Well kids, this is quite a hole we've dug ourselves.  How do we get out of it?  Can we get out of it?  Apparently, MTV owns us... Can we ever break free from their ever-tightening vice?  I guess we would have to want to break free first... But who wants that these days?  It seems like we're quite content in our safety bubble of new fads, materialism, and possibly the biggest case of "Keeping up with the Jones'" since the 50's.  I think music's slowly starting to disappear, and I think it's taking respect for women with it.  My boyfriend's friend said something very interesting the other day... how hip-hop's going down the drain, and how it won't be long until rappers run out of things to rap about... everything there is to be done has pretty much been done, and now people are getting repetative, lazy, and uninteresting.  "That's what happened to rock and roll... everything's been done.  Nobody's bringing anything new.  That's what's gonna happen to hip-hop soon."  I couldn't agree more.  I'm not saying that it isn't possible to save hip-hop, cuz it definitely is.  I've heard some amazing underground artists that still rap about what hip-hop was originally used for: creation of social change, and social justice.  Some artists even rap about love still (love?  what the hell's that?  didn't that die with motown?) Still, they're underground artists, and they'll probably stay underground.  As much as people like the exclusiveness of being underground hip-hop fans, and equate going mainstream with selling out, would it be so bad if these artists' messages, ideas, and talents emerged from the darkness to shine a different light on the cage that's been built for us?  Sure it's big, and decorated with pop-stars, bling, gorgeous women who are more than willing to shake that ass at the drop of a hat... and there's plenty of things to do in it, like watch t.v. shows of guys being obnoxious, girls getting in cat-fights with each other, guys and girls dating, backstabbing, raiding each other's rooms, and "going wild".  With all these distractions... we forget, and some don't even realize, that we're even in a cage.  What's gonna snap us out of it?  How do we wake up? 
Maybe women would be a good place to start... I think we've been manipulated the most.  We're degraded every day in music, on t.v., and often in person... are we even known as women anymore?  I'm pretty sure that word has been replaced by other words like "bitches" and "hoes".  I hate how we're represented as sex objects that are just kind of available for guys if they want us.  What kind of role models do we have to look up to?  The ones we see on t.v. and in music videos?  The same old tanned, flat stomach, blond haired/streaked girls who look like they're starving and need to go eat a hamburger from Carl's Jr.'s?  Or the sex goddesses stripping down to their bikini's and thongs dancing around and being treated like trophees, or some new clothes that you can rock hella clean for one day and then put em back in the closet, ready to wear again whenever a guy chooses.  So what would happen to the music industry if we chose not to listen, buy, or support any music that exploited or degraded women?  Oh goodness, what the hell would rappers rap about?  What would happen to MTV??? "And since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman, and our game from a woman, I wonder why we take from our women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women?  I think it's time to kill for our women, time to heal our women, be real to our women.  And if we don't, we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies."

One last thing to vent about... this new immigration bill thing that's been all over the news recently... I think it's a classic example of how our government deals with its problems; they find a quick-fix solution that usually ends up backfiring over time... we push things under the rug until we finally sweep it up and throw it out, or buy a bigger rug.  Instead of focusing on the source of the problem, (immigration) ((people are afraid of immigrants now))  (((apparently they're bad people who are stealing our jobs))) ANYWAY.  This bill is obviously focused on Mexican immigrants, and instead of working with the Mexican government on what can be done to prevent the DESIRE for such a large amount of immigrants to come illegally into our country, and instead of working towards increasing wages for jobs that our own citizens won't take, we seem to think that increasing the number of minorities in our prisons is a better solution.  I guess we're not concerned that people are still going to want to immigrate illegally into our country, no matter what the cost, because the possibility of escaping poverty and providing for a family will always outweigh any consequences of that pursuit. 
One of the most RIDICULOUS and IGNORANT things I've seen as far as a reaction to this pending immigration bill is this mini-militia group based out of Arizona, called Minutemen.  It's a group of regular citizens who are fed up with the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S., so they're taking matters into their own hands to help the border patrol.  They pretty much sit in their lawn chairs near the border of Mexico, and if they see anyone trying to cross the border illegally, they inform border patrol.  That's all fine and dandy, but here's where I get pissed off: THEY'RE CARRYING GUNS!  WHY!?!?!?!?  Their excuse is for self defense purposes.  DEFENSE FROM WHAT!?!??! The poverty-stricken immigrants who are armed with the clothes on their backs, women, and children?????  The Minutemen refuse to call themselves a militia... they believe that they're more like a neighborhood watch program... but I've never seen or heard of a neighborhood watch program that carries guns, ready to shoot intruders.  I can only imagine how that idea started... It probably began at one of the meetings when some trigger-happy gun-o-philiac raised his hand and said, "WE COULD ALL CARRY GUNS!!!" to which people harmoniously replied with much hootin and hollerin.  What better excuse is there to carry a gun?  "Be veeee-wee veeee-wee quiet!  I'm hunting immigwents."  WOW. 
Alright, that's quite enough.  I'm out.  "So will the real men get up.  I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up." 

--Arisela "Sneaky Bandita" Hernandez

short, sweet, n simple.  i'm on cloud 9, cuz i kissed the guy of my dreams last night.