#56: Not making New Year’s resolutions

It has likely occurred to you from observation (as it has this author…read along) that of all the bandwagons ghetto people hop on, they ain’t makin’ no resolutions. If they smoke, they smoke. If they fat, they fat (hoo boy, are they ever!). Look around the ghetto first few days of the year, you know ghetto people ain’t givin’ a f*ck about changing! At least not immediately. Ghetto people make changes when they get good and ready, bottom line. Otherwise, they’re perfectly content with how they do whenever you met them, and you’ll have to just deal.

In a way, that’s not a bad thing. Because it’s admittedly kinda silly for a bunch of cornballs to be pigging out and shopping till they drop and drinking like a fish, pounding all these things they usually partake of like it’s going out of style, only to suddenly dead it all cold turkey on January 1st…”new year, new me!!” Uh, what’s that Chad Eight Five says again…oh yeah, that’s right….child, please! Try to all perfect and without sin and sh*t as if the sinful ways are years behind you and you got it all nailed down. Most people who try to get religion and make resolutions distill back to who they were sometime around Valentine’s Day.

Maybe ghetto people are on to something. Change is a process. A process one embarks upon when the time is right, the heart’s really in it, and the mind can invest in it properly…not all willy nilly simply because it’s January. So while the lot of folks start slappin’ on nicotine patches and plunking down CNBC mad money for LA Fitness memberships, the ghetto people are getting in IHOP to get in those all you can eat pancakes (with bacon or sausage) and washing it down with a Newport when they’re done.

Crips in New York City?!?

Are you f*cking kidding me?

Unbelievable.

One of those kids is yellin’ “cuzz”…it don’t even sound right in that accent, like a mockery almost.

Far be it from this author to question anyone’s thug thizzle…I don’t even think it’s about turning the streets out on that tip for these particular guys, seems like it’s a rap thing.

This could have been a “You can’t make this stuff up” entry, but it was just beyond bizarre to see this. Don’t get it twisted, I got used to NYC-style Bloods, but I also know that what they do is different. Generally though, it’s like this in my mind, if you’re gonna be thuggin’, the least you can do is stay in your city’s lane. Bay Area do their Bay thing, Chicago and the Midwest stick to Folks and People, New York should stick to Decepticons and razor blades in the mouth and buck fiftyin’ people (not that I want to see that), and Crippin’ and Bloodin’ needs to be left to SoCal and wherever it made its way to pre-The Chronic. For a style of thuggin’ to rise in a place known for a different home brew? It’s just odd.

About as odd as that Champ MC video “Keep It On The Real”, with lowrider Impalas in the middle of the Bronx.

What’s next, Nortenos and Surenos in France or some sh*t?

UPDATE: Researched it some more and it seems that Crips have been around in the Tri-State and other northeast US areas since at least ’96. Doesn’t take away from my idea that NYC just looks weird embracing a foreign style of thuggery. And they could be very true and sincere to this, showing solidarity with SoCal sets and everything. I’m just sayin’, between this and those 508 dudes, the streets are out of control, things done changed.

#49: Loving Mom and hating Dad

Let this author frame the following for you in a way that ghetto folks understand.

In the hood, the boys are known to go back and forth with really incendiary jokes about their opponent’s relatives. Ghetto people all know (or at least are convinced) they pops ain’t sh*t, so baggin’ on dads doesn’t rate because it ain’t that effective. But baggin’ on moms is where you can get some laughs and do some real damage. Those sessions get charged like hemi Dodges.

Not to mention note the difference in attendance at buffet restaurants close to the hood for the Champagne brunch on the second Sunday in May versus the third Sunday in June. If pops is there on Father’s Day, it’s likely he’s paying his and everyone else’s way. Whereas moms on Mother’s Day probably has a brand new Lexus with that douchey red bow on top in the parking lot when she comes back out…with an LCD TV, Coach bag, shoes from Aldo, and that damn basket gift wrapped in the trunk! All of this chipped in for by her doting offspring, as if she made them by all by herself.

