As a general rule, it’s always good to aim for the even Steven 100. Then on the lower end of the spectrum you have baseball players. A third baseman with a hitting percentage of .340 is considered to be killing it in the majors. 34? Seriously baseball? Alex Rodriguez makes $28,000,000/year and he only has to succeed at his job one third of the time. Really baseball?

The point I’m trying to drive home here is that success (and the number or percentage attached to it) varies vastly dependent on the activity or realm in which it is being considered. When performing some activities, expectations are very high and others the rate of success is very low. What drives these expectations?

One could make the argument that the lower the positive percentage expected to be successful could almost be an accurate measure of how difficult something is. The more often people succeed at something or the less failures per attempts that occur, the easier the success is to accomplish. Of course no abstract theory I ever spit out is without exception, but think generally.

So, that being said, is there anything in life that is really tough given that theory? The idea of life in general has a success rate number of zero since no one survives in the end. Very dark thought I know, but hey, it is what it is. But outside of that, what else? I toiled and toiled over this for some time until I stumbled upon the answer. It is an answer that it pains me to relay to you but I feel as though it is my intellectual duty. A life activity that has one of the lowest rates equated with success is (drum roll please)…romantic relationships. *insert record skip sound here*

Yes, ye olde romance is one of the hardest things to succeed in for most. Let’s dive into the numbers in an effort to prove that I am not, as I have often been accused of, full of shit here. I’ve had romantic interest in any number of women over the quarter of a century that I have occupied this planet. I won’t go into the number of partners I’ve had because that number, no matter how low, moderate or high when told to others is never considered cool or honest in any scenario. “Girlfriends” seem like a good measure though. Let’s count those that I would consider serious relationships. The ones that I felt had a serious shot at making it all the way in however a bizarre scenario. That being said, my number is 6. What’s your number? Go ahead, I’ll wait…ok you got it? Cool. Jot that one down too.

Now let’s scientifically measure our success. In order to come up with the success rate we must first be able to differentiate romantic successes and failures. Any relationship that ended in a breakup, whether you and the other party remained friends or not, we will consider a failure. On the other hand let’s call success one of three things: marriage, engagement, or plans of such within the next year (the criteria are completely arbitrary and could be argued for days but I had to come up with something quantitative). If you’re currently in a relationship but do not have these plans yet, we will exclude it as an attempt that is still in progress (and we wish you the best of luck).

With the parameters for success and failure set, I’m 0-6. That’s right. Six relationships over the course of nine years have landed me with a ZERO success rate and percentage. Pretty fucked up for a dude who said his general number for success was 93. What is your romantic success rate number?

Now before you go calling me a “hopeless romantic” or “bitter” (which are terms that I hear thrown around far too often), let’s take a look at a few examples. Take my cousin and frat brother Evan (not his real name) for instance. He is 28 and has had 9 girlfriends over the years. He married his now wife and mother of his first born daughter last May and they have built a very nice life for themselves. They have a strong marriage built on a strong foundation from my talks and interactions with them. I would most certainly consider their relationship a success and I would venture to say they would as well. So Evan, in all of his romantic glory and “happily ever after,” holds a success rate of only 11%!!!

*drops mic*

*picks mic back up* This is awkward…

What should we deduce from all of this? Well like most data, it will be looked at subjectively. Surely some will conclude that romance is in fact hopeless. Some may see the pool of data that I have used as not reflective of the greater masses that they are a part of. All fair views.

My conclusion however is directly correlated to the other success rates that we observed earlier for other activities. I venture to say that the success rate of an activity can be a direct indicator of how difficult the activity is; the number of failures when compared to the number of attempts indicates the difficulty. So with that logic, hitting a baseball in a major league game is much harder than shooting a free throw in the NBA. Pick an activity, compare the success rates and you should be able to rank the difficulty of activities based on the winning percentage (It should be noted that with this theory, as with most, there are exceptions. I would say to be fair, that there would need to be a minimum number of tries assigned to any particular activity in order for the rate and difficulty to be measured reasonably).

