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I am Malcolm X !

It's been 45 years since the death of Malcolm X. I chose to do a study on him for my history personal project while I was in high school, and reading his autobiography had a deep and profound impact on me. I consider him one of my heroes. He was fearless, intelligent, articulate, humorous, passionate and compassionate, and in the end he paid the ultimate price in his pursuit of freedom, respect, equality and dignity.

His fiery rhetoric and unwillingness to conform to the accepted 'discourse' of the 'Negro-issue' meant since his death in 1965, the establishment has tried to erase his impact and his wisdom, but thankfully his memory has been persistent and resistant and his words still inspire many today.

45 years on, Malcolm X still lives.

Here is an interview he had with Eleanor Fischer of WNYC Radio in the 1960s, while he was still with the Nation of Islam. Enjoy! (it may take about 30 seconds after your click the play button before it actually starts playing, so be patient)

Doppelgänger

So, apparently, there is someone out there who looks a lot like me, well not a lot, but a fair bit.

He also happens to be of Nigerian origin, an actor known as Nonso Anozie

He does look like me, especially with the full beard he has on there. Having a doppelgänger is quite cool and eerie at the same time. Imagine if you got mistaken for a really famous person on a regular basis- that's bound to have some nice perks, it wouldn't be too cool however if your splitting image was some notorious criminal.

(looking like Denzel, Malcolm X, Pope John Paul II, Jesus, Gandhi, Barack Obama = cool)

(looking like George Bush, Nixon, Michael Jackson (post 2000) = not cool)

(looking like Hitler or Stalin......stop it, shave your moustache!)

Valentine's Day Sermon

So, the 14th of February is the day of love, St. Valentine's Day. No one really knows who St. Valentine really was, or if he was particularly into love, but, somehow, we've wound up with St. Valentine's Day, and it's good. Chocolate sales go way up, florists rake in money (check out the difference in Rose prices between Feb 13 and Feb 15) and lots of people take advantage of the day and propose to their romantic partners (in fact, I heard someone proposed today, right in the middle of a church service..which I think is risky, unless you are 100% sure she's gonna say yes..still then, it's very inappropriate I think, but that's just me)

This year's Valentine's Day happened to land on a Sunday, so the sermon should have been about romantic love, or at least some sort of love in the Bible (you'd think)

WRONG!

we went Old Testament today, the book of Judges to be exact, and read about the awesome warrior that was Samson, and how he killed a thousand Philistines with a donkey's jawbone, and all he said after was "I'm Thirsty".....he even had time to compose a witty poem after slaying them:

"With a donkey's jawbone

I have made donkeys of them.

With a donkey's jawbone

I have killed a thousand men."

Samson was the perfect action hero. The sermon was a lot more serious than I portray, and it was mainly about being a Christian in a world that is not just increasingly anti-Christian, but anti-religious in general, and one part of the sermon that struck me was "If the current's against me, I know I'm going the right way"

So where was I? well, yeah..it's Valentine's Day, couple's are all loved up, and the vicar is talking about Samson smiting people, in fact, in terms of love and relationship, the passage is quite dire, Samson's wife is given to some other dude by her dad, who then offers Samson his wife's younger sister, saying "Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead.” (a very stupid statement in hindsight*) Samson doesn't take the loss of his wife well, and proceeds to burn the Philistine (his wife was a Philistine) farms in the most ingenious way ever...get this, he ties torches to the tails of three hundred foxes and let them loose on the farms! (we don't know what happened to the foxes, but my guess was that it wasn't a happy ending)...okay, back to his wife, the Philistines are not to happy with their burnt farms, so they burn Samson's wife and her father (as you do)...on the whole, not very Valentiny.

So, here ends my first blog of February, expect another really soon.

Shalom

*well he died, so he doesn't really have hindsight anymore