Something going through my head right now: The way is a path emblazoned by a light that will blind you if you're not prepared. But making a blind walk is often better than making a drunken trek down a trail already traveled. I'll take unknown road every time.

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JUST (DON'T) DO IT

To any spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend who is considering murdering your significant other:

This is an open entry to you. I'm not going to take too long in making this point, but I feel like it's one that definitely needs to be made somewhere. If you are pondering the idea of killing your spouse, stop now. Don't follow through with that dumb-ass thought. You cannot get away with it, and I'm going to tell you why.

Over the last 25 years of my life, I've seen plenty of episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, America's Most Wanted, CSI and Forensic Files. I watched the OJ chase and case live in the mid-90s. I lived through the whole Laci Peterson ordeal.

All of these things have taught me this simple fact of life: you are an absolute idiot if you think you're going to kill your spouse/significant other and get away with it.

You have a better chance of taking HGH and steroids and hitting 74 home runs in a single 162-game season than you do of getting away with killing your spouse/homey-lover friend.

Don't be an demented idiot like Bobby Cutts, Jr., who allegedly killed his girlfriend and mother of his two-year-old son and likely his unborn daughter. If you're having Cutts-like thoughts, push them out of your mind.

You will be the No. 1 suspect, and you will go down. More over, you will ruin the lives of your children, if you have any, and cause plenty of undue stress to all involved.

That's all. My prayers go out to the Davis family and to Bobby Cutts wife and children.

dmansmi

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I know, I know ...

I know I owe you all a little something. I've had a pretty tough week, so I've been lacking for words, something that normally isn't a problem for me.

I think I want to move. It's weighing heavily on me right now. But I'm almost certain that's what I want to do. Don't know where just yet. But it's a thought. I'm in a good position to make it happen, too.

I've started hashing out an outline an plot for this story I'm calling Tryangles. The title is a reference to the quadry that is the love triangle, and all of the different perspectives that must be considered in said situation. We'll see if I find the drive to bust my butt on it.

My i-Pod is over 3000 songs for the first time (after crashing about 24 times while on the way to the 3000 benchmark).

Okay, that's all for the moment. I don't think I have anything else. Ill check back in tomorrow.

Holla.

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I Am Enthralled

Y'all I know how I get when it comes to good music (see the end of the last post).

So to jump-off this week, I've got some exciting news. I'm feeling this Chrisette Michele. I found her new album online this weekend, and have been bumping it like I was at the amusement park (sans 50 Cent) and just tall enough to cause some carnage during a bumper car session.

Chrisette Michele's I Am is an oxygen-machine full of fresh air in the congested, carbon-monoxide heavy mess that is black music today. If you love music the way I do, I definitely recommend dropping by your Best Buy or Target, or wherever you purchase your music, and picking up this gem.

Chrisette, a DefJam jewel who can be heard on Jay-Z's "Lost Ones" and a few tracks on Nas' Hip Hop is Dead, kicks the party off with "Like A Dream," a classy ditty about meeting the right person at the right time.



There's the current single "If I Have My Way," which is a ballad reminiscent of Alicia's best, but also hearkens you back to a time where Anita and Whitney owned our hearts.

Chrisette provides an abundance of great music and vocals, but there's nothing like "Let's Rock," a song that I think will easily be the favorite of most who hear the album. It takes simplicity being a fine line between elegance and plainness to a level of beauty unseen to most eyes. It has the feel of the perfect stepper's groove (so watch out, I'll request it).

Her voice's flow makes you want to dust off the Nancy Wilson, and kick back with that special someone. The lyrics are simplistic, never reaching for something that's not there. Her voice is harmonic-balancing Neo (not Ne-yo) to Keyshia Cole's (and this is not an insult) Agent Smith, light, but somehow full of substance and unmistakable soul. A soul that might help define that it sound so many of us have been searching for in a new vocalist for quite sometime.

