Category Archives: evil

Debate Deez: The Five Most Annoying Debating Tactics In The History Of Debate Podiums

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[***Y'all will have to forgive us for yesterday. Apparently our host got attacked by terrorists or some such f*ckery and nobody using our host was able to log into their WP accounts until mad late. At which point Panama said, "f*ck it"the-great-debate. Well, today, we're letting VSB legend, Cheekie, come thru and spread love the Brooklyn way. We'd let her do it the Chi-town way, but somebody might get shot then. Shots fired. Triple entendre, don't even ask me how. So without further ado, the floor belongs to the cheeks.***]

So, I be debating in these streets. And I enjoy it, thusly. Seriously, I love to debate for the sake of debating. Not because I want to change my opponent’s opinion (this mission is as futile as me trying to jump into freeze frame in real life as they did in 80s sitcoms, but still, I rise), but because I genuinely enjoy the discourse with someone who doesn’t share my opinion. It’s an adrenaline rush. A long one (heh), too. Apparently, the “gotta have the last word” is a Leo thing and it takes a lot for me to let sleeping dogs lie. #StayWokeDawg

Because of this, I’ve developed a few pet peeves when it comes to debating others. These are the things folks say in rebuttal, but in a “bringing a knife to a gun fight” manner WHILST puffing out their chest as if they brought an AK-47. So, without that ninja Adieu popping up to say anything further, I’m gonna to list ‘em for ya:

1. “I have a right to my opinion.” 

Often said when I disagree with someone. Um, yes, booboo, we know you do. Know what I didn’t do, though, by disagreeing with your opinion? TAKE AWAY your right to yours. For the 50-leventh time folks (especially ya’ll in the back row), if I disagree with you, that is not taking away your right to your opinion, it’s using my own right.  Capiche? Quiche. Also in this same vein: “I have freedom of speech.” You GO BOY/GIRL. But, I ain’t the gubment. Thus, I can sh*t on your speechy freedom as I dayum well please. Because I am doing, what again, class? Class: USING MY OWN RIGHT. *clap clap clap*

2. “Only SOME do this, NOT ALL.” 

Chile. I think Panda-Panama wrote an entire post on this in the past, but in the spirit of being truthful, this IS in my top five of debate tactic pet peeves. So, I gotta speak my piece in order to maintain peace. Wait, what? Anyway. For some reason, generalizations ain’t what’s sizzling on these boulevards. And I get why, I really do. We are not a monolith, blah blah skippy. However, generalizations are necessary sometimes. Yes, necessary. Because what we can’t do is note every single instance in which our claim has occurred. I mean, do I gotta be like, “ONLY the 56,48484.54 men I have encountered have approached me on some street harassment steez” or can I assume readers have common sense and will read “Men engage in street harassment” and — by default — realize it only applies to the specific men who have engaged in such behavior? I be TRYING to achieve the latter, but alas…

3. “Agree to disagree.” 

Now, this is my Lioness roaring again, because I do acknowledge that sometimes this is necessary. However, it’s oft-abused like a mug. So, while the term itself doesn’t particularly annoy me, it’s the manner in which it’s used: to have the last word, which, by default, MUST mean you have won. “Agree to disagree” is the end of the discussion and if you say this right after you have said all you need to say on a matter, you can smugly claim victory. Except not. But, folks do this sooooooo often and I be mad. Q: You mad? A: Yup.

4. “You just a hater./Why you hating?” 

This is usually uttered when discussing a famous entity, even when you have a legit gripe about them. Lemme tell you something. Numero uno, someone has to be in the position to be hated on, in order for me to hate on them. Gotta get that outta the way as folks STAY claiming we’re hating when… girl wut… why???? Further, just because I have one not-so-glowing thing to say about someone doesn’t mean I hate them. It just means I know they ain’t perfect. The problem is… some folks don’t get this. It’s a low down dirty shame. Whew.

5. “You’re comparing apples to oranges.” 

