Epic.

Daaaamn, Homie.

In Chicago you was the maaaan, homie. The fuck happened to you?

(Corked Bats FTL.)

"We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

"Common Sense Aint On The VIP List"

I love these commercials.

"$11.50 fo' a Hamburger, ya'll must be crazy."
"There's no cover charge to live the high life."

Aloe Vera.

As a pharmacy student, I study all kinds of medications from all over the world but my favorite type of medicine is the natural sources such as herbs and plants. It makes me think about what God has given us and wants us to do. Love this earth and the earth will love you. There wasn't Zoloft and Epiniphrine or antibacterials hundreds of years ago. But there was Cannabis Sativa and Aloe Vera.

Some of the benefits of Aloe Vera include:

• improved circulation

• helps regulate blood pressure

• promotes the healing of bones and joints

• strengthens the immune system

• defends the body against bacteria and yeasts

There are a lot more uses for this plant. As I type this, I have aloe vera on my face because it helps the treatment of acne and scars. It doesn't smell, irritate, nor is it greasy. As a kid, my mom would rub some on my small cuts and scrapes. I think this is mostly a hispanic thing though. I don't know what it tastes like but it doesn't burn when you put it on a cut, unlike iodine.


Look for Aloe Vera Juice at Trader Joes or Whole Foods.

I Don't Like Manny.

But I damn sure love his wife, Juliana.

Iron Mike Never Gets An L.

(50-6)

NSW.

The Mis-Education of A Negro.

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."

"The Lakers Beat The Supersonics"

I was talking to a friend about the criteria that must be met in order for me to have a Good Day.
The main thing I need is a good lunch. My day revolves around lunch. I never have breakfast because I wake up past 9am and ready to leave by 10 which to me- is too close to noon to have a meal. Breakfast past 10am throws everything off and I'm still full around lunch time.

Lunch time is like half time to me. I always eat between Noon and 2pm. Dinner is a toss up.

I LOVE Tam's. Charbroiled burgers For The Win!

The Perfect burrito is carne asada, extra sour cream, no beans, and no onions.

The best juice that you can find at the liquor store/7-11/mini market.

Seeing that my gas meter is close to Empty ruins my day. Laying around the house, lounging around and living a sedentary lifestyle is not for me. I like being busy and having things to do. A good day means I did something. You can catch me at working out at the Manhattan Beach Sand Dune or hoopin' any day of the week.

"Called up the homies and Im askin yall
Which court, are yall playin basketball?"

Everyday I gotta talk some shit to DaVon and Justin and chop it up with Marianne. Random texts are always appreciated.

Motivation Slap.

"The way out of the rut is to make major changes in your life, most of which won't be too pleasant in the beginning. The opportunity to make those changes seldom comes as bluntly as I put it to Bob. Most of the time, that opportunity knocks very softly. What I did was basically give Bob a verbal slap in the face. You can react two ways to a slap. You can get angry at the person doing the slapping, or you can realize that he was just trying to get you to wake up and focus on what you really want and, more importantly, what it'll take to get it."

18 Years, 5 Months.

Extra.

Dedantheman (11:12:40 PM): physical fight?
Friend (11:14:05 PM): Well she hit that nigga with an umbrella and tried to sleep his shit but he didn't hit her
Dedantheman (11:14:14 PM): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

You Annoy Me.

I hate it when people at the grocery store argue with the person at the cash register while they are scanning the groceries. After each item gets scanned, they look up at the screen to make sure the price is right. I know everyone's on a budget when they buy groceries but damn! Ralph's/Albertsons/Food 4 Less is not a flea market!

I was standing behind someone like this in line the other day. The cashier scanned his bananas and homeboy was like- "Hey, wait! That's 3.6 pounds not 4 pounds!" and apparently a box of Cocoa Puffs rang up more expensive than he thought so he told the cashier to put it aside.

We invite you to something epic, you know?
Well, we hustle out of a sense of hopelessness
...Sort of like a desperation...
Through that desparation we come addicted
Sorta like the fiends we accustomed to serving.
But we feel we have nothing to lose
So we offer you, well...we offer our lives, right.
What do you bring to the table?

Something Serious To Me.

A topic that is really important to me is gang prevention and also the issue with current gangs. I can't remember a time in my life where gangs were not prevalent. I've lost a few friends to gangs in the sense that they chose to run with other Scum-Bums who've thrown away their life. Being in a gang has never made any logic to me. The progression that one encounters throughout life is what makes it so valuable. Once you initiate yourself in a gang, life from that point on is a plateau without anything remarkable or of true value. In other words, everyday you wake up in square one with nothing to live for but the representation of a deficient gang.