It’s just something about mothers with ghetto people. They can do ZERO wrong in one’s eyes. Have kids with mad multiple different dudes (that their man-sweatin’ *sses give priority over said children), end up in prison on credit card scams (even ruining their own kids credit so they can’t finance a car or house in the future), beg for help from the kids the rest of their triflin’ lives using the “dirty diapers” trump card for pacification, and be an otherwise complete bastard to them…and they still hold momdukes on a pedestal.

Pops could give a kid a little less money than he was able to earn that week, and he’s the worst! Person! In the worrrrrrrrld! Ghetto people have daddy issues arguably worse than they do police issues. Yeah, we all know of the deadbeat dudes who only care about chasing new draws and bolt at the first sign that old girl is with child. But ghetto society got so jaded from even hearing about those guys that dudes that are out to do right can’t catch a break. Can’t win custody in court or nothin’…even when the punk *ss mama is literally a meth and crack addict on the stroll 16 hours a day.

And you wonder why muthaf*ckas wanna get married less and less each passing year…

#48: Talking to people any kind of way

You ever text someone and get the response “who the f*ck is this?” and wonder why that was even necessary? You think to yourself that you could see the need to ask who someone is if you’re just curious, but did it require the seasoning of such a hostile fighting word like an F-bomb?

Ever been in line at the liquor store or the chicken and Chinese spot to see an interaction where the customer begins to flare his or her temper and begin spewing forth curses and racial and sexual orientation epithets and such as if that’s really going to get them better service as opposed to their dinner spit into? Way to resolve a dispute. The Newport you just smoked didn’t take the slightest edge off of your stress apparently.

Ever get on the bus or train knowing damn well once you get over by the local high school, parental discretion is advised? Have these kids heard nothing about how to act at home and abroad among polite and other mixed company?

Have some ghetto people lost their home training or are they simply showing they never had any in the first place? Are these folks having a series of bad days, are they just A-holes like that, or were they taught that this kind of language and attitude towards any random *ss person really is peace? And the majority of these twerps dare to assert what kind of “good Christian” they are…

Surely these same people don’t like being talked to any kind of way…unless they’re Likes To Fight Guy on the “I wish you would” tip looking to take it to someone’s chest. Oops, almost forgot, women fight with their mouth, and if you get into it with a ghetto girl, you just might shed a tear or two…because they’ll cut loose and be meeeeeeean! Really mean! You kiss your kids with that mouth, booch?

All this vulgarity, rowdiness, and belligerence from so many hood folks. Desensitized to the point zero empathy is there, zero decency, zero sense of how to treat people, even those you disagree with.

The disease has fully infected the hood, polluted Hip-Hop as a whole, the children are a bunch of potty mouths…I mean this ain’t the 50s and all that, a little colorful language expands minds every now and again…but don’t you the reader find it gets a bit over the top? Wouldn’t it seem uncalled for and inappropriate if you heard it, for lack of a better example, on Saturday morning cartoons?

What is the ghetto person’s hypertensive fascination with using cuss words?

Or the other one you should love that ghetto brothers especially drip like water? “My n*gga.”

Every five words if you eavesdrop on one of their conversations (or are forced to hear it due to the obnoxious loudness), it’s “my n*gga this, my n*gga that, my n*gga my n*gga my n*gga.” You would think they just saw Training Day for the first time the night before. It replaced “you know what I’m sayin’” earlier this decade for most overused ghetto verbiage.

It is said that people who can’t control their tongue can’t control their actions. Now if you notice such behavior in a person, why would you think it’s a good idea to make them company you keep? Or in the case of one of those Bridezilla grooms, marry it?

#47: Proud ignorance of the world at large

Ghetto people really don’t get around very much.* You can tell right off when a ghetto person opens his or her mouth…and things are confidently confessed that to someone more cultured should be completely beyond comprehension. Sounding just ignernt…yep, spelled just like that, not ignorant, but ignernt.

That ghetto of the mind principle is real. Some people really have a NASCAR oval track their brain makes left turns in. They genuinely don’t see sh*t else. Whatever bullsh*t their mama or their little friends introduced to them is all they know, and they’re content with it, and actually have the nerve to dis things they’re unfamiliar with!

