Have you ever wondered what would happen if a comment thread became a screenplay or comic strip – like an actual script, except it’s based on real-life comments, opinions, and people?

That’s my latest baby and here’s a sneak peak at the parody I’m creating:

If you have any links (and I mean any) to comments, threads, posts that have made you just scream, laugh, or kill over its absurd arrogance, racism, or ignorance POST THEM IN THIS COMMENT THREAD or EMAIL ME! Help a sistah out!

It looks like your votes are similar to my personal decision to say a big phatty fat HELLS NO to attending my highschool reunion.

We’ll leave 1997 to be a sweet potato memory rolling around in my head, but I think I’ll pass on the gathering of folks. Besides, my flight leaves that early morning and to stay, it would’ve been an extra $150. Ehh.

I guess the deciding factor was realizing revisiting highschool wasn’t worth $150.

Thanks for the vote of confidence ya’ll.

Who are we without community?

I mean, really, without community we advance in our lives, grow in our habits, and revel in our own created moments without the peril of rejection, the poetics of others, the responsibility of scaffolds, and the rising up of collected voice?

Without community, life slims to a linguine thin escapade with whom we have no one to share. Friends go out. Community comes in. Strangers may care. Community heals. Where others drop off, community flies.

This weekend I dropped $30 to board a bus, I departed from my beloved Adonis to go relax away from Boston. Bumping along the highway, I contemplated three of my closest friends waiting for my arrival in a small town called New York City. It wasn’t about getting away from a city, it was about moving toward the women who know me better than the kangaroos in my workplace.

I needed to be known. Even if just for 3 days. I needed it to be womyn who saw me receive my first D in seventh grade science and then bawl my eyes out in the coat closet. (I really don’t know if I ever recovered from that test.) I needed to be with souls who helped me prank call my crush at 14, or with whom I had spent hours on the phone while casually shrugging off time zones across the coasts.

These are the lives that hold some of the very best parts of myself, as well. These are buckets which I have poured myself into. Attending their performances in which I laughed from the second row, their graduations in which I have wept like it was my own, and their broken hearts in which I have laid my own head in despair.

They are my loves, my community, my sisters.

Where else would I be able to contemplate the life of English Bulldogs and the psychological trauma of childhood divorce in one conversation? Who else wants to know details of my reproductive organs and my new black boots?

One element of true love communities is that nothing more than the basic necessities of life are needed for rejuventation. As long as there is food, air, water, and shelter, the rest takes care of itself. And after a beautiful, connective experience with three of the most loving humans I know, I see the change in myself.

I return to Adonis more beautiful and radiant, a wellness shining from deep within. Heavier dreams, thicker rain, and golden leaves accompany me. From my skin to my pillow, drops of spirituality drip from me like an overfilled honey hive.

I return with the Truth that I had so quickly forgotten. A community of people who love you can rebuild you, polish you, refuel you and remind you of the most sacred blessings of life: love, laughter, sleep, warm food, and eye contact conversations that unfold and exist outside the human-made measurement we call time.

If ya’ll don’t know what it means to have a strong, articulate womyn in your life, then you’ll never know what it means to be inspired. I mean, truly inspired.

I won’t go into how BA and I are riding the same wavelength that propelled each of us to write a post specifically for Nadia. We have different reasons. BAs got her own reasons here, ones that I fully endorse. (Scroll up after you hit this link.)

Mine are of a more personal victory.

Nadia and I were IMing about coordinating with another fanfreakingtastic WOC writer about a joint piece that would be featured in Make/Shift magazine. Of course, we begin talking about other things and I eventually spill some of my own beans about a situation I was struggling with:

I had contacted a fellow Pinay for an interview and potential publication. Planning on pitching it to a few different mags and potentially some online group blogs, I was eager to do this interview. At first, the interviewee agreed and my pen was ready to print.

Then, mysteriously, I get an email from her Big Manager, asking to first solidify the publication so it was a sure-fire deal before the interview took place. Uh, the request is fine. The timing (remember, she already agreed to do the interview) was way off. Forgetting our agreement, the interview was cancelled until I had a definitive approval that it would run. You know, so she doesn’t waste her time. Let’s not forget that “the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have already interviewed her.”

Hi, I’m trying to do an interview, but I actually can’t fit in the room to conduct it because your manager’s ego is the size of Nevada.

So, I’m weeping because I’m emotional, frustrated, and hate Big Media and all their Big Hype.

Cue: Nadia.

Let’s put it this way. This womyn sets the record straight with appropriate and fitting usage of the world BULLSHIT and phrase like YOU’RE DOING HER A FAVOR, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. These ions of support were decorating the main thrust of the argument that alternative media – blogging, zines, online features – are hardly something to snuff and early misbehavior toward journalists equals decreased support from said journalist’s constituencies.

Yeah – what she said. Take that!

And so, 2 weeks passed, and it was not until I could no longer deny that I was pissed and I’m A Person Too reasons, I emailed my side of the story, gave a I Don’t Give a Fuck Who You Think You Are But You Don’t Recant An Interview Offer kind of explanation.

And you can stuff that NY Times and Wall Street Journal bit up in the areas where the sun don’t shine.

Oh I got responses – with a few more bullshit lines and then, eventually, an apology.

