22 Apr 2012, Posted by caburkes in Personal Thoughts, Race, Random Crap, 0 Comments Tagged American Italian, DEEP, EXCEPT, New York

A Tale of Two Races: Ignorant Fuckery

This is a posting that was a long time coming and this morning was the sum of all frustration. Let this be my record of exactly how it is from my perspective.

First: The almighty Disclaimer:

My credentials and they are important to mention:

Went to Caucasian majority run and populated schools since elementary school. Through the late 70′s to the early 90′s, all throughout Floral Park, NY to Garden City, New York during a time when being African-American was being a minority by census and by physical placement. If there were any ethnic people at these schools during this time, they were a small handful of Blacks or a couple East Indians/Pakistani’s. Suffice to say, the majority of my friends were White and my general thinking pattern was molded from a White perspective. Before you give me  a ‘what’s a white perspective’ comment, I’m referring to a lifestyle that is not any other ethnicity EXCEPT classic White Anglo Saxon Protestant, American-Italian, American-German and/or Jewish.

I state my background not to prove something asinine like “Now you see I’m the ultimate ‘white person’! See my credentials!’. It’s to make sure you understand I have spent the bulk of my life in DEEP with a culture outside of my own and I can speak with confidence of how one race perceives the other from a Long Island, New York point of view, at the very least.

What this journal entry DOES NOT presume to do is point fingers at the whole. Example:

All White people do not trust Black people.

That is NOT true and I don’t support that.

All Blacks are thieves and rape White women.

That is NOT true and I don’t support that.

HOWEVER, MANY of you do. Many of you take one of  three positions: (1) Self-Concluded decisions about a particular race (ignorance), (2) Self-concluded decisions about a particular race and you HATE them because of it (racism) or no awareness of what’s going on at all and refuse to know (ignorance is bliss). There could be a fourth … absolute LOVE for one another, but it seems to fade off after we reach age 10 or eleven. Those who have it are far and few between. You know this … I know this … stop fighting me because I see you shaking your head and denying it … and read on.

How do I figure all of this? We all have built-in conclusions in our heads about one another. From the things we’ve seen on the news, from articles we’ve read and from other sources in our lives. These conclusions become ‘racist’ point of views when you use those conclusions against the progression of another race based on what you think. Then you have people who just don’t know what the hell is going on and don’t feel either way, wondering what all the hubbub is about? Those kinds of people are the worst, in my opinion.

Example: A man who speaks well is looking for a job and he is interviewed over the phone. The manager says I like how you sound and your faxed resume looks good … come on down, I got a job for you. The BLACK MAN goes to the job to meet the manager, and suddenly there was a mistake. the job is gone and he can’t be hired.

Here’s what some of you are thinking:

‘well, it might have been an honest mistake’.

‘That figures’

“Good for him’

Back in the day, much of all the South believed Blacks were stupid, regardless of the Fredrick Douglas’s of the time. Instead of trying to see that wasn’t the case, they classified them all as just slave material and you know the rest.

If you were White, and had no conclusions either way, and you weren’t a “racist” and didn’t take part in any of the civil rights era ANYTHING, you probably spent most of the time asking “why are those Black people so upset for?” It didn’t affect you, so you couldn’t feel anyone’s pain. That’s ignorant bliss.

The same way many of us sit and watch CNN and the Arab Spring recently (go look it up). What could those turban heads be complaining about? Me? Racist? Noooooo! Just what are they all up in arms about? They got it good with the oil and the world’s tallest tower in Dubai that Tom Cruise jumped off of. What’s the big deal? That’s ignorant bliss.

When white people tell me ‘this has nothing to do with race‘ on particular topics. That’s ignorant bliss.

That kind of thinking is so pervasive, it’s insulting and that is the foundation of this journal entry and when I’m done, you will understand my perspective and frustration with many, MANY people: friend and stranger alike.

Get ready to be offended.