I did not think this up nor did I write this post to be unreasonably negative or to discourage anyone from pursuing their current or future romantic interests. I wrote this because I feel as though we’re all in this fight together. Romance is the one thing across the world that we can all agree that we want on some level or another in our lifetime and if we are all to fight this battle, to REBEL against failure, we need to know what we’re up against. Optimism and emotions can sometimes provide an unrealistic mental security net or false sense of entitlement that our relationships will work on their own. They simply will not.

Yes, getting some food from the plate to my mouth is something I assume will happen 100% of the time (although I’m more around 85% due to a combination of chopstick use and inebriation; see “The Vice President” I wrote a while back). I take that activity and the success in it for granted. That can absolutely not be the case in romance. I declare not that we retreat but that we understand our opponent. Something with a proven record of defeating those who approach it cannot be taken lightly and success cannot be assumed. Serious relationships should be approached with care and planning; goals being set throughout, visited and revisited. We should care enough about them to learn from our mistakes. These are not free throws, bat swings or forks full of noodles.

I always like to have a model example for a theory in my mind as I form it. Since this instance involved romance, I looked to scholars on interpersonal relationships and “love doctors.” It was in that search that I realized that I did not need someone who was good at love. I needed a model that was familiar with and persistent through failure after failure. I landed on Thomas Edison. As you may know, it reportedly took Mr. Edison more than 1400 attempts to invent a working filament for the electric light bulb. Eventually, through perseverance, successfully invented and patented it. Assuming the number of attempts is correct (I’ve heard more inflated guesses), his success rate was .0007%. WHAT A LOSER!

But that is not how he saw it or we see it now, is it? He failed plenty but in short, and in concordance with the theory, he accomplished something that was extraordinarily difficult.

When asked about his failures, Edison’s response was “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” This is how we must approach our relationships. Each past failed relationship is a step toward a hopeful success. For this reason I am forever grateful to all of my exes and I understand why we collectively acted in a way that inevitably caused our demise.

I cannot tell you that your current relationship will work. I won’t offer you common advice like “communication is key,” or “trust has to be the foundation.” If you haven’t noticed or simply don’t remember from about 10 paragraphs ago, I’m still a failure at this romance thing too. What I can say, in the image of Mr. Edison, is that I have absolutely figured out six ways not to make a relationship work. It is with that knowledge that I will make my next attempt my best attempt. I won’t cross my fingers and hope I get lucky. I will own the craft of being a friend, caregiver, provider, lover, fighter and anything else that is required of me. Be encouraged my fellow love soldiers, and be not a hopeless romantic. Instead be a “strategic romantic.” It doesn’t sound nearly as sweet or storybook, but we are not interested in the way things sound.

WE are interested in the way things are and in doing what is required of us to prove our worth in this uprising against love’s tyranny of failures. So live well, fight hard and love strategically because…

The Rebellion Continues…

M

Conflict in its simplest form can be likened to a unicellular parasitic organism attached to an unknowing host. Whether eating away at its host until nothingness or mildly inconveniencing it, lessening an otherwise full and fruitful existence, there is hindered function. With spiritual regard, a torn soul begets a torn mind and physical stress. This can be drawn transitively from emotion to the manifestation of said emotion (for example, crying, smiling and so on). These shows of emotion are not necessarily indicative of a “torn soul” but, reasonably, one can accept this sequence of events as true.

Should one’s understanding of good and bad be exclusive to that of his prescribed religion? That depends on what he understands the overall message and purpose of the said religion to be. This raises lower level questions. Is bad an absolute? Can good be had in the grey area? I consider myself to be a Roman Catholic, yet my practices do not appear so. In reverence? Yes. In responsibility and accountability for my actions? Yes. I have come to the conclusion that my conflict lies in the views of others’ church leaders and antiquities, whose antique yet relevant customs I respect. I openly admit that through all the preachings of forgiveness and explanatory homily after the Gospel, I feel no comfort in being a sinner. That discomfort, ironically, is the most comforting aspect. I have looked for discipline in religion rather than comfort and basically, have gotten just that Others’ praise and/or disapproval for me can only go so far because of my personal honesty. Theologically I know what is expected of me and I have failed to deliver numerous times. Neither a good or bad person I arrive at well-intentioned. Whether or not this is good enough is beyond me. 