On the flip side, you can choose the path of progression to the point of your own idea of "success". High school diploma to your college degree to your profession to your own steady household in a position where you are content with the full 360 aspect of your life. And in the end, it matters if your mama is proud of you. I know many drug dealers who are proud of themselves so it doesn't matter if you're proud of yourself. IS YOUR MOTHER PROUD OF YOU?

I look at the way we mistreat gays/homosexuals these days, especially in California.* We've taken rights away from gays to marry, they've been fired as teachers, and are always looked down upon. What the fuck? There are about 100 gang members for every 1 homosexual in California (My estimate). The more vulgar lifestyle is the former rather than the latter. So why not take rights away from gang members? Why isn't there as much media coverage on gangs?

Many people argue that choosing to become a homosexual is a sign of mental instability or some shit like that. It begs the question: In what mind state must one be in to instate himself in a gang? What fucking mind state must one be in to instate himself in a gang?! I don't want a crip voting for my president and I don't want my daughter to marry a blood. You feel me? Another argument is that gay marriage goes against the bible. This provokes two arguments. The most important is a little thing called SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! This legal and political principle is from Americas Constitution. It means our laws cannot be created to preserve the beliefs in any religion. So why the fuck are we taking rights away from gays to marry? My second argument is that there are hundreds of religions in the U.S. and not everyone believes in the same doctrines.

A lot of people I know that claim to be crips don't know the plight of this man, Tookie Williams. He founded the crips in 1971. Tookie published written works, including nine children’s books which address crime, gang issues, and how to build self-esteem. A true follower of the crips should follow what the leader does. Years before facing the death penalty, he denounced the crip gang and worked to prevent gang violence which earned him a Nobel Prize nomination. Real Talk.

*=I used to refer to California as Killa Cali. This is no longer due to the fact the California is facing a budget crisis, passed Prop 8, and is even contemplating of making Weed legal for everyone 21 and over. Fuck all that.

In Progress.

The feelings that you're seeing are genuine from my heart and I can prove they were genuine from the start but now they wonder as a penguin in the dark because blacks and whites don't symbolize, they harmonize when complexions fail to bond with sensual touch.
In the absence of our chemistry, theories of relativity lose substance and studies of synonymous science becomes slightly smudged.
The author of this fantastically written friction used the sensation of friction to glorify the energy between two in the absence of useless diction.
The vernacular of touch speaks volumes when vocabulary becomes a dormant volcano. When we cannot converse, touch becomes the strongest force on earth when love is depicted as gravity. Those that think they truly teach the technicalities of tangibility don't know that love is translated through touch.
The silence of a stare can never supercede the soft impact of contact even in the absence of sex. The painter of these perfect portraits used deep purples to parallel the passion poets use to personify the perception of physical feeling...feeling...Feeling the force of five fingers forgives the failures of reality and welcomes and unfamiliar fantasy. Seems fair.
Words of wisdom will always conquer over world wars and wasteful fighting with the same passion of a woman's whisper which leads to finger tips uniting.
__
I have been working on this piece for about 6 months now. There's so much I want to add in terms of a more intricate rhyme scheme and other alliteration. I've come up with about 4 different ways to loop the piece into a unique ending but I'm still not satisfied. Once completed, I'll memorize the whole thing and perform it/record it.

Untitled, Nigga.

I see you, nigga.
Brand new shoes ass nigga
You choose to rep a block rather your name ass nigga
You lame ass nigga, you're the same as these other niggas
Can't make your mother proud ass nigga
You think you're a down ass nigga?
Please, nigga! You're just a clown ass nigga
No jokes, no future hopes to separate from these no good ass niggas.
Every hood has the same story and you're in the picture with synonymous figures
You don't belong there, nigga!
You belong in school trying to get smarter, nigga
So you could learn that when you push life, life is going to push harder, nigga.
See, I'm where I've got to be with a job, education, and my family like it's a monopoly but I disregard the currency
And that's the difference between you and me.
Even more, you see whores and bitches where I see beautiful women.
Daughters of beautiful women. You're a pimp ass nigga.
You see dollar signs in them and walk with a limp ass nigga.
She's a scholar, signs every line with eloquent print and talks with a voice as big as an elephants print-so she is respected.
You're just an infected ass nigga with six kids because you don't know how to be a protected ass nigga. You're a rejected ass nigga
My words speak louder than your gun so my first born son is going to have an arsenal of metaphors in his genes and you're still going to be a full of envy ass nigga
Ready to die ass nigga because you're a dry ass nigga
Holy water can't TOUCH your ass nigga, ready to cry ass nigga!
I see you, nigga. Looking at me, you looking ass nigga.
The pen defines my heart and you're still falling apart ass nigga.

