A Nook is Not a Book, Real(Clap)Talk(Clap)

By Trista Edwards

So, having studied English literature and creative writing for about nine years I always get three questions, which to me are all equally aggravating—“So, do you want to teach high school?” “Yeah, but how do you teach creative writing?” “How do you feel about the Kindle?” The two first question are for another day, what I really want to focus on is the latter of this heinous trifecta—the eReader.  I will not beat around the bush, I personally find the eReader appalling, maybe even borderline terrifying. Bookstores are disappearing from our landscape. Earlier this year we watched Borders file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and close 226 stores nationwide. This means, in most towns, there are now no bookstores. Nada. A big fat zero. That is distressing.  If you have a book store left in your town, go stand in and mull around. Touch a few books and wander the isles. Feel a true bound spine under your fingertips. Turn a crisp, white page of print. Take in the fragrance of coffee wafting over the dictionaries, poetry collections, and memoirs. Cherish this moment because soon it will all disappear. You can gaze around and say, “Pretty soon this will all be a Kindle.” 

How does that make you feel? If you are real blood-pumping, flesh-bearing being with a soul you might be crying a little.  If not, you are clearly beyond the point of no return and have become some sort of cyborg that can’t wait for the V-chip to be implanted in your wrist to make life easier, because apparently anything not involving a button is just too complex. Bookstores and libraries are slowly fading away into Yesteryear, something we will tell our children about—these rare artifacts once called books. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an artifact (artefact) as “anything made by human art and workmanship; an artificial product.” This sense of the word can be seen from the word itself: it is derived from the Latin words arte, ablative of ars (art), and factum, the past participle of facere (to make).  The book is defiantly on the decline a source of recreation and information and fading into the realm of artifact. To generalize, we as a culture have shied away from concepts like “workmanship” because patience is, moreover, hardly required for day-to-day living. Everything is instant, convenient, and obtainable. Why drive to a bookstore, record shop, theater, playhouse, park, etc. when I can hit a button and have instant amusement and luxury in front of my eyes? If I don’t have the cash at hand I can just charge it with invisible currency and worry about payments later. Gone are the days of saving, waiting, and feeling the happiness of reward for striving towards a desire. There stands a great degree of artisan-like quality, patience, and workmanship inherent in a book. The line of antiquity from bookmaking hails from materials like, clay, stone, tree bark, papyrus, wood, parchment, scrolls, and so forth. Materials that first had to be harvested from the earth by human hands and molded into a workable, pliable substance before being inscribed with familial stories, prophecies, biblical verses, myths and epic journeys. Think of the humongous history of printmakers and revolution—the toppling of monarchies, the challenging of ideologies, grassroots underground mischief that changed many a country—because don’t forget knowledge is power. Books are dangerous, they make people think, they make people question, and, more importantly, they make people question their current situations and conditions. Why were minorities and women kept from reading for centuries? Well, because it is easier to keep the ignorant subjugated. If you don’t know, then you are easier to control. And how easy would it be to gain control if eReaders were the only source of literature that could essentially be taken away at any given moment?

So, soon we all have an eReader of some kind except for the few eccentric weirdoes that hole up in their home libraries huffing ink, reciting Dante, hording the that last few pages of papyrus like it’s the only pack of cigarettes on the cell block when some conspirator blasts the bookweb with government toppling design. Suddenly, that “book” disappears or your reader can’t download it or your reader won’t work for week. When you log on next week your whole Nook has been revamped with a whole new suggestion list, all your previous downloads gone, and pretty soon you are “told” what to read by the limited (*cough*approved) selection of electronic literature before you. The weirdoes in their home libraries become the new revolutionary leaders and we turn to them to initiate change, fight for freedom, and give us back the task of printmaking and book distribution as means of warfare. People gather and build up the community that we lost with the overwhelming amount of technological devices that kept us apart.  The fear of people gathering has always been that mobs and riots start, and the scary part to those is power is that the bumpkins are gathering because they finally figured it out. I mean, it could very well happen. He who controls knowledge has the power. Fahrenheit 451, anybody? Are we our own culprits because we as a culture support the eReader? Are we setting ourselves up for our own downfall? You know, just keep that mind. 

This of course is my hyperbolized rant, somewhat meant in jest and somewhat acutely nesting in the back of my mind.

But seriously, to tone it down a notch there are a great many things lost in the decline of the book. You lose a sense of community. Book sharing, that passing down of one great read to another, private inscriptions, jotted down insights you find picking up a used book in which you somehow commune with voices of the past are dying—and sadly, something that future may not know. I used to spend hours in a bookstore to pick out the gift of a book. I would pour over pages, titles, covers, blurbs in order to find something personal and suited just for the tastes of the giftee in question. Now, you just throw a Kindle gift card in their face and shoot them a “Happy Birthday” via Facebook.  I mean, I can hardly say anymore, “Oh that story sounds amazing, you will have to let me barrow that when you’re done,” because who is going to let you barrow their whole freakin’ Kindle. 

