A community-oriented art & graphic design collective. We make graphic apparel, hand-crafted accessories and produce events. And most importantly, spew randomness about important and non-important topics.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Put this on your Tongue... Okay how about this?

It's summer time (okay the end of it) and my newest obsession is mixing some shites.


I always have one of these...phases. God help me. The problem with me is that I lack patience, dilligence and time to pursue it.

Well so yeah if I wasn't lacking those things I would be one of those people with a fancy blog and I would put up a recipe a day, take pictures of the products and write interesting narratives describing my process. But as I'm well-versed on the fact that I don't follow through, here's all you will get.

I'll just let you know, for this transient phase I'm into using my food processor to create homemade salad dressing using fresh herbs, oils and fresh produce, and using my measuring spoon to come up with seasonings from current spices on my rack and dried & fresh herbs from the garden out here.

I always have ideas and fixations going on in my head but also wary that I need to try to not do and be EVERYTHING!

Anyhoo, my friend Tossie was over the other day and requested (coerced me into making) some seasonings, so I was motivated and whipped her up some stuff.  The names and mixes are inspired by different types of 'sensibilities' and cultures of cooking food... from the Oregon coast hippies to Mama Iyabo on the streets of Lagos. I also listed what kinds of 'proteins' they will be good on. A lot of them are generally good for cooked vegetables & salad dressings as well.

We did some raw finger dip taste test and seems like it will be good. But I'll wait for more meals and experiments from her so we'll see. Here are a few of photos she took, after my custom seasoning mixing session for her (I took the one above)





Saturday, August 27, 2011

*Pouts*

I feel so sad...the whole world is clearly and completely falling apart around us and we're just going on as if. Makes me want run around screaming at the top of my lungs: "Everybody shut the fk up, and stop anything you're doing, because nothing we are doing right now matters!!!" But then I decided I'd just update by Facebook instead before going shopping...
 

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Red, Bike & Green First Friday (August 2011)

I adore my bike. I do I do.


Oh gosh. I can't believe I'm writing a freaking blog post about my bike. This may be worse than posting pictures of food (lol I'll need to check with my sister).

Anyway back to my bike. One thing I love more than my bike.
Oakland.
One thing I love more than Oakland
Black folks.
One thing I love more than Black folks
My friends.

So...
My Bike + Oakland + Black Folks + My Friends = Hella Love!

So I just want to give a shout out to Red Bike & Green and myself and my friends for finally doing our first ride with that crew!
Red, Bike and Green is a community-building collective of Black urban cyclists seeking to improve the physical and mental health, economy and local environment of African Americans by creating a relevant and sustainable Black bike culture. (Learn more)
Almost 11miles in Oakland. It was so delicious. Took some photos throughout the ride (look ma no hands). There were a few hiccups in my ride...i.e. my gears being messed up so that 1st gear the easy gear is as hard as my 3rd gear, and my bike is the heaviest bike on the planet, so when I tried to go up that steep uphill freeway overpass...it was a wrap. But thanks to the guy who was sweet enough to trade bikes so I could make it over...lol even though that was a disaster because then I was so used to riding on this hard gear that his easy gear was like flipping me out...

all in all it was the best time ever. check out the rest of the photos on good ol' facebook.





Speaking of Bikes

This is FREAKIN Hilarious. Because it's SOOOOO True. This may be only funny to people really familiar with SF or from the Bay Area...but I'm dying laughing here.

Lol @ the Haight and the Castro. Financial District is sooo on point because I always see them fools with their fold up bikes getting on the Bart, and I curse the fact that Bart hasn't somehow considered bikes and commuting... *sigh*

And damn why did they have to play Tenderloin like that?

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Panic on the streets of London.

If I could write; I would write this. Basically what I'm trying to say is...

Penny Red: Panic on the streets of London.: "I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and..."

Rioting in London: Police vs. Black Man

 This is basically a bit of a stream of consciousness surrounding the recent London riot after police shot a Black man (London riot you say? What pray tell is it?) Colorlines has a "short and sweet" report about it.

Photo from Colorlines

I'm way past sick of this police vs. black man; colonist vs. black lands phenomenon. It makes me want to throw up and I feel I'm simply so over this human 'race'. And the news around the after-effects drives me crazy, aren't people tired of sick of just narrowing it down to something done by those savage-black-gang-involved-tennis-shoe-stealing youth? We're such a lazy group of people who never will actually fight for change because our lives are really just great, so we pass the blame. And so the media goes ahead and puts up their template news and we go deeper into our discrimination. But sometimes I wonder maybe that's just what we need, for everything to really go to complete shit, and for people to become REALLY uncomfortable so they can pay attention.

Here's one article that begins some exploration of the causes and effect of blaming the youth, it's not that deep (neither is this blog post) but a lot of this is very emotional for me, the comments to the article make me angry and illustrate what is messed up about our societies and how far we have to go in terms of regard for humanity.

This article is particularly interesting to me. I've been intrigued out how much the blackberry is a huge thing especially from the point of Nigerians in Nigeria and the Diaspora. If you know the half of it, you know that blackberries are now getting something akin to a human right.

Because these days twitter and facebook can get you in big shit, and BBMs are less traceable by the authorities (for now), Blackberry is saying that they would give information to the police about people's BBM messages to help aid the arrest of folks who are passing on info about the London riots. So these hackers threaten Blackberry... i.e.
"You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all,"
"If you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. Don't be a puppet," 
(read the article for more)

Like I said most or all even of the people I know who have Blackberries are Nigerian/African/Caribbean. We support Blackberry, one (too many) of us gets killed, we up-rise, the company that we fish over our moola to fecks us in the ass.

dog eat dog sucka.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

the Pencil vs. the Gun

On this past weekend the SOS Rally/March happened in Washington D.C. Lots of things were said. Lots of things happened. Below are two videos I've selected to highlight.

Okay see now the problem is. Goodness! Okay I'm glad that the people in this video are the ones who are doing it, because if that was me, there would have been some weave pulling and butt kicking. I know I know, not a good example for the kids. sigh. woosah. meditate. visualize.
If you know half of anything about me, you know that I don't joke with providing the best and equal opportunities for all! But I'll just let you watch the video.



Jose Vilson (click to visit his blog) who is one of my favorite educators and activist that keep me going from afar had this to say:



p.s. Jose you need a "Teacher  Don't Teach Me Nonsense" tee

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

I Hella Heart Las Gidi (Video Post)

I always said that if I even move back to live in Nigeria, I CAN'T live in Lagos again. But this video & song "Ijo" by SIJI makes me want to move back with the caveat that I create a utopia where most days are like this.  I'm a proud Igbo but I rep Lag, and this video makes me lightweight wanna jock my inner Yoruba hard! Lol


SIJI - 'Ijo'(Official Video) from SIJI on Vimeo.


P.S. There are 12 dance signs in this vid...I can do 7 of them...I need to get to work on the 5 and a few that are a bit rusty. Until then...back to my summer romance...

novel.

and framing art work

and watching Instant Star on netflix

and drinking my 32oz

of water

and planning

world domination.

yes i'm all that awesome. multi-tasking queen

-n