I wrote this as I sat in night school more than a year ago. During a lesson of Americas hypocrisy, I ignored the lesson and wrote what was around me. A classroom full of teens who cared more about advertising their gang/clique and looking fresh with fake shoes. This one time, we were passing the roll sheet around and this kid got skipped. He shouted out "AYE PASS DA ROLL SHEET, CUUHH!" Associating yourself with a gang makes you sound soooo IGNORANT!

Ten Speed.

Oscar Wilde.

“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

Popsduke.

My father and I were chopping it for a couple hours last night while waiting for a tow truck. I asked him "why haven't you retired yet? Why are you still working?"

Now-my pops is 82 and is still on his grind. He's a king in his trade and has been his own boss since the day I came out the womb, choking on placenta.

He laughed and said, "work is when you have to arrive to your job everyday on time with someone over your shoulder telling you what to do all day. I love what I do, it's always been my passion and I'm good at it." He told me how I should never do anything out of desperation and shit, always keep on the path to my dreams. He said,"You can be a truck driver for 40 years. And if you suck ONE dick you'll always be known as a dicksucker and not a truck driver."

Popsduke is always dropping knowledge.

Life Work.

I saw on another blog a photo that said "I pretend to be religious because I want my life to have meaning". I started thinking if my religion defines me or gives my life meaning in such a way that I would be empty without it. In honesty, it does not. Although I do worship my God and Jesus, my religion does not make the Dedan Kevin Hedrick that you know today. I have not read the bible in it's entirety but I do respect many verses and stories which I have seen to be be true in my own life. Religion does not define me.

There are 3 things that define me. Death, the under served populations and poetry. The 3 are threaded together because when I was younger, I feared death soooo much that it kept me from sleeping and functioning normally. I looked to artists and poets and such who had their life work keep their name alive and that's why I started writing poetry. I wrote my thoughts on life and death. The works if Malcolm and King left such huge impressions on me that I started to feel inspired to work towards keeping their dreams alive. That's where my dreams formed to give back to the under served population. This is what defines me. Working on my dreams has allowed me to escape my fear of death because I've reached the position where I can help those who struggle like I have and I can publish a book of my poetry. My lifes work is what defines me.

I'll be teaching my children to believe in a God and have their own way of interacting with that God. I don't want my children to believe in any teachings because it is in print. The strongest way to believe is to SEE and FEEL for your own. If one were to read a book about heartbreak and never have been faced with such incident, the belief would be undistinguished until he in fact feels the pain and suffering of a legitimate heartbreak.

Hip Hop Talk.

I've never liked the way Jay-Z positions himself as some sort of godfather of rap . To me, he resembles an old retired man sitting in his rocking chair and when the young'ns are making too much noise he has to get get out of his chair and scorn them and bang on the floor with his cane. The fate of Hip Hop does not lie, and never has, in the hands of one person. Hip Hop's fate lies in the in artists' that respect what is real/true and not in what generates the most money. What I do appreciate about Jay is his consistency of putting out good music. This is what he, Eminem and Dre have in common. It's not about quantity but rather the quality. Wayne has consistently been putting out garbage and getting away with it.

My problem with D.O.A. (Jay's new single) is that it's kind of a stab at the 808's. 808's And Heartbreaks is an album that surpasses any other recent hip hop album in many categories. I feel it is completely genius. Hip hop has always been about pushing the boundaries and challenging the status quo. Some people watch love movies others eat pints of ice cream to deal with heartbreak but I bump the 808's. "I wish this song would really come true
I admit I still fantasize about you"

Not once have I attempted to defend hip hop when everyone was saying it's dead. I've felt that way before Na$ was shouting that out and before LRG was printing it out on their shirts. Hip hop died around the same time dave chappelle quit. Bullshit artists slutted her out and killed the whole game. We used to not care how many times the rapper was shot or what his career was prior to rapping but now everyone puts out 5 albums about "the trap" and "pushing that baking soda." (btw, I'm tired of all these metaphors for sellin cocaine...coke, dough, baking powder...just say cocaine!)

The way I see it, if I can picture the rap game without the rapper, then they are not hip hop. Like ludacris. I can be happy without him putting out lame ass hits. But eminem-noooo waaay! Who's going to be the white boy shutting up critics and clowning celebrities? Dr. Dre? Noooo, never. Who's going to supply us with the raw beats? Flo-Rida? Get the fuck out of here with that BS. I mean for God's sake-Power 106 is playing "YOU'RE A JERK" !!!