I am loving it. I am enthralled. I haven't felt this good about an album since John Legend dropped Get Lifted, and before then it was Musiq Soulchild's debut (I'm not looking up the official title, he shoulda just spelled it right). Chrisette, this is the way love feels.

I started to title this post, "I Am Engaged," but thought better of it. That would have setoff some serious ignorance.

Also listening to:

• Tank's Sex, Love & Pain
• T-Pain's Epiphany
• Carl Thomas' So Much Better
• Hidden Beach Recordings' Unwrapped 1-4
• Fabulous' From Nothin' to Somethin'
• Joe's Ain't Nothin' Like Me

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Find Yourself in Mizz-ery

When I woke on Tuesday, I felt like being an absolute bum. I really didn't want to leave the crib, but I had to work. Taking full advantage of my J.O.B's dress rules, I promptly through on some mesh basketball shorts, a long-sleeve Mizzou tee and a Mizzou cap.

I flew under the radar for most of the day, no one saying much of anything about my attire. Then a co-worker with similar name as mine (drop the d), who went to that school across the west border known as KU, came up to me and said the following:

"Will you go ahead and clean that bird shit off of your chest and hat."

I didn't even look to see if a bird had shat (shitted, which is it I don't know) on me. I knew what he was referencing. He kept walking, and within three minutes he was back in my office, headed toward me with a roll of toilet paper.

I already knew what he was going to say ("This is for you to clean yourself up with."), but better yet, how I'd respond.

I happily took the toilet paper from him. I waited until 5 p.m., when most of my co-workers left, and then went and TP'd his desk with the ammunition he gave me. Yes, it seems like a high school prank, but we try to keep it fun in our office.

He had a hell of a time cleaning up the mess I left for him the next morning when he got there at 7 a.m.
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Another co-worker came up to me on Friday and told me that he wanted me to come holler at him at his desk. I did, like an hour later, and watched as he opened a desk drawer with about 150 albums in it.

He gave me access to them all. I damn near cried. You know how much I love music.

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Fast Foods Out

I went to Subway today and got a tuna sandwich. I'm gonna get on this Damone Watchers kick (it's the cheap version of Weight Watchers) for the rest of the summer so when my birthday rols around in August, I'll have it right and have it tight.

Anyway. As I pulled up to Subway, I noticed that nobody was in the restaurant. It looked like a Ghost town, and it got me to thinking.

I said to myself, self, out of the top five fast food restaurants which one would be the first one to completely fold, and close it's doors? It seems like the restaurants won't ever shut down, but if they did, what order would they go?

5. Kentucky Fried Chicken - This chain has been in a steady decline. We American's love our chicken, but we don't want it as screwed up as KFC has become over the years. The Colonel is probably spinning like a laundry machine in his grave.

4. Hardee's - They screwed up with the Thick Burger thing. It reminds me of the Mondo Burger from that one movie with Keenan and Kel. You know what I'm talking about.

3. Wendy's - As long as I'm alive, Wendy's isn't going anyway. It is my guilty pleasure.

2. McDonald's -Golden Arches? Kids know what they are at two. My nieces see the arches and scream until they get fries. Therefore, Mickey D's is safe.

1. Taco Bell - Did you not see Demolition Man? The movie predicted that all places to dine out would become Taco Bells? Yeah, there's proof of this. Yo Quiro Taco Bell. The Mexican-based food that has a part of the fabric of American society, and it's going nowhere soon.

Are there any other's I'm missing, restaurants that are super big chains? Sonic? Arby's?

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Odd Trio: Ruben, Kelsey and Paris

Have you heard that new Ruben Studdard joint, "Make Ya Feel Beautiful" yet? It's about at 9.5 out of 10 as far as hot songs go right now.

But the opening lyric is intriguing. He starts with a a Luther-like intro that last about a minute. Then Studdard harps, "Baby, First off let me start by saying I ain't trying to get in your jeans."

Now, the way he says it, it sounds like he's saying, "I am trying to get in your jeans."

