Heavy Mentalist

Friday, July 23rd is Haile Selassie I’s Earth Day. On October 4, 1963, His Imperial Majesty gave a speech at the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York City, part of which was turned into the song “War” by Bob Marley. Photo from An Ethiopian Journal

Happening Now

• If you’re a conspiracy nut who believes the future will be full of global pandemics, checkpoints, quarantines and biometric ID cards, a new study on future societies by the Rockefeller Center gives you more reason to worry.
• Sinn Fein Vet Views G-20 Arrests As “Dry Run” For Government Detainment Strategy
• New Military Robo-Copter Flies Without Human Help
• Alabama Tells Kids: No Shot No 6th Grade
• Facebook App Lets You View a Lighter You
• Cause They Treat Us Like Hos: Bynamite Wants Websites to Stop Selling Personal Info Without Paying
• Billboards Sponsored by Final Exit Network Advocate Suicide
• Green Energy Accounts for Half of New Energy Generated Last Year
• Jezebel Poses 15 Questionable Things Whoopi Goldberg’s Defended
• Too Short Likes ‘Em Too Young

Sistas from songstress and actress Jill Scott to blogger and writer Sister Toldja have sparked quite a buzz over the subject of black men romantically involved with non-black women. But since the number of black men out-marrying hovered around a paltry 8% throughout the 80s and 90s, most media outlets have instead chosen to focus on recycled “lonely black female crisis” news. However, a new study revealing a steep jump in black male out-marrying may prove Toldja and Scott right about the interracial elephant in the room that’s about to sit down on everyone in it.

Dave Chappelle with wife & kids

Cross-cultural love in the US is nothing new. Before the advent of slavery, the US was home to immigrants from all over seeking a better life, and it wasn’t unusual to see interracial couples among Native Americans and European and African immigrants.

It was only after slavery became a fact of American life that laws against inter-marrying were put into effect, with most of these laws remaining on the books well after the official end of slavery in 1865.  Continue reading...

Dancehall.mobi is reporting that reggae legend Sugar Minott has died. His biggest  hits include the song that is credited with being the main influence behind the “ragga” sound, the Sly & Robbie produced  “Tune In (Rub-a-Dub-Sound)” (1984).

One of my favorite Minott tunes is a lesser known song called “Hard Time Pressure”.

RIP Sugar Minott!

Lately, Facebook has been on some dumb shit. I just got blocked – again – for the third time in the last two weeks.

Why?

Was it for spamming my Facebook friends with ads for some widget I’m selling? Nope!

Was I blocked for using software to add extra friends illegally? Not even close.

I was blocked by Facebook for participating in the core concept of social networking — being social.

It started like this:

Two weeks ago I received a friend invite from a woman I haven’t seen in 20 years. She’s an old friend from the small town I grew up in and attended a school we’ll call High School No. 1.

I attended two high schools, one in my hometown and another in Durham, NC well call High School No. 2.

I go to her profile to accept her invitation. As I peruse her friends, a trip down memory lane packed high with nostalgia begins because her friends for the most part, are also my old friends from our hometown.  Continue reading...

Every year when people across the country celebrate Father’s Day as they did this weekend, I wonder what it’s like. Because I, like an overwhelming number of Americans, grew up without a father.

Today, about 50% of America’s children will spend their entire childhood in an intact family, and out of the other 50% who don’t, 40% of them have no contact with their father.¹

Although fatherlessness only affects half the population, the consequences of fatherlessness hurt us all. For example, 70% of all long-term prisoners are from fatherless homes², as are nearly 80% of children with psychiatric and behavioral problems.³ And those statistics are just the tip of the iceberg.

I made the video below to share some of these facts and more. In the video I share some of my personal experience of growing up fatherlessness, and talk about the middle of the night phone call that, after years of not knowing, finally revealed the truth to me about where my father was.  Continue reading...

Thank you for visiting.

This blog is the combined version of writer Cherryl Aldave’s formerly separate music and personal blogs, Heavy Mentalist and the Last Nerve, and is scheduled to re-launch solely as Heavy Mentalist on May 1st, 2010.

In the meantime feel free to browse the posts on this page, the posts in my “categories” drop down menu to your right or my archives menu.

Thanks for stopping by and have a beautiful day!

SEO is something I wish I had learned…like five years ago. Oh well…better late than never. I just spent the last twenty minutes going over my recent posts and injecting keywords throughout my posts without spamming my posts with keywords. And the posts still make sense, thank God.

It’s not hard to keep a good keyword density and still have your posts make sense, it’s just tricky. And it can be funny too, because you can end up saying the person’s whole name like fifteen times in your post *cough* *cough* Caster Semenya *cough* lol.

I just have to try to remember to go over any keyword suggestions for what I am planning to blog about first, then craft my posts around those keyword suggestions from now on. What a pain, but I guess I gotta play this blogging game right to get anywhere. And in all games it’s go big or suck, right? Right.