As a secular artist I deal with many conflicts. Being God’s children I assume that we all have dark, unsavory, off-color thoughts. An artist is understood to me as one who expresses freely, but not without criticism. The expectation for the message or lack thereof to be louder than sound bites in a written piece gets more embarrassing by the song. Now it would seem as if my prescribed to religion has taken a backseat to artistry. Untrue. In all fairness, the sinning and conflict started over ten years before I ever wrote a song. I’m authentic. Self-awareness and self-preservation go hand in hand to me. You can’t have one without the other. Being aware of my flaws, fatal and trivial, I find some battles futile, some behaviors infantile while others I just have no desire to change. In an altered state of consciousness and uninhibited free flowing thought my stream streams seamlessly. Unapologetically yes, but only after doing so unknowingly. There is no intentional shock and awe at work. Some would call my ramblings anti-Catholic sentiment. This would mean that true Catholics aren’t capable of such thought which would be saying that we are perfect. That implication would be fallacious at its core and also even more anti-Catholic than my initial example. Whether or not one voices these thoughts does not excuse them from judgment. It merely spares the individual from judgment from those who can’t truly judge anyway.

Conflict does not need a reason or validation and therein lies the rub. For all of my personal debate and playing devil’s advocate I have no solace in any of my logic. Why is it that I feel such a strong sense of wrongdoing when I am reminded of my religion as well as my craft? Simply, I have disrespected the practice and pageantry of Catholicism. My heart is true. I know only one way to pray and the Catholic Church taught me that. Sometimes in church it feels as though all eyes are on me, my tattoos and my soul. Perhaps next time I will just remember the immense failings of some of my religious leaders, realize that I’m not so bad, and then still not let myself off of the hook for my own trivial and not so trivial failings. God is good. Not me.

-

Yves

***NOTE***

This is an original piece submitted to me by a dear friend and fellow rebel, Yves. Here at The Corporate Rebellion, we strive to provide original content and genuine thought from some of the brightest and most underrepresented minds of our time. This medium is a venue for said thought. If you’d like to know more about Yves and experience some of his other work, visit http://thenicelook.com . Enjoy the piece and show him the love he deserves by sharing your opinions, no matter the nature. If you would like to submit a piece, feel free to contact us via the messages and I’ll get back to you immediately.

The Rebellion Continues…

-

M

You’ve heard about Beats. You’ve seen every athlete wearing some variation of these over the past 2-3 years. What do you really know about them though? Probably the same thing I knew before I got them. They cost a lot of coin. These, for instance, retail for $229.99. And these are like the middle of the road ones! For Pete’s sake. Do they come with a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” and a sexual favor? 

The price is the reason I never even considered purchasing a pair. That was until my dude Warren (@GeezyZB19) bought a pair and gave them a rave review. He planted the seed. Being a bit of a music buff (190 gigs of music total) I’ve always appreciated high quality sound equipment. I have a Harman Kardon surround sound system in my loft that I was fortunate enough to get for free with the Performance Points from my job for an 80 hour week I pulled out in Cali in ‘09 during crunch time of a deployment (slave ship shit). Having good audio equipment makes you love the music you already have more and the ability to appreciate instrumentals and mixing much better if you’re into that sort of thing.

So anyhow, I was considering them and finally had a good opportunity to give them a listen during a layover in Atlanta about a month ago at Brookstone. Plugged them into the iPad and I was pretty much sold on the spot. They were the black pair and I liked how subtle they were. My thoughts were “You’re already wearing a pair of Beats, no need to draw any extra attention.” So I bought them on the spot for $179.99 + tax. Only to get home and realize that despite the seemingly knowledgeable salesman telling me they were the HD’s they were not in Hi Def. (Note: He was a fat black dude. Say what you may but for some reason, I generally don’t trust overweight guys. Yeah I’m a monster. Save it.) Instantly pissed. So I return them to the nearest Brookstone and return them. To add insult to injury, they don’t have the HD’s so I’m forces to get a refund. Back to my $9.99 earbuds. No big deal.

It was a big deal though. For the next 4 days all of my music sounded really sucky. I had to get another pair and fast. Pittsburgh airport to the rescue! I walk into this mega kiosk and tell the dude my story. He’s like “You’re in luck. We have one more pair of the Product (RED) HD’s. I was like “Man, I don’t want that super flashy shit.” But then I thought to myself, I need these like right now. I was on the fence though. Then he said the magic words: “Buy them here, right now and I’ll give you $30 off.” SOLD.