Here we go …

(more…)

19 Apr 2012, Posted by caburkes in Random Crap, 2 Comments Tagged Corey Washes, INCLUDING, PROFESSIONAL, REAL

Maintenance Weekend: Author Corey Burkes Washes His …

(I titled this journal entry this way simply because i look forward to seeing the headline in a google search and all you see is …Corey Washes his …and if you don’t click on it just for clicks-sake, I don’t know what you’ll click.) LOL

Good friend and excellent author Daphine Glenn Robinson has pointed out, in not so many words, that my social presence is crappy (said in a kind, Christian presentation because the woman will not curse. But if she did, I would have heard the REAL deal). My facebook page is a shallow mess. 40 to Go page, come to think of it, is a mess too.

All of it … and me trying to look like a professional author. HA!

My defense: It’s only me here and I’m doing the best I can. Now, because I can read minds (you didn’t know?) I see you saying: “ohh boo-hoo, Corey. I got to do everything myself, too! Do you see me with a sloppy fan page????”

So, this weekend, which will give me an excuse to play with my Ipad in another room away from the computer, I will be focusing on cleaning up my social presence from sea to shining sea. By Monday morning, I’ll be a brand new Online Corey. Even going to add those funky checker-board barcodes on somethings INCLUDING a novel or two.

But first things first … my stuff is dirty and I need to get it all cleaned up and transcend from the hustler of old to the PROFESSIONAL hustler of today.

19 Apr 2012, Posted by caburkes in Random Crap, 0 Comments

Idea Reminder

A friend of mine emailed me and I was pleasantly reminded this morning (or tragically reminded, depending on how you look at it), of an idea that I created back in 2006. I created a website, which basically was just a photo gallery using one of the off the shelf php photo gallery platforms, for people to upload photos they take with their cellphones. Basically, the idea at the time was to showcase cell phone photos as ‘art’. Random photos people take while out and about, upload it and showcase it on the site. I told a few people about it, uploaded a few photos of my own from my camera but it was hard to catch on and I let it go. Plus the off-the shelf gallery program wasn’t the easiest thing to use if I were to get many other people to upload. I think I used Galleria or something. In fact, I remember someone telling me that it won’t work “And people will not like putting their business online like that.”. Mind you, this is before Facebook took off also. Odd, when MySpace was going strong … I don’t know. Some people just refuse to have ‘vision’, even when there are similar things that  … oh, never mind. I think I even called it ‘Cellulart” or “Cell”-something. I forget.

Anyway, here we are in 2012 … today, it’s called Instagram, which went live in 2010. Sold for billions in 2012.

No, I don’t think any robbery or anything. That wouldn’t be right at all. My idea didn’t utilize cellphone technology directly and was really a base prototype. Cell phone photography usage was a no-brainer to me, at the time, and it was just a matter of time before someone scooped up that idea, which is why I put it out there as fast as I could. What i needed at the time was programming skills.

The point is, I feel I was justified and the idea could have worked, obviously.

What this does for me is justify a few other ideas I have and helps me bend them a bit so I think in the right terms to make them work for me.

18 Apr 2012, Posted by caburkes in Random Crap, 0 Comments Tagged Butta Worldwide, LOL, Storyboarding Demo Reel

What’s is he doing?

He (me) is doing the following:

1. Finalizing a workable workflow between Daz 3D Studio 4, 3DS Max and MotionBuilder to create characters, skinned and boned properly and animated with a return back to 3DS Max. All for the cause of animation.
2. Partially into the next Leslie Road Detective Mystery Short Story to follow Toasted!. 
3. Partially finished the video tutorial detailing how I do a book cover from start to finished. It’s really just an overview
4. Walkthru #1 of the Butta‘:Worldwide edits almost complete
5. Photography of Tiffany tonight for face mapping for animation (Demo Reel). I’ll have to wait till Aaron and Sariya show up during the summer.
6. Writing 40 To Go novel
7. Staging “I Got A Man” animation for DesktopEpics Storytellers.
8. Storyboarding Demo Reel
9. Storyboarding 40 To Go Book Trailer.

17 Apr 2012, Posted by caburkes in Random Crap, 0 Comments Tagged LOL, TV

Packing For The End

As we get older, or at least for me, I start questioning ‘death’ like I was planning for a vacation sometime in the probable future.

A trip that I don’t necessarily work daily to get to, nor think about packing for, but every now and then I remember it’s a trip my ticket is already paid for with no returns and the date is blurry. Every now and again, I try to see the date in a better light without success. I know there is a date there… that much I’m certain, but I can’t really make out the numbers. Maybe it’s an 11 … or a six. Who knows.