Another actually-necessary phrase that is oft-abused. And to use an example, I’mma bring up old sh*t (but not really, as it’s still an ongoing argument, in general). So, Panama (hey boy hey!) and I had this forever-and-a-day argument about how men are hypocrites for calling women hypocrites for liking “Scandal.” The menfolk (remember: NOT ALL! tee hee) came to a consensus that women are hypocrites for enjoying the drama within “Scandal” while hating cheaters in real life. And I used the example of how men love “The Wire” yet wouldn’t necessarily love the violence that came with it… in real life. I said that both occur for sheer entertainment, and it’s okay. It really is! He said I was comparing “apple to oranges.” NO SIR. Yes, the specific situations may be different in that women are more vocal about cheating, but the concept is exactly the same! Which is what I’m comparing. The concept that just because we are entertained by something in fiction, that doesn’t mean we condone such an act in real life. If we can’t separate the fact that even though it’s entertaining, Olivia Pope is a cheater (and we hate cheaters), then ya’ll can’t separate the fact that even though it’s entertaining, Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale, an’nem facilitate in killing the community, including the kiddies (and ya’ll surely hate that if you have a heart, Five Heartbeats). Apples and oranges may be different in taste and color, but they still both fruit. (Manager’s Note: Did this motherlover really just come into my motherf*cking establishment and take as hot at me on a guest post I allowed to happen? Oh. Yes. Carry on. – Panama)

Woo, followed by… sahhhhhh.

Aiight, VSB fam, what other debates tactics annoy you? Do any of the above annoy you or do you think they’re valid? Speak (or debate) on it.

(Hey Panama, can I do this alias sign-off thing? It always seemed like fun.)

– Cheekie aka CHEEKS aka BELINDA J. CHEEKINGTON aka DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWG, SHE GOT CHEEKS

Get Yo’ Hands Out Of My Email!

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Some of y'all have this setup don't you?

Some of y’all have this setup don’t you?

People are crazy. Period. Aside from death and taxes, insanity on behalf of the human race is the only other certainty in life.

Yet for some reason or another, we, a people who are crazy, are also one of the most hopeful and optimistic species on the planet. We like to think that the one time out of then that somebody does something we want them to do trumps the nine times that they attempted to get us murdered by doing any of a number of things.

What does this have to do with the price of your NCAA bracket in North Carolina? Glad you asked.

Knowing that people are crazy, and crazy people really can’t be trusted, should we all assume that our significant others snoop through all of our stuff? And by stuff I mean cell phones, emails, etc. And by snooping I mean actively breaking into our emails and cell phones and basically committing felonies in order to a) gain information; or b) make sure they’re not being played?

I bring this up because the other day I was listening to the radio and heard some folks talking about how their current and/or exes have gone thru their FB messages and text messages and what not. It came up because somebody on the radio asked if folks actively deleted text messages. This started an all out war about whether or not you should delete texts or not. Conventional wisdom says it does look suspicious to do so…

…wait….but why?

How the hell would anybody KNOW that you’re doing this UNLESS they are breaking into your phone and thereby possibly giving you a reason to do so because they can’t be trusted? Of course, if you do have a need to delete anything then there’s a chance it probably shouldn’t be there in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle. I can’t stop eating because I’m fat, but I’m fat because I can’t stop eating.

But let’s kind of skip over what dirt you may or may not be doing. Stop it. Don’t do dirt. Now you can say you resisted.

JUDITH!!! JUDITH!!!!

The last few lines came from Tyler Perry’s Temptation. Don’t see this movie. Unless you already have. If you have, then I feel sorry for your mother.

I remember having a convo with a friend of mine a few weeks ago and she said to me, straight up, “P, if you have a phone, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that your girl has gone through it.” In the next breath though, she did tell me that she’s never done such a thing which of course leads me to one, and only one conclusion: you can never believe anything a woman says.

I keeed. I keeeed. Kinda.

But all of these folks were calling in, both men and women, saying how their phones and profiles were constantly being surveilled by their folks. What caught me most off guard is that none of them sounded surprised by it or even upset. A ninja like myself? I’m not ’bout that life. I don’t believe in sharing passwords (though I’ve learned that if you password protect anything, your SO is going to find out that code by paying attention at all times). I remember once getting into a discussion about my passwords.

“Yeah, I ain’t giving up the passwords.”

“Do you have something to hide?”

“No. I just don’t think that you need them.”

“Ewww. I don’t even want them but I feel some kind of way that you are telling me that I can’t have them.”

“Tough titty. Make me a sandwich.”

It went something like that. But probably didn’t end like that. The point was clear. I think people you are dating do tend to feel a certain entitlement to your private life. I know of couples who are only dating where they give up all of their passwords and important information. Folks who have been dating for 6 months handing over married life info in case of emergencies. Naw, my ninja. In case of emergency, call my momma. I don’t expect somebody I’m only dating to be the emergency contact at work or anything. But apparently some folks operate like that so I suppose handing over the passwords makes sense.