So I broke em out. First, I love Product (RED) products because they support AIDS treatment and research and I love Dr. Dre because he’s Dre. Supporting Dre is supporting everything rap is. Secondly, the HD sound is unmatched. The first song I listened to on them was Big K.R.I.T’s “My Sub” because I wanted to hear the what the bass on these bad boys could do. It was like literally sitting in the back seat of my boy Supreme’s cutlass that he had in high school. Major bang. After I got that ratchetness out of my system, I listened to my favorite song of all time: “Suzie Blue” by Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. The 40 second clarinet solo sounded like the 1st chair musician was sitting right next to me. I instantly was happy with my decision. 

Third, they come with a feature called ControlTalk which is basically the same thing that comes on those iPhone headphones that allow you to talk on the phone through the microphone located on the wire. You can also mute them and control the volume on an iPhone, iPod or (for me) iPad. That may seem like a minuscule  thing to have but it’s actually really convenient when people walk up to you and you don’t want to pull out your device to mute it.

Last but certainly not least, these things are a statement. When I walk into the airport, I’m usually wearing a pair of tailored slacks with a conservative shirt and tie combo. My luggage is four wheel corporate. Sure, I’m young and black but I still mostly fit in with the rest of the corporate slaves in the rat race. These provide me with just enough extra edge to let everyone around me know that in the words of Weezy (whom I’m jamming right now. “The Mobb” from Carter II) that “We are not the same.” When I pre board with the Platinum AAdvantage guests, mostly commuters like me, they know that I’m probably listening to “some deviant, destroy-the-youth” music. And though the majority of my life I’m not, on Monday mornings, that’s damn near all I listen to.

Why? Because when you’re going in to fight that work week battle that I fight week after week, you need to be properly motivated. And though I’m nowhere near violent or disrespectful in the workplace, I know that I have an identity outside of what they see both on the plane or in the board room. It’s the rebel in me. And that rebel is partially fueled by the tunes that enter my cerebrum through this beautiful vehicle.

Cop a pair. Bang them out. These are CRACK without the possession case. Listen good. And most importantly, REBEL.

Because as I switch to some OFWGKTA tracks for the weekend to come on this cloudy and rainy beautiful Friday, Monday is lurking right around the corner. And when that cold hearted bastard gets here,

the Rebellion Continues…

M

Al Gore. Dick Cheney. Joe Biden. Myself. What commonalities do we have? Well for starters, me and Al Gore are both very concerned and feel that something must be done about climate change. Me and Cheney are both often called rude, short and stuck in our own ways by those who wish to discredit us. We have both also shot someone in the face in the last ten years. I’m kidding about that last one. Or am I? *Cue suspenseful music* And Biden? Well we both will fall asleep damn near anywhere. Whether it is a client meeting or an internationally televised speech about our own administration’s plans to tackle a budget crisis. Come to think of it, that’s what most of my Firm’s Client meetings are about as well. 

 But what do all of us have in common? We are all men. We are all currently still alive. And the term Vice President can be used to describe each of us. For them, they are the “Vice” to the president during their respective terms. Vice being defined as “acting as deputy or substitute for; next in rank” from the Latin vice- meaning “in place of” in their case. The odd thing to me, however, is that referring to their title is usually the only time I see the word used in that way. 

 When I typed the word VICE into my handy dandy dictionary widget on my Macbook Air I saw the much more common use of the term at the very top. “Immoral or wicked behavior. Criminal activities involving prostitution, pornography or drugs.” Well damn. So you see, the words VICE PRESIDENT could be (and very well is) much more of working title in my case. 

 And that is what leads me to this post. I have been giving quite a bit of consideration to addictions and how they work. Full disclosure, I have dealt with them on many different levels. For instance, during my junior year of undergrad, I was addicted to an energy drink called SOBE Adrenaline Rush. It was actually pretty disgusting now that I look back on it. At one point, I was drinking two each day, usually five days a week. At around $3 each, that’s $120/month. What. The. Fuck? Once I realized what it was costing me, both quantitatively and via opportunity cost, I immediately cut them off. Cold turkey (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean or be derived from). That was a comforting moment to me because I felt as though my intellect had won over the “so-called” addiction.

