Tag Archives: fear

Fear of Flying.

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Being as it’s Black history month and seeing as how most of us probably forget that fact that half the time once we graduate from high school, I figured that perhaps I should devote a little time to “Black issues”.

What are “Black issues”? Good question. But they sure as hell aren’t Jet Magazine.

Rimshot.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently – both because of the FAMU forum and because I try to spend at least twelve minutes of everyday on substantial thought – trying to determine what I think some of our biggest “problems” are. Now, this presupposes that we have problems but I’m fairly sure that we can all agree that as a community, we have a long way to go, Obama or not.

Can I get an Amen?

Yay-men.

I’m not afraid of failure. Strange as that may sound, if I fail that means I gave something a shot and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I tried to be sexxy. And I won. I tried to become the next Jay-Z. I failed. It’s all part of the game. But at least I played.

What does scare me to death is mediocrity. I’m deathly afraid of being just another mediocre person of little consequence to anybody but those who know me. I’m afraid of becoming like the people I see on the train going to and from work looking like their just passing time while they wait to meet Hayseuss. Amen.

I’m afraid of just doing what everybody else does to just “make it”. I’m afraid of being $20 away from being on the street. Hell, I’m afraid that if I decided to never blog again tomorrow, nobody would care and I’d fade into the obscurity that so many of us accept.

Telling you my biggest fear was a roundabout way of telling you what I view as a large problem for the Black community: complacency. Ever since we started following white people into the suburbs and getting the types of jobs we once considered out of our reach, we stopped pushing. We made it. The only problem is our version of making it was somebody else’s version where we were placated with better housing and more quality education opportunities.

The middle.

It’s not a monetary thing, it’s a mentality thing. Mentally, the boat stopped being rocked because we reached more placid waters and got complacent and comfortable. And that would be great except the ideology exists across the financial spectrum. The people with no money sometimes just accept circumstances that they were unfairly handed as their lot in life and don’t aspire to greater. Mediocrity is the goal, not a motivator. We haven’t taught enough of our community to continue to strive for greatness. Some of us just have that innately and want to do mo’ better. Or better stated, refuse to believe that wherever they’ve gotten is where they’re supposed to end up.

But hell, where is there, anyway? That’s part of the problem. We don’t even know what to want for anymore so we find jobs we like and people we can tolerate and turn 50 and wonder what happened to the time and what we’ve contributed to society.

That scares me to death. What’s the point of living if nobody realizes that you’re alive?

It doesn’t require you to be Nathaniel Drew, EE Just or Harriet Tubman, but it does require you to realize that you have to keep on pushing towards somewhere.

People get ready, there’s a train coming. Word to Araminta.

Just get on board.

So my debaters and debatresses of VSB, are we too complacent with our current situation as a community? If so or if not, what does it all mean anyway?

Is we gon’ die?

Talk to me, Petey.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL, HE A 3

scared sh*tless: nine things that every grown man is afraid of

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1957 - monolith monsters, the (poster)

its been 25 years since a midnight viewing of the monolith monsters shook the young champ so much that he refused to walk on pebbles and anywhere else where swarms of rocks were present. this extreme b*tchassness ended six months later when i entered first grade, and realized that the pebbles near the swings where were all the cute girls hung out at recess.

most men have similar stories, where they learned how to deal with what scares them after realizing that visible fear is the most surefire female repellent. fear never goes away though, just what it is that scares us. pebbles, poodles, and puddles eventually change to police, prison rape, and burnt p*ssy. 

as another example of the verysmartbrothas.com commitment to fighting crime, here’s nine things that every man is scared to death of.

1. committing to the wrong person

although the idea of hell usually includes some combination of pitchforks, sulfur, and soulja boy cd’s on loop, most men consider the idea of being in a long-term relationship with the wrong person as even worse.

obviously, women have this same fear, but since most of us feel that “being in a faithful relationship” is the antithesis of our latent nature, we feel like we have to “change” more than women do for a relationship to work.  its almost like we have to alter a portion of our dna. because of this, finding out that we made a huge commitment (ie: marriage, home ownership, dual bally’s memberships etc) with the wrong person makes us feel like we’ve taken two l’s instead of one.

and divorce? and child support? shiiiiiiiiit. just seeing those words probably induced chills on half the vsb’s reading this.