You lose an architecture. I have four (and growing) large bookshelves that make up the architecture of my home—and, in sense, make up the architecture of my life. Each book represents a person, a moment, a transition, a memory for good or bad. I read Almost Transparent Blue (Ryu Murakami) on the plane to Paris, On the Road (Jack Kerouac) still has sand in it from the beach, I was reading the poetry of Maxine Kumin when I received the most  disquieting news that changed my life up to this point. If you value your books, they more than likely hold a sturdy place in your house. My books make up my home, literally and metaphorically speaking. If I were to lose my books I would lose my hearth, the foundation of so many memories.

If I drop my copy of Pride and Prejudice in the tub as I chillax to some candlelight and Sade I don’t lose my whole library. Enough said.

I don’t ever have to worry about the battery life running out in the middle of my hard copy of Dharma Bums nor will my entire library ever get a virus. 

Lastly, but not finally, as a writer myself, and perhaps more pertinent to poets, you lose control of the page.  Poets will spend hours, often a lifetime, arranging their words and meticulously crafting the way the poem looks on the page just as meticulously as the choice of the words themselves. The construction of a line break may be as thought out and planned as an aerial invasion. Few people have influence over the change of a line break—other revered poets, mentors, and editors—and from time to time those people are told to go to hell, the line break stays. Our current poet laureate, Billy Collins, put it quite exactly like this:

"... that's what we do, we make lines. Charles Olson, the poet, said no line must sleep, every line in a poem should be wakeful to the lines around it. And when you put a poem on a Kindle, the lines are broken in order to fit on the screen. And so instead of being the poet's decision, it becomes the device's decision."

Very few artistes of any genre are not one to give up artistic control to another human being let alone a device.  In these respects I encourage the continuation of printed books and promote a steady consciousness to what the growing support of electronic texts will have on our culture. There is so much to lose in the face of advancing technologies and we forget a little bit more of our human aspects everyday. The convenience of the eReader is just a little too alluring, a little too seductive for me to jump head first into the world of literary gadgetry. Nothing compares to the solid back of book in my hand. Reading a book requires every crook of our senses: we hear the flurry of pages, we see the compiling of ink to form characters and landscapes, we touch the leather binding of ancient craft, we smell the musk of used bookstore’s shelves or the crisp freshness of the unread page, and we taste...well if you are tasting your books you must be out of Zig-Zags and, in that case, I hope you are using the endpaper. No doubt, reading an actual book is a sensuous experience, one that virtual texts cannot provide. So, I guess at the end of day you really have to ask yourself is how synthetic do you want your world to be? If you favor the eReader, I suppose I will see your sniveling face again during the revolution as you come bawling back for me to save you. And if you hold an old tried and true text in your hand I will see you at the next meeting, same place, same time, same dank basement.

A little about the author, Trista is a literary bad-ass. I mean she is already a pretty accomplished writer in her own right and I am super stoked that she was down to contribute a couple hundred words of her choice on KenNitro.com.  I could go on about how great of a writer she is, but if you read all the way down to here, you already know that.

KenNitro's Giving The Game Away: The Game of No's

Ok, last time, we spoke about “lanes” and how staying in them will yield you the best results for WINNING with women, but there is something that is just as important as knowing who are the women that you have the best chance of winning, but it is understanding a word that we hear all the time. I am talking about “NO”, but most people understand the word no, but not the types of no’s, and this understanding is crucial in winning over the females that are in your current lane and the expansion of your own highway.

There are Things Worse Than No

See, there are hard no’s and soft no’s, they are still no’s, but you know, no’s are kind of strange because they can flip flop and turn to YESES (within three days or thirty minutes) or they can go from soft to hard and vice versa, women themselves will admit to their flakiness but before we get into that lets talk about these types of no’s.

First no’s are something that all men are accustomed too. Any guy that has never been told no is not just lying, but telling a BOLD FACED LIE, why do you think there is even such a thing called a hard and soft no? Taking the word no is a lot like eating vegetables, sometimes you have to eat them, sometimes you don’t, but knowing when to do both is the difference between sitting at the table looking at the moved around peas and getting dessert.

Don’t worry women created the whole concept of hard and soft no’s, and they can either agree with me or accept my decision.

Let’s talk about the No’s

The hard No is something that all men are accustomed too because this type of no has everything to do with you, the good thing is that these no’s are generally based on a lack of information and it sets you up for the championship because the game is all yours to win, but how do you win when you seem to have already lost? 

  When you start at the bottom there is nowhere else to go but up, and that knowledge alone is enough to work with.

Ok, once you have the hard no from the target female, disengage. No matter the situation or your environment, you need to put her at the bottom of your interaction list and let her see you interact with everyone else; you can call it a “Strut” if you will. Now, this does not mean ignore her completely, it just means that you are going to be distributing your attention to everyone that is on the field in equal amounts when you work the room, it lets everyone know that you are concerned with having a good time and making sure that no one in particular can accuse you of being all butt hurt cause you got shutdown.

*PAY REAL CLOSE ATTENTION*

The “Strut” is not about making the female that gave you the hard no feel uncomfortable, what you are doing here is showing her that she is the one that is making the miscalculation in judgment and as she watches you maintain your lane and occupy the attention of other females, she is going to take notice.  So continue to have fun, but don’t be all hell bent on offending some chick because you are all butt-hurt about her shooting you down.