 Once I came to the realization that I had somehow used mathematics, basic opportunity cost and intellect to beat an addiction, it forced me to do my favorite thing; ask questions. Could this be possible for any addiction I would ever encounter? Was this ability to drop addictions limited to those of us who think on or above a certain level? If so, what was the over/under line on intellect and how could it be measured? I put a personal spin on this because I myself have seen so much addiction in the ghettos and housing projects of the Stop 6 and Polytechnic areas of the east side of Fort Worth where I was raised. Even in my own home, addiction (to drugs, alcohol and violence) had just as much influence on my upbringing as anything, including love, morals and education. It was an inescapable part of my siblings’ lives as well as mine daily. Could all of the hurt, life altering consequences and negative influence that we experienced in adolescence have been avoided with the use of a little brainpower? Gees Mom.

 Regardless of the answers to these questions, one question stuck out to me because it was one that questioned myself. Would I have quit the energy drinks (or even noticed for that matter) had this addiction not had a negative financial effect on me? This was something I toiled over for some time and like many questions that I can’t definitively decipher without the experience of the hypothetical needed to gain the evidence for a theory, I pushed this question to the back of my brain in some type of cranial external hard drive. I was actually happy that I had not experienced this situation due to the dire straits it could have had on my own adult life. (In my best “12 Steps Program Voice) Either way, I am 4 years clean from SOBE Adrenaline Rush.

Fast forward, or better yet don’t just stick with college. Junior year I also drank alcohol. A lot of alcohol. After all, I was in a fraternity and live at the house of said fraternity. It was a lot like you might imagine when it comes to adult beverage consumption. College is a time when most people go a bit crazy anyhow, experimenting with sex, drugs and alcohol in their various forms. I however, did not use any controlled substances for most of my college years. This was because a very well respected pharmaceutical company who performed best in industry drug tests employed me. Another potential addiction crisis once again averted because it would have affected my bottom line. But the drinking continued and I contributed it to “this just being college.”

 So a few more years of this behavior pass and although I was very ill at one point contributed to drinking too much and stress my senior year, I got better and graduated. After graduation I was resolute on becoming a better person all around. After all, this wasn’t college anymore. Despite the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, I landed an incredible gig with a leading consulting firm (whom I still work for) and was moving to California with my then girlfriend for work and the rest of life. After the move, my drinking scaled back significantly to almost mild levels. I would generally have wine or beer with dinner and maybe one or two nights of partying a month. No drugs whatsoever. I was right as rain and well on track to becoming a respectable adult. Then life struck.

 Due to a series of unfortunate events I was forced to move back to Texas after about 8 months in the sunshine state. I was staffed on a new project in the northeast and began commuting via plane to work and staying there four days a week in a hotel. The travel caused the relationship to tank. No more girlfriend for motivation. Misery riddled my weekdays in this grey city with no friends. The good news was I was getting paid more and there were a lot more social events on my new project. (Company sponsored happy hours and get-to-know-the-team beer tasting and the like.) So generally, one to two nights during the working week were reserved for us consultants to get plastered for the low price of on the house. Then on the weekends I could go wherever I pleased and continue this behavior. My weekends then became a safe haven in time where I could be myself. With my friends. And being myself meant escaping the boredom and constraints of the corporate world by letting loose, talking the way I always had and being the more aggressive tour de force that I had been throughout college. The proverbial Frank the Tank was back.

 So I drank. And drank some more. And slowly but surely, people began to talk to me about drinking the way I’m sure people talk to Sean Carter about rapping. With a certain, “Aww, now don’t be modest. You know you’re the ultimate when it comes to this stuff” tone. When did I become that guy? So here I was again. Forced to reevaluate my own existence. How much did/do I drink? The answer is, in it’s simplest form, A LOT! This is told by some of the things I hear from my friends, colleagues and even strangers. My best friend (@WTWilsonJr) quoted a few weeks ago, “When you tell me you’re coming for the weekend, I block off my Monday and Tuesday for recovery.” What a douche’!!! When we’re at a Firm sponsored event and someone orders one or two too many shots, “Give that one to M, he’ll drink it.” I have somehow become the Mikey of Jagerbombs.