2. getting a “one trillion” in life

*from wiki*

used to denote a (basketball) player who has played one (or more) minutes without recording any other statistic. the term takes its name from its appearance in a box score, as it reads as one followed by twelve zeros – the conventional american rendering of “one trillion.”

because the box score shows that you basically made the exact same contribution to the game as the popcorn venders, this is one of the most humiliating things that can happen to a ballplayer.

there aren’t many things that scare a man more than the prospect of getting a “one trillion” in life, dying and leaving no evidence whatsoever that you were even alive

3. having an extremely unattractive daughter

while we’d love a mud duck daughter just as much as a cute one, this scares us because we all remember how the ugly girl in school was (mis)treated, and we wouldn’t wish that on our worst enemy.

with that being said, we’d still rather deal with this than the prospect of…

4. having an early “developed” and hotpants daughter

basically, we just hope that any daughter we have will be a nerdy tomboy with a cute face who doesn’t grow breasts or booty until she’s 22.

there's a reason she's the vsb's favorite cp3
there’s a reason she’s the vsb’s favorite cp3

5. being wrongly accused of a crime

because of the helplessness you’d feel, and the fact that it could eventually lead to this…

6. prison rape

“I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight, and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that – but prison is no fairy-tale world. He never said who did it, but we all knew. Things went on like that for awhile – prison life consists of routine, and then more routine. Every so often, Andy would show up with fresh bruises. The Sisters kept at him – sometimes he was able to fight ‘em off, sometimes not. And that’s how it went for Andy – that was his routine.”

lets just say that we’d all love to go through our lives without morgan freeman uttering those words about us

7. getting “b*tched” or made to feel helpless in front of your woman

for those unsure of what i’m referring to, just watch this scene again

8. knocking up a jump-off

an unexpected pregnancy is bad enough, but an unexpected pregnancy from the hoodrat applebee’s waitress you met at the cut-rate is enough to send any sane man to an insane asylum. seriously, thinking about sh*t like that makes you want to invest in kevlar rubbers. or, you know, actually start wearing them

9. the “unfaithful”

for those who’ve never seen this movie, the “unfaithful” occurs when you’re in a seemingly happy relationship, with a seemingly happy and content woman, and she cheats on you with a jim jones doppleganger. i know cheating hurts women too, but because many of you all expect men to cheat anyway, most of you have support systems and sh*t already in place as well as the “he was a dog” perfunctory fall back.

when a woman cheats though, the guy is out there by himself. no support systems, and he doesnt want to even tell anyone about it because the prevailing thought will be “well, if he was taking care of stuff in the bedroom, it wouldn’t have happened”

this usually leads us with one option: murder

i’m sure i’m missing a few. is there anything else that puts a universal chill down the spine of men (or women)?

also, besides the idea of another solo diddy album, what in particular scares you?

the carpet is yours and sh*t

—the champ

link of the week: the art of war

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Attempted murder suspect, victim were romantic rivals

An arrest warrant was issued for Valerie Walls, 27, suspected of assaulting a 29-year-old San Bernardino County woman between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The victim suffered deep slicing wounds to her upper torso area and she lost a lot of blood, Desert Hot Springs Det. Sgt. Radames Gil said Wednesday. The victim was able to get to the K-Mart store, where she sought help and authorities were called, Gil said.

Walls and the victim were romantically involved with the same person, Gil added

we all do it. whether conscious or not, every second of every day we spend on earth we’re doing it. you did it with millions of other sperm twenty six years ago in the back room of your mom’s shanty, when that pint of md 20/20 convinced her to finally let her uncle’s leadfoots jenkins squirt his “kind milk” inside of her. as a toddler, you did it with your dad for your mom’s attention, at least until you grew older and focused your energy on your siblings. you did it for a spot in that college you’re still paying off loans for, along with that job that allows you to spend three hours a day on vsb, and that apartment you lay your head in every night, dreaming about the champ of ways to do it better. shit, that air you’re breathing? you’re doing it with trillions of other organisms for that as well.

we can’t help doing it, even if we do want to. competing is in our nature, as fundamental to humanity as oxygen and stacey dash.

this everlasting competition extends to the dating arena. each of us are equal parts free agent and general manager, constantly evaluating, being evaluated, and battling for spots on the right team. with more intense focus than kobe in a snizzles anus the 4th quarter, we’re as cutthroat as anton chigurh. we lie. we cajole. we run game. we rock wonderwaterbras and subtlely twirl our benz keys while we’re walking in the mall. we sabotage. we throw salt. we’re subtle, tactless, implicit, and direct. we start trojan wars, and gleefully shank boat ninjas outside of kmarts.

a couple questions, good people of vsb.com:

1. in regards to romance, how do you compete? (notice, i’m not asking “if” you compete, because everyone does. stop lying to yourself. you aint special and sh*t)

2. has there ever been a situation where you’ve openly competed, or have been openly competed for?

3. have you ever been shanked outside of a kmart?

remember, we’re all fam here. just me and roughly twenty-five hundred of your closest friends. dont be scurred to tell the truth and sh*t.

—the champ