That’s a reality we all have to consider. The great guarantee in life: death. Not taxes, because not everyone pays their taxes and have successfully gone far and long without doing it. Ask a republican. They may also have the secret to cheating death too!

I don’t regret what I wrote regarding my mother. I’ve been writing too long and too confidently to proclaim what I wrote was something i didn’t mean. No. I meant every word and stand by them. I just wish I had things differently; lived life differently, where I could have ended our strife with a significant amount of money to get her out of her situation and shut her up, succeeded in my goals to be a ‘good son’ and let her age gracefully debt free.

Rest assured, I do have other regrets:

I regret I wasn’t ‘successfully’ writing earlier. I regret I wasn’t as obsessed to get here that I’ve alienated friends and family. I regret that I’ve ruined lives along the way. I regret meeting people who have ruined my life. So on and so forth.

No, not a pity party. Insightful reasoning. We can talk all the hardcore ‘get up and start walking’ jazz all we want, but I think this era lost it’s ability to stop and think deeply. Everything must be fast. Articles online must be short and quick. Web series must be brief. Everyone is acknowledging the short attention span and they feed into it by giving the short attention span even less to think about.

Long drawn out thinking of anything more than 120 characters is not recommended in this day and age. As you know, I travel a road written by me so if I decide to change the way things are done, that is what must be done. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … a good story is like fine wine and MUST be told at it’s pace NOT the readers inability to keep up or slow down. You don’t write for the stupid … you write to enhance the stupid otherwise they will not learn or think from anything written.

How that connects to anything is the last regret: that I could actually NOT succeed in achieving personal career goals before, say, my mother passes; canceling my opportunity to prove to her once and for all I’m not who she thinks I am. Ahh, but to even care would mean I not trying to reason that I will NEVER be approved by her.

Death, however, shakes all reasoning and, likely, at that time, I’ll never have a chance to say or do anything anyway for her. Then all of the ‘you should have said this and that when she was alive”. Well friends, I said this, that and the other thing multiple times and it wasn’t being received.

No, nothing happened recently. Well, I had a bizarre dream earlier. Very disturbing. A neighbor was going through some domestic situation. Neighbors I didn’t know. I was being told to get away from the situation and come inside, but for some reason I stayed to see if I can help. The wife of the neighbor was out int he back chasing her kids inside and she was mad. She snapped some wood in two and was screaming. I saw the husband and nodded at him and asked if everything was okay. The people around me was concerned that he had a gun but i didn’t see it. The rest of the dream had me running and chased by dogs and the husband ended up having a gun and he was shooting at me … or at least in my direction but I couldn’t tell while I was running. But I knew dogs were chasing me and I climbed this fence, but on the other side was a yard full of dogs and the fence I was on was bending terribly.

Naturally I woke up. But something about this dream is sticking with me. Do I want to say a message? Who knows. from who? Why and what cause. None of the players, except one or two in the dream, had any meaning to me. I don’t own a dog and I didn’t know the neighbors. But I can say this … the wife of the neighbor was cute (lol) and something was telling me there was some impression of the husband thought she was cheating with me … but not really. More like he thought she was cheating and ANY man was a suitable target.

I do have one family friend in mind that roughly overlaps this scenario. They are divorcing even as we speak and he’s a cop. Plus they fit the ‘I know them but don’t really know them’ bill.

Hmm. It’s times like this when I start creeping myself out. The kids are sleeping and the house is quiet. No music or TV and I get this overhwhelming feeling like someone is looking over my shoulder as I write. I’ve practically turned my head to see a few time now. Very unsettling. Let me throw on SOME sort of background noise. LOL. Alarms on in the house so I’m good.

This sort of journal entry easily gets the ‘random crap’ category.

For the record, I don’t dream often and when I do it’s usually something that comes to pass within a 6 month to a year and I either remember it with no record of proof that I dreamed it a year prior … or I forget it and it feels like Déjà vu.

This one is sticking pretty hard. Almost remember every action and voice.

Officially got the heebie jeebies and just wait till I start writing that horror/scary novel before October.

ugh … enough of these bleak journal entries.