*PAY NORMAL RANGE ATTENTION

Captain Save-A-Ho Showing You How It Is Done!

Now how long do you keep them at the bottom of your interaction list? Well you tell me? Women are quirky as hell and they may be the type to feel some sort of way about the fact that you aren’t chasing after them with engines on maximum warp cause they told you “No” in the first place. Women like to be chased, hell people like to be chased, what is important is that you do it on your own terms. The good news is that while you were strutting it out you have got you one or two that you might not have had an opportunity to conquer had that first one said “NO” up and said “YES”.

EVERYBODY WINS.

Soft “No’s” tend to require a little more finesse; a soft no can turn into a hard no really fast if you don’t understand the complexities of this type of “no”. A soft no has very little to do with you and more about the situation surrounding you. It might be something as simple as this fall semester is acting without mercy and she just can’t juggle you and 18 hours at the same time. So in this type of situation you have to be patient and take a back seat and wait out the semester while still staying relevant on her radar. If she got to study, bring a book and read with her or hey why don’t you study with her? 

One of the more popular soft no’s is manifested in a battle for time. Hey, the rent is due on the first and you have to eat everyday of the week, so when the 9-5 conflicts with the 3-11 then you have a recipe for disaster or not…depending on the chef.  At this point free time is at a premium, and if you are trying to win with someone with a seriously conflicting schedule you have to not assume and understand that whatever free time that they do have, that is shared with you, should be treated like a canteen with water in the middle of the desert, appreciate it.   

This is Why it All Worth it.

So even though you are 99% sure that she is going to say no because of , call and ask anyway. Besides, folks always would rather be given the option of saying no instead of you assuming that they are going to say no.  So the strategy here is having a alternate plan if time is not on your side. The suggestion is to give this person the first option, look at it like this, if she say’s yes, then you get some premium time with girl you are trying to win with in the first place, if she says no, then well, you have a chance to get out there and “strut” and at the same time assure the one you want, you still think enough about her to continue to ask her out even though the universe won’t get you some playing time on the field.  Patience is the key here, cause you really can’t do anything more than wait for a window of opportunity and jump through that mofo at the first chance you get. 

No Caption Needed

Another more what’s the word…normative situation is that the female in question is already deep in a relationship that is either in the process of crashing and burning or sitting up on the rocks like a boss, and while she is not going to cheat on her man, you already know through the flirting, innuendo’s, girlfriend like behavior that she exhibits around you even though she got a man, all you have to do is wait. To be honest, this is your game to lose and you are already set up to lose, because at any point they could reconcile stronger than ever…and it could be your fault.

How could that be?

Ok, let’s be honest, we can all agree that women are crazy. Seriously, how many times in our lives have we met women that say, “…That’s why I don’t fuck with females...” or “…Chicks lose they damn mind over a dude, so I can be around all that drama” and so forth and so on.  So when you are the guy waiting on the other guy to fail, there are a couple of buckets of guilt that you are going to have to carry up river. 

Let’s put it in perspective: Thoughts, words, and deeds are all interconnected. The internal conflict is a moral one at the very least, but it really doesn’t matter, cause well she has already cheated. See she is already in conflict about how she is feeling as it relates to the boyfriend and you, the guy waiting in the wings, everything you say should be calculated to maximize the return on your efforts.  What normally happens is that the guy in question is probably a sounding board for the girl to vent her frustrations about the boyfriend. 

Now this guy(you)if you are actually paying attention should be doing nothing accept listening and agreeing to some extent about the situation.  Women by nature like to argue, but you aren’t trying to win arguments, what you are attempting to do is create a safe place for discussion about how she is feeling without tipping your hand that you are secretly trying to sabotage any attempts at she and her man smoothing things out.

Guess what, she knows it.

Press too hard and he will know it too. There is not a man alive that does not raise his eyebrow about the intentions of new men that enter into the lives of he and his girl that were not previously a part of it. You sir are no different and while the boyfriend may not know who you are, he is aware of your presence.  Aside from that, show me a female that wants to be told that their relationship is a crap sandwich, and even if you are telling her exactly what her home girls are telling her is not going to help. Why would she listen to you, look women rarely listen to the good advice their close female friends tell them, and they go to the bathroom with one another, keep all this in mind before you open your mouth.

A woman that is already on the fence about their relationship status is not going to fall completely for the “I’m-going –to-be-the-exact-opposite-of-the-dude-she-with” program.  To be honest, the female in question probably trust you to be “honest” about what you think about the issues that she should be discussing with her boyfriend. If you want to win, remain neutral on all subjects unless you truly can support it 100%, consider everything about the boyfriend that she brings up in the negative as a preliminary test for you and it is pass or fail.