Perhaps I’m just paranoid, but you know how when you really need that email or something inside your email and you can’t access a computer…I will pop a molly and sweat around Rick Ross before I’d think to call my girlfriend up and give her access to my email. That might sound ridiculous, but if I’m to assume that ninjas are going to go through my stuff anyway, then why HAND over permission to do so.

Plus it opens the door. (No judgement btw for some of you all who are completely okay with this). You give them the password. They give you what you need. You change your password. They notice. Well they can’t just say it but folks ALWAYS tell on themself and get crafty with telling you what they’ve been doing. Plus, I don’t feel like having to explain something thats in my email who doesn’t understand context or what have you.

But back to the lecture at hand, should you just expect that your significant other is going to dig through your stuff, effectively hack into your accounts?

Is this just where we are? I’m curious.

What In The Entire Hell? National Proposal Day?

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Us menfolks tend to do a lot of complaining about Valentine’s Day. For a lot of us, its a made up day that causes us to have to go drop a ton of money on flowers and candy and restaurants where we’d not normally eat. But the truth is, we don’t mind it as much as we let on.

Hell, the only real beef most of us have with it is that it falls in February, less than 2 months from Christmas where most of us spent all of our money. We don’t mind showering our significant others with love and affection…we just don’t want to be forced into it. I think that makes us human.

Read more at Guyspeak.com

The Scariest Thing About Chris Dorner? Our (Black People’s) Reaction To Him

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Between her hundreds of pairs of shoes, closets full of clothes, and dressers full of jewelry, to call my mom a fashionista would be an understatement. I’ve teased her about this before—she’s like one White House Black Market bangle away from full-blown Hoarder—but it’s one of the things about her I’ve always appreciated. It’s kinda cool having a mom who’s fly.

Although her illness has made it difficult for her to put the same effort into her appearance, she still relishes the rare opportunities she has to get dressed up. Now, these opportunities usually occur when she’s going to the doctor’s office.

She had one of these opportunities last week, and while speaking to her over the weekend about how her tests went, she brought up something that bothered her a little.

“One of the nurses said something about how dressed up I always am when I come in.”

“Oh? Well you do always look nice. What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. It just rubbed me the wrong way. Sometimes, when White women make those types of statements, they say it with a tone where it feels like they’re just surprised that a Black woman would have nice clothes.”

That the nurse’s statement had a racial undertone is possible. But, as I joked with her, it’s more than likely that my mom was just experiencing a bout of Nigga Neurosis-–my definition for the feeling many of us have when something out of the ordinary (good or bad) happens to us, and we’re not sure whether it only happened because we’re Black.

This (the “Nigga Neurosis”) is one of the more unfortunate byproducts of a lifetime of dealing with America’s neurotic relationship with race. It’s something so ingrained in many of us that we often don’t realize when we’re doing it, and the perpetual mental gymnastics involved in distinguishing between real race-related behavior and perceived can f*ck with a person’s sense of reality.

I was reminded of this yesterday while following the Chris Dorner news and some of our (Black people’s) reactions to it. Not so much the advanced form of Nigga Neurosis displayed by those actually rooting for him, but how messed up things have to be for this to even be possible.

This and other situations like it manages to be both an indictment on America and us at the same time, proving that our experience with race and (real or perceived) racial injustice in this country has left some of us so cynical, so antagonistic, so angry at anything having to to with the “establishment”—police, the government, politics, rich people, etc—that we’ll support any type of comeuppance, regardless of how much evil had to happen for it to occur. This is f*cking scary.

And yes, if the things he’s been accused of are true—and I have no reason to believe that they’re not—Chris Dorner is an evil man. He’s not a hero and he won’t be a martyr. He’s not even a Django. He’s a murderer who killed people in cold blood, a man who might have had a real opportunity to expose the LAPD’s corruption, but instead chose to act on his own selfish need for some type of retribution. At best he’s a movie-of-the-week, a Dateline special, a new Wiki page, a line in a Jadakiss verse. He’s no different than Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and all the other men who targeted and killed innocent people to avenge some “injustice,” and I will shed no tears when he’s captured and/or killed.

But who Dorner is and what he may have done doesn’t matter. At least to those of us who are rooting for him, it doesn’t. As along as he is Black and getting back at something “White,” it’s a cause worth supporting, regardless of any insignificant collateral damage —like, you know, the murder of a man who could have very easily been your brother, cousin, or boyfriend.