Take for instance some 18 year old ghetto girl. Meets a dude that uses fairly polite terminology, keeps a pretty clean diet, knows some other things he’s willing to teach her. Ghetto people tend to be threatened by worlds that are foreign to them. So she’s likely to slur him in a culturally insensitive manner and send him packing…as if how he’s living is beneath her.

This is how one hears things like Asians being all called Chinese, Latinos being all labeled Mexicans who eat beans and tacos, all Black people with “dreads” being called Jamaicans and asked if they have any weed to smoke, all Muslims being labeled terrorist A-rabs that threaten their good Christian sensibilities, and more…

And thinking that sh*t is OK to boot! Snitching is a huge ghetto crisis, but bigotry and prejudice (not brought forth by police, that is), that’s cool!

These are people whose horizons and minds you can’t expand to save your life…even if you’re buying! They’re life’s picky eaters. They have a life-tose intolerance, they just ain’t digesting much (unless it’s pork). This, but they’re also the biggest lemmings…meaning if the whole hood is on it, they’re on it. Won’t catch on to a new sound until it’s on the radio twenty times a day. Won’t watch that movie if the bootleg man ain’t got it in stock. Ways of customizing a car or wearing clothes that have existed for years ain’t cool…at least they weren’t until that baller rapper they aspire to be (with) mentions it in his song. As far as interest in international travel, the ghetto person is probably the one who speaks of Africa like it’s a country, or maybe that dude who wants to go to Brazil only because he thinks a porno shoot will break out when he leaves the airport. Foreign foods get Americanized partially due to ghetto people who need to be spoon fed stuff. This author sounds harsh, but go have a conversation with this very person and you’ll feel my pain like Clinton did while he was feeling on the booty of Monica Lewinsky.

*Having been around the block in bed, if diseases and popping out babies like rabbits is any indication, is the obvious exception.

#46: Not caring for professional help

In case you haven’t noticed, ghetto people don’t do therapy.

Nope, having a shrink is not what’s hot in the streets. Ghetto folks are too “real” for that…no matter what kinda funk they could be in.

They ain’t tryna get labeled crazy or weak (though they and many of their ghetto contemporaries are as crazy and/or weak as they come…hey, they don’t hide behind guns and their crew for nothing). They think all the therapy they need is Jesus, or sex, or money (I guess they never heard money can’t buy happiness)…or exorcising their demons on others.

Is it not having the cash or insurance for it? Is it pride (read: fear of tainting their street cred)? Are these folks who say things like “only God can judge me” and other witticisms taught to them by Tupac records as they do this, that, and the third with no shame in their game really that afraid of being ostracized and gossiped about by their community? A lot of people in the hood are struggling with serious personal problems that they can’t sort out on their own. But again, many hood folks are victims (and some in turn are perpetrators) of the toxic ghetto mentality that rules out many of life’s options.

It’s funny how that ghetto mentality works. The ghetto has a thing for keeping one down and kicking them while they’re there and (while they ironically enough can’t stand haters) hating on any ideas for rising up that aren’t pre-approved as appropriate for one of the ghetto world. One can trace conditions of education and infrastructure and crime in the hood to this worldview. The ghetto would easily rather one like Maia Campbell not get the help she needs, but get caught on camera cussin’ out some hoodbooger in a tank top, as in that recent YouTube clip that made the rounds. You the reader probably have tons of new lines to impress your friends as you insult their anti-horny *sses.

It’s funny in all its seriousness.

#43: Cookout holidays

There’s three types of holidays:
-the giftin’ kind (e.g. Chrismaboxihanukwanzakah AKA the whole month of December, Mother’s Day), where women and children always want some sh*t…
-the drinkin’ kind (NYE, St. Pats, Cinco de Mayo…really, all of them, but specifically those), the bar’s, club’s, liquor store’s, and freeloading female’s best friend, and…
-the grillin’ kind (could be the whole season of summer, but specifically Memorial Day weekend, July 4th weekend, and Labor Day weekend).

This is the type of holiday where there’s suddenly not a parking space in sight, mad kids you never met will be runnin’ around, and e’ybody feel like they can throw down. Swear they got the best ribs, the best carne asada, the best chicken, best brisket or brats or links.