If you press too soft, she is not going to feel too sure about dumping the other guy to turn this soft no into a yes.  Keep in mind, she has just been on the fence, and you are trying to push her into the direction that is going to benefit you. A lack of action will only allow the boyfriend time to regain lost ground through sincere apologies, a change of attitude, and shoulder rubs.  After everything at home is in order, I can assure you that she is going to tell her man about you, in an (or not) effort to have transparency in their relationship, she is going to paint a picture of this new friend, and she will introduce you cause she is looking to move you to FRIEND ST, but there is no way that the guy that almost just lost his girl is going to concede to a new male friend. So she is going to be given a choice to make, and she is going to choose him. All you can really do is shrug your shoulders.

Strength Based

Oh yeah, there is one more type of “No” this was made mention by one of my comrades in arms at the facility, KD or “Mr. KD” as he is referred too made such a compelling case that there was no way that I could post this blog without it’s addition.

It’s called the “FUCK NO”

Fuck no’s are just that, and there is no coming back from it. A Fuck No is a lot like a pit of quicksand, the more you struggle with it the more likely you will suck into the bottom. If you struggle with a “Fuck no” you are looking to seriously be embarrassed socially by females, and probably physically assaulted by Superior males that are in close proximity, so I really can’t condone any other behavior except leaving the venue where the “Fuck No” got put on display and try something new next week.

I got one more in me for this topic of discussion next week and then we are going to be rolling into the new year with an all new look for 2012 and a plan for expansion.

KenNitro's giving the game away part one: Stay In Your Lane

For all guys that have been struggling over the last 11 months to get it in with whomever you are trying to get it in with, you are in luck!  See, the next 30 days presents an awkward moment in the female/male social dynamic. It’s Chirstmas time, and no one wants to be alone, so everyone will be looking for those possibilities to end the year on a good note.

So, guys if you got it like that, it’s going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. There are a number of women out there whom are looking to have somebody on their arm or be on someone’s arm for a number of different occasions over the next 30 to 35 days, so you can finish out the year strong and move into 2012 like a straight up BOSS.

If you don’t have it like that, that’s cool too. This time of year can give you that environmental boost that you may need.  You know like when the crocodile is waiting near the edge of the water and snatches up an unsuspecting wildebeest like it was nothing, this was not luck, what this creature did was utilize the local landscape to catch his prey off guard.

That’s what you have to do with women, catch them off guard. Cause for the most part, they already have you pegged and the answer is already No.  So I am going to give the game away in small bits so can easily digest it. I’m not going to hit you with 10 step,  there are plenty of those out there.

Let me start off by saying this,

Seriously

FUCK SWAG

When I think of swag, I think of people posturing trying to give off the impression that they are something they are not. Whether your posturing is happening through clothes, fake confidence, or whatever it may get you off the launch pad, but it is not going to get you to the moon.

Seriously, most women have too much game for the swag to be a deal closer, and spending too much time on this aspect is an exercise in futility.

What we are going to focus on this week, is determining your lane and staying in it.  What is your lane? I am glad you asked! Your “Lane” as we call it, is your area of expertise plus location that is the most comfortable for you to be successful at capturing women, the key word is capture because you can meet women anywhere, but you don’t want to meet them, you want to WIN!!!.  The winning part comes into play when what you know is in tune with what they want to hear.  This is where those listening skills come into play.  If they happen to be into something that you have no idea what it is about, then find some sort of shared experience, anything that can keep the conversation moving, because at some point the conversation is going to come back to, “What do you think about that?”

Don’t stand there looking like BoBo the fool when you knew ahead of time, that she was intoand instead of reading about it , watching a documentary, or even wiki’in that MOFO, you decided to wing it…

any one that had that sword, did what
ever they wanted too, in STYLE

The next option is to bring them into your world. If you are passionate about something, that they could find interesting, then there is your Green Destiny right there. If you are not passionate about anything and you are over the age of 23 my advice is to stop reading this blog right now.

It won’t help you.

People like learning new things or more importantly, people like learning new ways to think about things that they think they already know, so if you got the inside scoop on something, present it in an engaging manner that does not come off as condescending or to technical. Too much of any of those things will equal a lose.  

Next week we are going to talk about whatever I f'n want too!

November is for food: History is Hungry

So every year Americans all over the world get together for a big ol meal called thanksgiving, every kid in this great country learned that thanksgiving went down a little something like this:

See, these religious people left England in hopes of finding a place that they could get down with the worshiping the way they want to, and not have to worry about being hated on by the legion of haters in the “Old World”. 

So they came to the “New World”

Now, when you think about it, the world was new, but it was new like a used car, you know new to you, but not to anyone else…you know cause someone else already owned it or in the case of the Native Americans already lived there.

Anyway.

So, the settlers show up all happy and what not, but they don’t know jack squat about anything in terms of hunting, fishing, farming, or surviving in this “New” world that really should be called the “Previously Lived in World”, and the cool as hell Native Americans were all like

“Ay! Check it, we bout to hook yall up”

See, the Native Americans didn’t hate the players or the game, and so what they did was hook them up with all the buffalo, corn, fish, etc they could eat, and that is how thanksgiving happened and the Native Americans were our friends.

We all learned that, but that’s not quite how it happened though.