Their I’m Sorry wasn’t what tickled me purple. It was recognizing the power of one. The power of one person to support you, affirm a wrong – no matter how small – and BE in your state of anger with you.

So, raise your laptops to Nadia:

May your words never die,
and your Fierceness never stop.
You
are
beyond
necessary.

In gratitude,
Sudy

Just last night I asked Adonis why in the hell don’t sports teams retire their racist mascots like the RedSkins or the Indians, aka The Tribe led by Chief Wahoo.

We didn’t come to a conclusion as to why teams still prioritize a mascot’s tenure over a clearly racist and highly offensive picture and name.

But, hey, as long as hundreds of thousands of fans paint their faces red, pay a ridiculous amount of money to see men hit a sewn ball with a piece of wood, who cares that it further disrespects and offends a population that this country tried to wipe out after their land was stolen from them?

That’s racism, folks. Clear and simple. Look past the pig skin and red sewn balls for second. Look at history for a change.

Thanks to Racialicious for this article.

If you haven’t heard, Skybus is a new airline that operates out of Columbus. The fares are dirt cheap – as low as $10 on some – and one of the destinations is Boston! (Well, it’s actually New Portsmouth, New Hampshire which is 45 minutes away) So, get moving!

Forego a late night at the movies, skip the popcorn and soda and in exchange buy a flight to Boston.

Tickets are on sale.

Go.

Now.

I’ve always wanted to ask Hillary in private what she does for women of color, but the questions need to be set to an entire group.

Via Racialicious, if you want to send in a question that you want to ask a presidential candidate, here’s your chance. R. was chosen to be a question collecting station for us online nerds who write brilliant points but are never heard. Here’s your shot.

R. has got all the guidelines and rules. Go to it!

Aw yeah…

This is why you have GOT to start reading Miss Crip Chick if you haven’t done so already.

This is a great post in light of some disturbing recent headliners. So Disturbing.

Gossip blogs can suck my big toe.

The anti-asian sentiments found in gossip blogs are appalling, racist, sexist, and downright infuriating. I never link to sites that I don’t read, but apparently some gossip blog (Idon’tlikeyouinthatwaydotcom) has some choice words to describe the surprise that Katherine Heigl was a bridesmaid for her sister and the bride is of asian-descent.

OH MY GOSH. WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO? HOW CAN KATHERINE GREYSMULTICULTURALANATOMY STAR HAVE A HAPA SISTER?

I guess we could ignore logical steps in ascertaining how and why Heigl’s sister is of a different racial and ethnic make-up. Mhm, second marriages, adoption, bi-racial identities…no? Of course, we can always just pander to the lowest common denominator and resort to racist and sexist commentary.

Thanks to Jen for bringing this ugly out into the open.

I’ve been dreaming a lot. I’ve also been aging a lot.

After a while, one has got to win and the other must forfeit. Lately, I’ve been letting age win, but that doesn’t mean that dreaming has stopped.

Since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. Writing was never about anything but a wind that only I could feel. Writing was never about capability, punctuation, or approval. It was about perfection; finding the combination of words, sounds, expressives that most perfectly fit to convey a thought in my own mind. Perfection. The urge itself was poetry, a streamlined unconscious effort to love myself into art.

Writing, as a child, was pure. Completely uncensored, I wrote about crushes, injustice, poverty, Lent, and fear. Writing, then, was simple with no hunches of my own shoulders, no computer screens, or query letters. Writing was as private as it was sacred. My own life, recorded, by my own hand.

I’ve recently moved forward in my writing. This blog, this conglomeration of stories, news, identity, and links has morphed into something that I ponder. It’s information, but it’s not my writing.

Writing on my stomach on the hardwood floors of my bedroom was peace. Writing about confusion at 13 was so honest, probably more honest than my confusion at 28. At 28, on a blog, you wonder how it will be read. I didn’t used to care. For some reason, now, I care more. That confession deflates me.

There is more to my life than my confessions. There is more to me than my relationship to my husband. There is more to me than being a woman of color. I am. I am. I am so much more than this blog, more than one blog will ever allow.

The world doesn’t care about non-identified people and the world doesn’t care to hear if you’re not credible. In the middle of the night, on any given night, I ask myself what, then, does the world need me for?

I’m finding I care more about what the world thinks of my words than what I think of them myself. I care more about what publishers, and noteable women, and loud men, and stat counters have to tell me than the sound of my own voice. How did I come to that? More importantly, how do I get out?

Knowing full well that this is not true, I think the world is moving forward without me. All around me, everywhere, friends are beginning families, going back to degree programs, publishing their work, saving money for a home, deepening their spirituality, and finding themselves in very uplifting, very evidence-rich ways. In a room, alone, with one lamp as my witness, all I have are quiet nights and drafts unedited.

The dreams inch into darker corners and the devils come out to dance around me. I begin to wish I had wings. I wish I wasn’t alone.

The pain of rejection and self-doubt redistributes all that you thought you achieved in life. The shares in your pockets are smaller, the rations of perseverance discouraging. The soundtrack of my life was drums, guitar, flute, and sax. And now, one line of a violinist.

I’m pretty self-indulgent right now and I think that’s what happens when one questions the validity of our own dreams. That girl, that honest girl with handwritten cursive and pen marks on her cheek – I’d like to see her tonight and remember that she isn’t that far away from who I have grown into.