Vegetarians, as you have probably figured out by now, ain’t welcome and the ghetto people who make up the bulk of the crowd will feel threatened by them and make remarks about how they can’t live without meat! So they’re up crap’s creek unless they’re interested in the potato salad with paprika and eggs and green onions and other random *ss ingredients (what in holy hell is a pimento?).

Anyway, all these foods you will take a plate of home, then forget all about as it goes bad inside your fridge…because you already know too many cooks spoil the pot(luck), but you gotta humor the sensitive bastards who made it lest you get made to feel feel guilty…

And of course you know what else is gonna happen when ghetto people get pepped up. That’s right, sweet babies, your ears will bear witness to the f*ckery known as a soundclash (clash being the key part of that term). Because there will be that DJ that doesn’t give a f*ck enough to have turntables as he opts for his dual CD player and a zip case full of bootlegs and burns of the same damn Tupac and reggaeton and oldies you can hear on a day heading home from work played with no kinda blends involved. That dude is also unequivocally over 35. And his opponent: that one cousin or boyfriend who swears his trunk rattlin’ *ss Chevy is bumpin’, so he just GOTS to have his door wide open as he wears Young Jeezy the f*ck out.

Oh, but there will be a wildcard, and that’s that dude that rides the wide *ss Harley with fringes on it. He’s sure to come rip snortin’ in the dance like he’s the absolute don playin’ Teddy Pendergrass or whatever super-lover artist was hot when he was younger.

Total noise pollution (which could get uglier if the karaoke starts) to add on to the air pollution of the burning flesh of the piggy piggy. Because the ghetto cookout just isn’t fine if the attendees can’t dine on swine. It’s a party, y’all, to which the 20-somethings will have blunts in rotation, the 13-year-old girls will bang out the stank dance of the month, and that one uncle the family suspiciously knows about is in the background grabbin’ his meat.

What, I was just talkin’ about the sliced beef!

#7: Kool-Aid

Kool-Aid is the top beverage of choice for ghetto people. This beverage is available in a variety of flavors such as red, blue, and grape. Back in the day, the mascot for Kool-Aid was a walking pitcher who would crash though a wall while screaming “Oooh yeahhh.” While the adults enjoy their malt liquor, Kool-Aid is the equivalent to crack for kids. Ghetto children will experience withdrawal symptoms if they do not have Kool-Aid every 4 hours. Sometimes ghetto kids would forgo the water and just eat the Kool-Aid powder by itself. An indicator that Kool-Aid is being eaten out of the packet is stained finger tips.

Although Kool-Aid comes in many varieties, the most popular flavor is red. Red Kool-Aid, followed by grape, appears to be the preference for many ghetto children. One of the signs that a person is in a ghetto household or neighborhood is if a bunch of kids are seen running around with Kool-Aid smiles. The bright red stain round the mouths of children is a sure indicator of ghetto tendencies. A child must drink at least five to eight glasses of Kool-Aid within 2 hours to develop this stain. That’s an abundance of Kool Aid if you consider the average glass is about eight ounces.

Kool-Aid is a drink that many ghetto people get very creative with. Sometimes adults mix Kool-Aid with vodka for a fun cocktail or add fruit such as grapes and pineapple to the beverage. Kool-Aid can also be made into a fun frozen treat by pouring the beverage into ice cubes. Regardless of how the person chooses to make Kool-Aid, it is a traditional drink in the households of many ghetto people.

#2: Reusing old cooking grease

Ghetto people enjoy reusing old cooking grease. The reason for this phenomenon is that reusing old grease is economical and supposedly enhances the flavor of many ghetto cuisines such as fried bologna. Old grease also gives an extra “kick” to catfish and fried chicken. Although there are exceptions to the rule, 9 times out 10 a jar of old grease will be found on or by the stove of a ghetto person’s house. The old cooking grease is often composed of bacon oil, old vegetable oil, lard, fish oil, and of course chicken residue. If the grease manages to go below room temperature, it will start to solidify, often resembling a big jar of pus.

Despite the potential health risk and disgusting hydrogenated oils, ghetto people really like reusing cooking grease. In fact, throwing out old cooking grease is signing your own death warrant. Try going to big momma’s house and throwing out the jar of grease. That person will probably get a beat down.