See, this holiday just like everything else has gone corporate. November is all about food, shopping, and not burning your house down trying to fry a turkey in the garage.  If the numbers of people that are camping out in front of best buy, Target, and Wal-Mart just to fight with each other over a flat screen TV were to donate the same amount of time to a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or after school center, the possibilities are endless as to the amount of the Lords work that could be done.

The Pilgrims thought they were doing the Lords work too, see instead of viewing the Natives as a real people they viewed them as a tool of the lord put on the land to guide them just long enough to get screwed in the RAWEST deal on planet earth. Squanto, the Native American that is credited with teaching the invaders of to live off the land, was actually kidnapped as a child and bought and traded as a slave and somehow he managed to get back the “New” world or “Home” as he would call it, just to find out that his people have been slaughtered by the very same people that he helped.

Ain’t that bout a bitch!

At least there is turkey right?  Right now kids in school are putting on thanksgiving plays that are probably reinforcing so many negative stereotypes that the inside joke that they are letting the black kid be the lead pilgrim, who will no doubt get to be Martin Luther King jr in February, gets over looked all the way over. 

Lets keep rowing this boat, Thanksgiving in the U.S. coincides with Columbus day. The day Christopher Columbus brought the first invading force to the “New” world. See, but that is political anyway, see Honest Abe came about and made Thanksgiving an official holiday (you know the one where we get holiday pay but not for MLK day…I’m just saying)and on that same day, he sent troops in to march against the Sioux Nation in Minnesota .

 Anyway, back in the day, anytime there was a huge slaughter of Indians a day of thanks giving was called to celebrate the destruction of the “savages” because that is what the religious zealots at the time believed. It got to the point to wear George Washington was like, “Damn we can’t be doing all this partying after we get it in on these Indians, we got a nation to build!!!!!” So he decided that they would have one big party to celebrate all the genocide.

So Native Americans get a two for one in November!

This is the short version.

Around Halloween, I saw someone’s facebook on the facebook that is inside of facebook talk about how she was happy it was raining on Halloween because that day celebrates the devil and anyone that new anything knew that.  So hopefully, everyone will take some time and learn a bit about what they are celebrating. If you really want to show how thankful you are this season doing something about it.

Volunteer at a shelter, give some can food items that you would actually eat and not the ones that have been sitting there for years to a can food drive, or go visit a nursing home and just sit with the people.  That way you would actually be celebrating thanksgiving the way it should be.

KenNitro Vs Bullying: I Am In The Solutions Business

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

                                                                                                -Friedrich Nietzsche

A friends facebook status on bullying, and from the responses of the parents all seem to think that teachers and administrators don’t seem to have a handle on the definition of a bully, much less the different types of bullying behavior. So what we end up having is a big ol cluster fuck of “Who is” and “What is” and “How is” going on, with everyone looking to place the blame and no one looking to find or create the solution.  Seriously a RICCO case and proving bullying takes about the same amount effort.

It’s aight though!

GET SOME!!!

KenNitro, full time awesome/Killer, part-time child behavior modification specialist, and strength based from my ten deadly toes to the tippy top of my AFRO, has the answer to the question:

How does my child deal with bullies?

Wait, before we even go into that, let me go ahead and put it out there, that I do not have any kids of my own, nor was I bullied as a kid, picked on yeah, but who wasn’t, but I am real live rock and roller who rolls with a wild bunch of like minded individuals that are quick go in, get it in, and defend our parking lot titles against any and all who want 100% of our attention.  By no means am I a bully, I am something much, much worse.

I’m an asshole.

They Came To Fight, We Came To
Turn The Volume Up!

If you want to do it the right way parents, it is going to be time consuming emotionally frustrating and I can’t promise it will even get the results you are looking for, but the children involved, parents, teachers, administrations will all know that you will not put up with some aspect of their job description interfering with the educational advancement of your college bound child. To be honest, this route does not guarantee victory, but it is the most honorable.

First is that when your child comes home and tells you that he/she is having issues with another kid, tell your kid to try to work it out through some sort of non-confrontational way. You have to do it in real life, and they might as well start learning now, and if that doesn’t work have your same kid tell the teacher what the deal is and hopefully the teacher will step in with the authority that the state has given them to teach kids and hold kids accountable to basic expectations in their classrooms. Now if that isn’t working, this is when the parents step in and ask for a conference with the teacher and principal and ask them open ended questions like, “So what is your solution to this issue we are having?” and “How do these disruptions effect your ability to teach, and what can my child do differently” If none of that works then I would suggest having a sit down with the other kids parents, and both parties can show their offspring how adults handle situations so they can have some positive behavior to emulate in the future.

If parents can say that they have done all of that, and kept their own egos in check during the whole process then you have given the universe all it ask in terms of karma’s repercussions, and if the results were not as you hoped, then an only then would I co-sign a child’s throwing hands with another at school.

The funny part is no parent wants to go this route. See what is going to happen is that everyone’s ego is going to get involved and the issue is going to go from kids not getting along to parents not getting along and then it is going to be an issue that has nothing to do with the kids and everything to do with the fact that the parents and administration can’t act like adults.