 So I thought to myself a few months ago, “How much of a problem is this?” That inspired me to look at the thing that I have always looked to first to see if something is an issue: the bottom line. My bank and credit card statements definitely show a substantial amount of alcohol purchases but the amount doesn’t seem alarming. This is because someone else covers about half of the drinks I consume. It is the natural way in both the corporate and drinking worlds. “I GOT DE TAB, YOU CAN GITTIT NECHSTIME!!!” What generous drunken idiots we are. Also, I am much more financially stable than I was in college.

 So after long consideration, I am back at the question I asked myself years back: Would I quit this addiction if it did not have a negative financial effect on me? The answer is, that I am not sure.  I have a really stirring time (pun intended) when friends, colleagues and myself go drinking. Over the years I have formed a very keen and meticulous palate for beers and have even adopted a few places (Sharp Edge, Pittsburgh and The Flying Saucer, Dallas) that I frequent a few times/month solely to experiment with different variations. I thoroughly enjoy these occasions and look forward to them. I meet many people during these encounters and even feel as though it adds some sort of additional cultural value to my life.

 My drinking doesn’t affect my work output, as I have never missed work due to a long night of banging the bottles. I don’t drive so there is no danger of DWI or me causing an accident. Days when I don’t have anything to drink, I feel fine and many days I do opt out. But when I opt in, I’m in. Is this an addiction? I think it just might be. But if its effects are not seen as negative, it is barely more harmful than my addiction to tailored clothing or the beautiful voices of Yael Naim or Feist.

 I am seemingly addicted to riding my bike and will skip almost anything to do it. I have been hit by a car while riding and continue to do so even though it clearly presents a level of danger that I could avoid otherwise. No one ever tells me to not do any of these things. Riding a bike without a helmet is illegal and although some of my friends discourage this, many of them are much more passionate about my drinking and my need to scale it back. Drinking alcohol is not illegal. I don’t participate in any illegal activities while intoxicated. What is the deal, ladies and gents? Is it the health risks involved? I rarely see critical peers discouraging poor eating habits or lack of exercise the way they do alcohol consumption when they clearly all present comparable long term health risks.

 I have concluded that it is rather the negative stigma that is placed on alcohol based on the effects that it has on the greater public: violence, drunk driving, lack of production, etc. These actions and characteristics are clearly not a part of my life and my drinking has not catalyzed any of them for me over the years. It is with that in mind that I have decided (at least for now) to accept my vice of choice. Scratch that. Never mind acceptance, I will own it. My drinking and knowledge thereof will continue in my comfortable and “careful moderation.” Cheers.

 I have decided to live with and preside over my favorite vice. So while I’ve never backed up the Commander in Chief, there you are Joe, Dick and Al. We’re all in this Vice President game together. Aren’t working titles fun?

 So as I continue to fight this fight against “cases of the Mondays” and the four-walled taupe cells (laptops included) that many of us call our office spaces, luckily we have a completely competent cabinet of assistants to help me along the way during our vice presidential terms. You may already know them. If not, let’s rendezvous and I’ll gladly introduce you. Meet Jim, Jack, Johnnie and Jose. I even have a military division with a ranking officer, Morgan.

 This is The Corporate Rebellion and we will fight with all that we have, shots included. We will toil over it and one day we will win. Until then we accept each Firm sponsored happy hour as a small victory in this war. So let’s have at it in (and with) the best SPIRITS we know.

 As our French Allies would say, “Laissez bon temps rouller!!!” and was always…until next time…the rebellion continues…

M

May 1, 2011. Cafeteria Restaurant and Bar. New York City.

I’m drinking a white grape martini and eating mac and cheese spring rolls, which are delicious by the way, when I get the urge that I get all too often: the urge to check Twitter to ensure that I’m up on the latest and greatest news both worldwide and with my friends (@monsieurnelson if you’re unaware). As I look down my timeline, I realize that something has happened. Something bigger than usual. I know this because 90% of the people I follow, from fashion designers to photographers to college buddies to sports reporters, are all talking about the same thing:

President Obama announces that Osama Bin Laden, the Lord Voldemort of the non-Hogwarts world, has been killed by U.S. Military forces. 