Should America take the blame for this? For making some of us so filled with antipathy and antagonism that it has completely skewed both our sense of right and wrong and our perception of reality? Or, are we just using the nigga neurosis as an convenient excuse to “get back,” to finally unleash our inner Dorners or live vicariously through him as he kills all the White people he can before getting caught?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. But, I do know that while reading some of the pro-Dormer tweets, comments, and Facebook statuses yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of the first thing Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) asks Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) in The Departed.

“So…how f*cked up are you?”

—Damon Young (aka “The Champ”)

Dear Me, I Lied To You

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Men lie, women lie, numbers lie. Lies lies everywhere, up to my elbows up to my hair. Some of the biggest liars on the planet are folks who swear they don’t lie. I know some folks who HATE liars, who I’ve heard with my own two eyes come up with the most ri-damn-diculous story every for how or why they’re doing whatever the f*ck they were doing…when.

Hooty-who.

I’ve come to reason that people only truly don’t like lies when they feel like they affect them personally. Yes. This is a conclusion I’ve drawn. Etch-A-Sketch style.

Well, while LIE BAD!, the truth is folks make up sh*t all the time. It’s almost a national past-time. We don’t even mean to do it half the time. Some people’s entire existence is a lie. We view ourselves through certain lenses even if that ain’t who we are. You know that whole, “be the change you want to see” mantra? I loves it. Well, many of us are from the “say I’m this long enough and hopefully folks will believe it even if that’s not remotely who I am”.

Not coincidentally, I’m from the Wishan*gga Woods. We got a library. Pshaw.

So here is a list of lies that we often tell ourselves.

“I don’t play games.”

Ninja, you just bought stock in Milton Bradley while playing hopscotch during recess while singing Kurtis Blow’s “Basketball”. I will say that while I know we all play games, I’ve heard more women swear that they don’t play any sort of games…which I’m almost convinced is a game within itself. Have you seen The Legend of Bagger Vance? Of course you have. Charlize Theron’s character in that movie was the epitome of game-playing. Spades, anyone? RACISM!

“I keeps it 100!”

Men are guilty of this. We are all liars (that’s a lie). Just be clear, when this is being said, we ARE keeping it 100…we’re telling you 100 percent of what we want you to hear at that moment. Not that folks are always lying to you, but the point is, and I’m keeping it 100, Tupac is alive.

(Women) “I hear you. And I understand. Thanks for being honest.”

Fellas, never ever believe a woman who tells you that she appreciates your honesty. Or that she’s listening to you. I mean she probably is at that moment, but it won’t last very long because fairly soon after she’s going to be really mad at you for something. There’s a good chance you just had a talk about where you stand. There’s also a fairly good chance that if you ever speak to her again after said conversation you will be accused of sending mixed signals. To keep it 100, I don’t play games…so I’m glad you hear me and understand where I’m coming from.

(Men) “I’m working on myself and becoming a better me. For us. For me.”

Believe it when you see it, sister. Now, this one could probably go both ways as well, but I’ve learned in life that most people are full of sh*t. People like inspirational books and posters and paintings because they like to look at words. For the vast majority of us, real change comes thru real loss. Most of us finally figure sh*t out when it’s too late. Sound cynical? Well I keeps it 100. I know you understand.

“I’m going to go to the gym.”

This lasts for many people through the second trip to the gym. Then stuff starts coming up. Folks don’t realize that the longer you go between visits, the harder it is to go back. It’s just like having sex with somebody you ain’t really feeling but is always there. You start waiting a month in between…they notice. They start asking you if you care about them adn whether or not they’re just their for your using since, well, you only call during certain hours and not really ever because you want to talk or spend time or hang out or count motherf*cking clouds because who in the f*ck counts clouds with a n*gga you don’t want to go to Target with, my n*gga, ya smell me…like who the fu…

What was I saying?

The remix: “I love…going to the gym.” (Or for ‘going to the gym’ insert any number of things.)

We all know that person who swears they love doing xyz even though through your entire friendship you’ve never actually seen them do that. For instance, me? I love eating cauliflower! Very few people have seen me eat cauliflower…do you know why? Because I hate that sh*t. I don’t trust white vegetables. Or the police.

“I’m not a bad person.”

We covered that some months back but I figured I’d resurrect it. MJ. Man’s favorite lie.

“I would never…”

Woman’s favorite lie.

So…good folks of VSB, what the lies we most frequently tell ourselves?? Holla at a playa!

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka MR. ME TOO aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3