See now let me tell you something before we go any further, once you co-sign this there is no coming back. Whatever happens after that first punch is thrown; you by default are ok with it and anything else that comes from it. The cave entrance will have crumbled on you and the way out is the way through.

I am a pacifist, because I have the
option to be one!

So I am going to give you a KenNitro Anti-bully methodology that if done correctly will ensure that your child’s respect at school from their peers increases enough to be moved from the bully column to the “Leave me the fuck alone group”.

1.     1.  No Bluffing, this is always the first mistake. Once you get up out of your chair or take a stand there can be no hesitation only action.

2.     2.  Don’t pick up chairs or swing things like book bags, these items require too much commitment and without a proper follow-up, this will not go well for your child.

3.      3. A well placed sucker punch is much better than the aforementioned rules, the best time to sucker punch anyone is always when they are not looking, now if you want to utilize any of the aforementioned items in the second point, then fine. Following up the sucker punch with a chair shot is acceptable

4.      4. Fight as if losing never happens. Sometimes a war of attrition is exactly what needs to happen.

5.       5 .Make them bleed. If you go this route you can’t just beat the bully, you have to destroy the bully, that way they will remember what they are going to have to endure if they choose to continue this beef, and their friends will have to be willing to endure what their bully friends have if they decide to get into it.

6.      6.  Talk shit while you are doing it, this is for everyone else really. Once you remove the bully’s support system, it will no longer benefit the bully to continue to focus on you.

7.      7.  Go in on the bully’s friends (see rule 4), find the weakest one and beat the shit out of him for his support (see rule 5), then move up the ladder. As you do this, the bully’s lieutenant will realize that this war is not worth it and the bully is going to follow the advice of the lieutenant because his ego is not at stake.

The fact is, if you tell your child things like, “Handle your business” or “If someone gets in your face, you better not back down” or my personal favorite, “If you lose a fight at school, you are going to lose another one when you get home” Then good luck to you. Chances are, you are the type of parent that will also tell your child that you are not sending them to school to get into fights, but to learn. 

Don't you think that is just a little bit confusing?

If you think that the school isn’t going to do anything, then be prepared to support your child’s actions and if he/she does not follow the seven steps that I just outlined, then well they are going to fail, and by fail I mean get the crap beat out of them hard and often and if they succeed they will probably end up expelled from school, and you will only have yourself to blame mom and dad cause instead of modeling a behavior that will set a positive example of conflict resolution, you wanted to prove a point.

Victory without honor, is no victory at all.

November is for Food: OCCUPY OMG TACO!!!!

So this entire month everyone in the facebook universe has been filling their statuses  with what they are thankful for on a daily basis, and while I originally said that I would not do such a thing because after all November is really all about food, I find myself about tell you all what I am thankful for:

What I am thankful for are people that strive to give people better options to spend their food money on, I am thankful for local places that fill up my belly and give me a chance to give back to the local community all at once.

Best Taco's Ever!REAL(CLAP)TALK(CLAP)

I am thankful for OMG TACO.

Lets get right into it, OMG TACO is the best place to get a taco in ATLANTA, GA period. If you ain’t down with that, you need to be flying triangle.  What makes OMG TACO so amazing is how it somehow took these two culinary cultures and made one great taste.

Mexican food with Kim chi, do you even know what Kim chi is? Kim chi is fermented cabbage, and it is a staple of the Korean culture.  Without going to deep into it, Kim chi is the culinary equivalent to cornbread in the south, and have you ever had a Sunday dinner without cornbread?

Exactly!

Look, you may feel some sort of way about cabbage, cause to be perfectly honest, if I never ate cabbage in my entire life it would be too soon. I lived a year in Korea and managed to eat Kim chi only when I really, really, really, had too. So if some people out there are turned off to the aspect of cabbage on a taco I have some words of encouragement:

Build a Bridge and Get Right Over It!

Anyway, OMG TACO is a fusion of Korean and Mexican food and it will change your life as it relates to tacos for the better.  I suggest getting a short rib taco with the OMFG sauce as well as a calamari taco.  The spicy pork taco is super flavorful, but the short rib is easily the crowd favorite.  The atmosphere is super laid back with some classic hip hop tracks providing the background music and a staff that is as easy on the eyes as they are knowledgeable about what comes out the kitchen, and what comes out the kitchen, is nothing short of amazing.

Blake Bowman(left) and Jorge Segarra, pictured with first
eddtion Golf Bat.

If you are going to go to Atlanta, ask your Jesus phone how to get to OMG taco.  More than likely if you are outside the perimeter like myself, you are going to eat while you are there. Why eat at a place that is  in Atlanta and in your county way outside of 285? That makes about as much sense as a golf bat!

Why would you not want to try a new restaurant, comfort? Maybe cause you got a coupon? Maybe cause you just don’t want to trust a local restaurant because money is tight these days (I mean, we are in a recession) and I can understand going for the sure thing in most situations, but OMG TACO is not most situations.  What you have in OMG TACO is a chance to experience a new trend in food, eat some really good food, and not break your wallet at the same time.  I can honestly say that whenever I drive to Atlanta, I am saving room for OMG TACO and it is a non-negotiable portion of the evening.