After really listening to the lyrics, this prompted me to think. Big Rube should definitely not be telling any woman anything about trying or not trying to "get in her jeans." That just doesn't sound right at all.
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On to more important issues.

My prayers go out to the family of Kelsey Smith, the girl who was abducted on Saturday at a Target (literally a block away from my house), and murdered in Kansas City. I'm sure I know plenty of people who knew this young lady, and she probably had a promising future. There are some evil people out there, and I certainly wish that she hadn't come into contact with the man who did this to her.

But in the wake of this situation, a co-worker came up to me today and asked me an interesting question: "Do you think that there is any sort of racial aspect to this situation?"

If you don't know, Kelsey was a white female from a family that lives in a fairly affluent suburban area in the Kansas City metro area. My co-worker was referring to whether or not I thought that things would be different if it were a missing black person in a similar situation.

I told her I think the situation would be completely different, but it wouldn't be totally predicated on race, although it does have an indirect effect. It's a class issue. It's an issue of juice as we might call it in the black community.

And it's apparent that Kelsey's parents and friends had the juice to turn this into a national story and get 200 cops searching for her. Is there something wrong about this? No.

If I were a multimillionaire and someone abducted my child, best believe that I would use every penny I had to try to find my child, just as these people did.

The problem is that there are plenty of children, black, white, rich and poor, who are missing right now, and the effort definitely isn't as strong as it's been over the course of the last week in Kelsey's case.

That said, there's little else to say except that I wish that everyone's efforts over the last few days could have brought Kelsey home alive. As I said before, my prayers are with the family, the friends and the Shawnee Mission West High School community who lost someone who appears to have been a great person.

Thankfully, the have the man who allegedly did this in custody and he won't be able to do this again.
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Back to the ignorance for a moment. Will someone please lock Paris Hilton back up? Having money surely shouldn't mean that she should be on house arrest right now. She's supposed to be in a cell, not her bed with Tinkerbell on her cell - phone.

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It Supposedly Never Rains in SoCal

So my boy G-Money took his wife T-Money to California last week for a nice little hiatus from what we consider to be Kansas City-land.

They were visiting friends in the area for the second year in a row. They flew into San Jose, spent a day there and eventually made their way down the coast to the city of angels.

Once in LA, they made a stop at a breakfast joint on Sunset in Hollywood, a place frequented by the locals who are better known as celebrities who are full of themselves

G and T-money sat at their table, and low and behold, in walks who? None of than that dude named Luda. Ludacris happened to be accompanied by actor Hill Harper, who I personally happen to only really remember in the movie HavPlenty singing the ignorant ass tune "40 Ounces of Love."

Well, being the seasoned YBF twentysomethings that the they are, G and T-Money paid little attention to Luda and Hill. They knew who they were but acted as though they had no real desire to speak to them.

Then the waiter or waitress sait Luda and Hill in the booth next to the married couple almost like "Let's crowd all of the negros into one section in the restaurant" but not really.

The Monies still ignored them until Luda turned to say something to T-Money, who had just received two ginormus pancakes to eat from her server.

This prompted Luda to say to T-Money, "Those sure are some big pancakes. Where are you going to put those on that petite, cute little frame of yours?"

Forget whatever T-Money said in response. It didn't matter much because it instantly pissed G-Money off. Luda had hit on his wife like she was a groupie on the set of the "Stand Up" or "Move Bitch" or "MoneyMaker" video sets.

There were several things G-Money could have done including go D-Jay in Hustle & Flow on Luda. That would have been a story for the ages, one that would have had G-Money locked up like Akon in Africa.

Instead, he chose the high-ly sarcastic road.

"Hey Luda, so when Oprah had her forum on Don Imus, did you get an invitation?"

Luda simply said "no," hushed up and continued his conversation with Hill. They weren't heard from again and G-Money had successfully defended himself against a multimillionaire rap star, and kept said rap star from thinking he would make it rain on G-money's wife.

Like Saadiq and Co. said, "It never rains in Southern California."

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