So the big questions that I received from many of my friends on both sides of the intellectual scale is “What is your response?” & “What is your response to others’ responses?”

Let’s tackle these and other expansion questions separately.

WHAT WAS MY RESPONSE?

Like many other African Americans, my initial and secondary responses to this were not much different from my responses upon finding out that Sen. Barack Obama was the new president elect back in 2008. What might strike many as odd was that my responses were very minimal to both.

Do I care about Politics? Do I care about the War on Terror? The answer to both is a “very limited yes.” I care about these issues only on the basis in which they directly affect my life, mainly because they do not care about me beyond these things.

I remember the extreme jubilation following the announcement of the election results. I was still in undergraduate study at Prairie View A&M (Historically Black University). Just imagine what it was like when 9,000 black people between the ages of 18 and 25 heard that Obama had been elected. There were people crying, people laughing with gladness and even people heckling others. There was an unhealthy mixture of both happiness and vindication, of joy and vengeance. You see, there is about a 2% white population at Prairie View and the some of the black population, like any population anywhere, are extraordinarily discriminatory and saw this as an opportunity to “stick it to the white man.” Either way, regardless of your race, political affiliations, gender, age or educational level, that was a significant event and I understood exactly why the reactions were so dramatic. It was a historic day. A day that marked the end of an era and the beginning of the next.

My response to that historic day was one that most people around me had trouble understanding. I did not celebrate at all. No text messages sent. No Facebook status. No high 5’s and no “YES WE CAN. YES WE DID.” This sparked many to ask me whether or not I had actually voted for the man whom my girlfriend at the time’s family said I resembled (mainly because they live in Germany and the pool of light skinned, multiracial American they have seen is small). Full disclosure: I DID. So I told you what I didn’t do. The question is now probably, what did I do? I finished writing a paper that I had been toiling over for a class that I hated. I ate something that probably had more calories that the last black guy to run for president had votes. Then I went to sleep. The reality, mine anyhow, was one of extreme realism. I came up with a simple way of explaining it to people: “My life won’t be any different tomorrow than it was yesterday because of this news.”

You see, politics, whether good or bad, haven’t largely affected my life. I was born poor under Reagan. I was raised in poverty (and poorly) under both George Sr. and “the Ladies Man.” And while everyone was complaining about the terrible job George Walker was doing in the early years of the new millennium, I decided that like his predecessors, Republican or Democrat, I couldn’t depend on him to improve my life. I could only depend on my personal network and myself. So I did just that and work to be better and frankly less poor everyday thereafter. It worked. And after seeing it work, I lost interest in politics before I ever had a chance to be interested in the first place.

But since I had decided years earlier and had seen presidents from both parties come and go, I was sure that my life would probably not change on a day to day after President Obama’s election and inauguration. But after a few months, when the inauguration came, I thought, “You know what, this is pretty cool. It’s the end of an era of struggle for a lot of people who have worked really hard for an idea. This event is the personification of that idea. This is what they consider to be their goal being reached. Good for them. And in many ways, I’m a part, however small, of that group/struggle. So good for me.”

My response the other night to the news of Bin Laden’s death was almost identical. 

While the range of responses was as wide as I’ve seen for any event in recent history, from glee to sorrow, from cautious celebration to cynicism, I was extremely unresponsive. I saw what was happening, knew that it was important and historic, but somehow remained unmoved. I proceeded with lethargy through my night in NYC. Then I got word that “OMG OMG PEOPLE ARE MEETING AT GROUND ZERO TO CELEBRATE!!!” via text. I was still not excited despite being less than two miles from the exact spot. As Twitter burst into uproars in 1000 different directions I felt the need to express myself in 140 characters or less. “I was getting bread when Osama Bin Laden was alive, I will continue now that he’s gone.” What a prick, yes I know.

WHAT WAS MY RESPONSE TO OTHERS’ RESPONSES?