Life Changer right here!

Did I tell you about the fries? OMG fries probably do not get the attention they deserve and it is OMG TACO’s own fault really.  See when you go in, you go in on the fact that you want taco’s not fries, so you get tacos and you miss out on the complete and utter awesomeness which is OMG FRIES.

Imagine French fries(or freedom fries if you lean that way) covered in any of the delicious taco fillings(the short rib is the crowd favorite), drippin with the OMG custom SAAAUUUCCEEE, and covered with cheese.

November is for FOOD, break out of your comfort zone. 

November is for Food: Eating is Serious Business

Last week, I talked about how this November everyone is talking about what they are thankful for, I am still under the impression that November is not about thanksgiving at all, but that is a blog for a different week(Soon, like on thanksgiving).

Continuing on from last week's blog about local food vs corporate food on during this gov't mandated month of gluttony I am once again trying to educate the masses on what to eat vs what not to eat and why. Which brings me to the topic of the day

Mexican food

The food or the people one or
the other is coming over the fence

In America we speak ENGLISH!
(No Accents)

Well lets be honest, most of the american people couldn't tell the difference between a Nicaraguan restaurant vs a Mexican restaurant any way, and in the right light and Asian from a Mexican. So we take that kind of indifference and mix it with a society's desire to have everything fast, plus sprinkle a little bigotry and passive racial discrimintory policys then BOOM!!!!! Yo queiro Taco Bell.  Seriously, with all the B.S. about building a fence with Razor Wire, and flying sharks with lasers patrolling said fence with the right side of our political spectrum feeding the sharks the leftover souls of innocent children that they just ate to the sharks we forget about one of the most awesome creations on earth.

Mexican Food

But for some reason, people seem to eat taco bell like is all good.  I mean most of the stuff at that place really can't be considered food anyway.  Then you have Moe's. Don't get me wrong, I like Moe's a lot actually, from the names of the burritos and the cheese dip, all the way down to how they get down with like five different kinds of salsa for the chips, but they are still apart of the problem, and Chipotle! Don't even get me started.

Actually, let me go in on these folks coach!

You can get down or you can lay down
but if you lay down, you gonna stay
Down!

How you gonna make burritos and tacos gourmet? I tell you how they do it, they use some better foil and claim that they are using fresh ingredients, but in reality you have a guy who went to school for culinary arts traveled a bit made it to san francisco and saw what the local Latino populous was hustling and after talking daddy into bank rolling his dream of raping a culture for their food and then getting even more money from "The Clown" we now have this thing called "Fast Casual Dining"

And folks actually go and eat there.

Meanwhile in every town, there are a number of Local spots that get enough love from the the community, but it is not cause of the food, it's the margarita specials.

In Carrollton, GA you got two spots that come to mind The Border and The Lazy Donkey(I know right)and to tell you the truth the food is off the chain and I have never had a bad experience at either one of these restaurants, but we are going to get a little deeper. I'm not focusing on these spots because they do just fine without a plug from KenNitro.com.

I'm talking about the *Mexican grill, it's a small spot that has big portions and a seriously family atmosphere well I can't say if it has a family atmosphere, whenever I go I am hanging with my peeps and we are a rowdy bunch, now if a family were to come there I am sure the atmosphere would be great for it.but the parking lot is never full, and that is a bad thing, oh and the best part.

It's not expensive!

What do you do? If you are a small business you can't expect people to go and try something new unless you do something completely out of the ordinary like have people eating on beds, Ipads for menus, a live sacrifice or something else that will make people swear that the food is something special, when there is nothing special about it.

See, as I have said before you have already have allocated those dinner dollars so why don't you spend them on a local restaurant that still puts their heart and soul into the food you eat? I am sure there is someplace local that you have not been to in a while, and you should fix that.  Like I said before, we try to encourage our kids to try new things.

Lead by example.

*I don't have a good picture of the restaurant cause I wish I had time to just be running around taking pictures of stuff

KenNitro vs The Facility: All things considered

Today was like any other day on the island. I stood with one of the other holders of the word and spoke about the world outside of the island, the weather was a bit colder than what I was comfortable with.  As my equal and I spoke about the things we do our children stand close, not so close to be told to go and be amongst themselves, but close enough to be seen and not heard.

Those are my favorites.

I noticed in the distance that one of the footballs was off in the distance; I decided to see how my young charges have improved on their interactions with one another and critical thinking. So I said to them, whoever can bring that football first, I will give a bonus point. Before I could say go, one of my wayward youths took into consideration that everything has a point and he did something amazing.

He thought it through!

He stops everyone and says, “Look if we all go and get it and bring it back we can all receive a bonus point” I actually held back a smile because he is applying a lesson that I taught in a group several months ago. Everyone seemed to be in agreement with his plan.

So I said, “Go”

With that, these kids took off like the wind, these are the good kids so seeing them run in any direction does not alarm anyone, but we still pay very close attention. I would like to tell you that they each took turns carrying the ball equally sharing in the work load so that they may equally share in the ever elusive bonus point from Mr. Ken A.K.A Dr. Doom-Megatron , but that is not what happened.

Instead the faster kid got out ahead of everyone scooped up the ball and ran it back to me with a smile on his face. As his peers made it back to me, they were all upset. I asked him, “Why would you do that, everyone could have gotten a bonus point if you all would have worked together?”

His response was probably the most honest thing I have heard anyone say in several months.

“I know we all could have gotten a bonus point, but I didn’t want them to have a bonus point”

In that above statement lies a deeper truth.

OCCUPY THE FACILITY!!!!

I’m just kidding, but if you are serious though, I mean, we can do it…I’m just saying.  Working at the facility is not a job, it’s an adventure.   The work at the facility is not work, but art and must be practiced every day. I say all this to say, and this may be the first time that I say, “I think I speak for everyone “when I say,  I need a day off!

No, I am not talking about the two days that I get off every week, but I need like a day off that I don’t normally get off.  The truth is I work in a very “Reactive” environment, but what is confusing is that being proactive really just creates more work for an already over worked group of individuals.  So scheduling is essentially a love /hate relationship. Geez, relationships are never fair though, and when you do what you are suppose to and you do(put the time that you want off in when you are suppose to do) and you do not get the results(the time you asked off).

You tend to feel some sort of way about it.

Did I tell you about my most recent waffle house adventure?

Ok, see me and a friend were getting down on that waffle house awesomeness, I was enjoying my usual waffle and bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with my hash browns covered and chunked, and they well I can’t really remember what they had but they enjoyed it none the less and we got spoke with our waitress (Wait, is it still ok to call them that? Whatever) and we talked about how it is hard out there for everybody and she went on to talk about how she had been working for the Waffle House for thirty years.

He saved your soul, so he can feed
it to the DINO's!!!!

WHAT!!!! SWEET JESUS RIDING A DINOSAUR did you say you have been working at the waffle house for 30 years!!!!

I felt really bad about bitching about my job for the length of time that I did, when this poor woman has been hustling waffles to every drunk, hipster, family, pre and post party going from the Regan Era to Obama. I should be happy to have my job cause well I don’t get paid as much as I feel like I am worth but hey I’m not grinding this waffle house gig ya know?

See that is where I fucked up, time for my favorite part of blogs

PUT YOU UP ON SOME GAME!!!!!

Waffle house servers make like 7.25 cent and hour waiting tables. Most servers at the corporate cafeterias that most of you all spend your dinner dollars at make 2.13 cent and hour. Now no one goes to the Waffle House and spends less than 10 bucks and if you tip based on the fact that you were not raised by wolves you probably throw down 20% like a BOSS!!!

This is what happens to your
brain when you realize that the WaHo
folks are living the dream, and you aren't

So 7.25 plus 2.00 bucks, but wait, I had a friend with me, so we have to add another 2.00. So right now we have 7.25+4.00 so now she is making 11.25 an hour and that was the one table we were at. Let’s say she had 3 tables of 2 people all spending 10 dollars apiece and dropping the 20% LIKE A BOSS! That is 7.25 + 12 dollars so that comes out to be 19.25 an hour.  And she went on to talk about how getting time off is never an issue because for some known unknown waffle house folks have figured out how to make the most people happy most of the time.

I was mad all over again.

The source of the Strength

You couldn't ask for a
better handbook

If you keep you with my facebook statuses, you may see a lot of statuses that say “Strength Based on Deck” or something of that sort. Well, you may find it hard to believe but the strength based program is a living, breathing, document, similar to the constitution in the fact that it can be changed and adjusted as needed, but what I want to talk about is the secret to the strength of the strength based program. It is really quite simple these are the two words that hold the most weight at the facility:

                      Rewards and Consequences

The State will take everything
away from you, and we will take the rest

It’s pretty simple really, kids that do good get rewarded for their efforts and kids that do not do good do not get rewarded. Now the system starts to shake when there are kids doing good and they have to wait on the reward, a shake is not so bad though, kids need to learn that everything in life does not happen like clockwork and I do strategically promise and not deliver. The system breaks when there are no rewards to be earned and those that do not do good receive the attention from staff. What happens is the system is turned on its head, the bad continue to be bad and flourish in the attention they receive from Us, and the good ones fall into that behavior because they are confused as to why they are doing good in the first place.

So the new challenge is turning what should have never been upside down in the first place back to its original place and keeping it there, but the answer is right in front of you.

                                                                     Consequences and Rewards  
 

You can get with this

Actually, it is all about holding yourself accountable to the islands inhabitants, support for your team, and unity in the face of adversity. 

On the island, we had to put the pyramid in its proper place and once we did everyone and I mean everyone was on the same page as to what direction the sun comes up, and that page simply said, “Whatever direction I say it

or you can get with that

does”Real(clap)Talk(Clap).

Once the islanders understood that those that make the right decisions will be rewarded and those that made the wrong one would not be, and that whatever the reward was going to be was going to happen, regardless of how those that normally make the wrong decisions act, the kids understand is that the best choice is to follow the lead of those in charge otherwise nobody wins.