But just as the inconsiderate, self-interested jerk in me subsided with the election, the same transpired with this event. Over the next few days I saw the passion in people. Those who held the “Never celebrate someone’s death no matter what” as well as the “Yes I’m glad he’s dead and I hope he burns in hell (Samuel L. Jackson voice).” And as much as I wanted to side with one or the other and get in on the colour commentary action, I just didn’t fall into either of those categories. I respected them both on some level but felt that both were being a bit insensitive. 

The group who say that you shouldn’t get any joy or positive feelings from the death of another: think about the justice system. When a child molestation or murder suspect is convicted of a crime and sentence to either life imprisonment or death penalty, is the family of the victim wrong for feeling the relief or joy of knowing that justice is being served? Is it wrong to get a positive feeling from the closure you receive that only said justice can provide? Well, there is a large possibility that that was exactly what was provided to the loved ones of the 2,752 who died at the World Trade Center and the 184 whose lives were lost at the Pentagon on that Tuesday morning. The single headline “WE GOT THE BASTARD!” may very well have provided that closure. And who are you…better yet, who are WE to say whether or not the way that anyone responded was right or wrong? My conclusion was not that it was right or wrong, rather, that it was fine.

WHAT NOW?

I’ve heard other rumblings that suggest that this wasn’t as significant a feat as the media and government have made it out to be. That Al Qaeda will simply utilize the chain of succession and the next in power will continue to orchestrate the reign of terror the way that OBL did the past 20 or so years. Well, luckily for all of us, that group doesn’t know shit about the way that evil empires work (Nazi Germany, WWII Japan, Al Qaeda, etc.). They are generally based on a series of small acts that are encouraged and climax in one large act (The Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, 9/11). That act then serves as a vital source to add to the movement those who were unsure of the impact that said group could make. Immediately following the large act though, the evil group must survive a surge of opposition. 

This is where things got sticky. In the other two cases I’ve cited, the enemy was clear. They were nations. Germany. Japan. We go there. We kill them. We kill the leader. We win. Well, it wasn’t that cut and dry this time. 9/11 couldn’t be narrowed down to one nation; rather it was accredited to a smaller group of underground radicals from many nations who live in utter secrecy. That makes it impossible for our nation to “go there” and it makes them a lot harder to kill. What we did have was their leader’s name. That was the good news. Great news, actually because just like in the other evil empires, the acts are fueled by the ideas of the leaders of those empires. The strength of the movements lived not only in the acts of the past and plans for the future but the idea that “we are strong because our leader is strong.” This was especially the case in Nazi Germany. A vast number of enlisted Nazi’s were relieved upon finding out that Hitler was dead. Relieved because they knew like I know now. That many evil acts are in obedience to not only the ideas of evil but also the deliverer of that evil. Once Hitler was dead, no matter who took his place, the shoes would never be filled. There would be a certain resistance. A “Hitler wouldn’t do it like that” mentality.

Those mentalities work just fine in democracies but no so much in “kill them all” organizations. So I am forced to ask, who takes Osama Bin Laden’s place? You don’t know, you say? Well neither does the 16 year-old kid who is training to be a suicide bomber. He has lost a piece, no matter the size, of his motivation; he has lost his figurehead. He is a member of the Foot Klan with no Master Shredder (see TMNT). And when your job is to lose your life for the cause, you need all the motivation in the world. Don’t think that I’m saying that terrorism is over. It’s not. I am saying that that movement is weaker on this day than it has been in the last 10 years. And I’m saying, in a very celebratory tone, that that is an extremely good thing for us here in the Colonies.

HATE. That is what Osama Bin Laden embodied. He was the personification of modern day terrorism. He was almost everything that is wrong with the grander world. He ruined and ended many lives that held so much promise. He ruined mass travel. He made children and adults afraid to go to school and work respectively. He made life a lot harder for folks whose lives were hard enough already. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to lose your loved one to a heinous act of cowardice orchestrated by a man who has never met you or your family but want all of you dead at any cost, even the lives of his own loved ones. My heart and prayers go out to those families and friends.

BUT THANKS TO OUR BRAVE MILITARY, ESPECIALLY THE CORPORATE REBELS OF SEAL TEAM SIX, THAT ENTIRE LAST PARAGRAPH AND ANYTHING ELSE EVER WRITTEN ABOUT osama bin laden WAS, IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE IN PAST TENSE. 

God Bless America. Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. 

M