The G-Code (According to Me)

Because some people can't tell the difference between being tough and being an idiot.

I recently watched the news story about 13 people being shot on  the Southside of Chicago, and it got me to think about the fact that there is a lot of confusion over the title of a gangster (other names: the man, real nigga, etc.). It seems everyone is infatuated with being one, whether it be Al Capone, The Triads, the Yakuza's, the Bloods and Crips, or Russian/Italian Mobs.  This has inspired me to come up a 'code', if you will, of my own regarding the 'hood life. Now keep in mind, I'm talking to mostly my fellow mahogany brothers and sisters, but it can also apply to anyone else. Here it is: the G-Code, according to me.

RULE #1: Subtlety is strongly encouraged.

I don't know about you, but everyone that I see throwing up gang signs and such on camera, I almost want to facepalm and cuss them out (or worse), especially when they go so far as to burn wads of cash to prove how 'gangster' they are. Honestly, if I had a gun around them, as soon as the camera was turned off, I would have shot every single last one of them. I'm not saying that I'm the toughest guy in the world, but at the same time, how could you be so stupid? Whyyyyyyyy would you burn all the cash that you just earned? That's everyone's rent for easily the next 9 months. Real gangsters don't recklessly put themselves out there because they know that cops watch these type of videos. If you're going to do all of that, you may as well hold up a sign saying 'ARESST ME' with all of your contact information.

Consider the Colombo Crime Family. They've been able to survive for almost 75 years. Why? Because they do everything under the table. Do you what a Colombo looks like? Exactly. Take the hint and keep it on the down low. In the words of Scarface (the rapper):

...But real gangsta-ass niggas don't flex nuts
Cause real gangsta-ass niggas know they got em...

-Geto Boys, "Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta"

If they can attract less attention than you, that's a problem.

Or, like how Denzel Washington puts it....

RULE #2: Get some aim./Don't ever shoot in the 'gangsta' style. EVER.

One the saddest things in the world is a woman, child, teenager, or other innocent bystander gets hit by a stray bullet. Tragedies like that can draw tears from rocks. Nothing makes you feel worse in your community than to hear about the sweet old lady down the street or the beautiful, smart high school girl being a victim of someone else's carelessness. So, because it is so devastating, under my code, you are required to be able hit a human-sized target from at least 50 yards away. I am so sick of innocent people getting killed because some dudes can't hit the broad side of a barn. Or, as Nas explains it:

 ...I had to school him, told him don't let niggas fool him,

Cause when the pistol blows the one that's murdered be the cool one, 

Tough luck when niggas are struck, families fucked up,

Coulda caught your man, but didn't look when you bucked up, 

Mistakes happen, so take heed, 

Never bust up at the crowd catch him solo, 

Make the right man bleed...

-One Love

He further talks about this dilemma in his song Accident Murderers. The point that he makes (and the same point that I am making) is that you aren't 'hard' just because you blast a gun. You're only hard when you know how, when, and where to use a gun. You also don't have to use guns if you don't want to. True gangstadom is not determined by whether or not you use a gun. Like what Posdnuos said:

...Gun control means using both hands in my land....

-Stakes is High

Another way to stop these coincidental killings are to quit shooting pistols in the gangsta style. You may look cool, but you aren't going to hit anybody shooting like that. Anybody who continues to shoot like that will be shot themselves.

This is all of Garo Yepremian's blunders in the form of a hoodlum.

Oh, and in drive-by's, make the shooter has to hit a moving target with just three bullets. It makes no sense to roll by in a van and spray a hail of gunfire knowing that you hit everyone except the intended target.

RULE #3: Don't ever seek out trouble.

This is the biggest issue in differentiating the gangsters from the wannabes. However, I think I've found a way to do so. Let's take a look at the classic gangster film A Bronx Tale. 

Remember the bar fight scene that the local Italians had with the biker gang?

And remember the main character's (Calogero) friends beating up Blacks riding by on their bikes?

And remember what happened when they insisted on going into the Black neighborhood with Molotov cocktails?

That's the difference between real gangsters and wannabes. Wannabes look for trouble. They sniff it out like a heat-seeking missile. Gangsters don't start trouble, they deal with it accordingly. Know the difference.

Rule #4: Take responsibility for your actions.

This is perhaps the most controversial, due  to the whole "no snitching" policy. You should know the consequences of your actions. You shouldn't be surprised if someone calls the police because you are warring with a rival gang across town and things get physical all of a sudden. Therefore, if you blame someone else for your slip-ups, then you're not really being 'hood', you're just being a bitch-made thug who is hiding behind an illusion.  Anyone can do that. Not saying you should tell on yourself, but at the same time, don't try to intimidate other people into keeping their mouths shut who are outside of your circle. Now on the other hand, if someone in your circle rats you out to the cops (especially after both of you guys get arrested), then you can call that snitching (in which case, killing or beating them is perfectly justified). 

A fake thug's worst nightmare.

Rule #5: Control your emotions.

First off, don't listen to this guy, because he will get you killed and have you lying in a dumpster somewhere. It's quite alright to show how you feel, just don't go overboard with it. If you have paranoia, passion, or anything else that you would like to get off of your chest, do it in a constructive manner. You can't be as effective as you would like to be if you're an emotional wreck all of the time.

Like this guy.

Nothing wrong with a few tears, but it shouldn't get to the point where you seem as if you've been watching Lifetime movies for five days straight.

Rule #6: Be smart.

This is the most ironic, yet most obvious rule that gangsters should abide by. A little common sense and good judgement never brought the biggest crime bosses down (not immediately, at least). Simply put, having intellect is what makes the difference between being notorious and being notoriously stupid. 

The key to "runnin' thangs".

Rule #7: Keep your finances together.

Al Capone, Frank Lucas, among others, were able to become very rich men because they have a business mentality to their street life. Even if you don't "make something" of yourself, know ways to keep your money flowing in. Invest. Read books about money. Shadow people who know how to 'stack their paper'. Why do you think Jay-Z was able to get so rich?

By not always doing this.

Conclusion:

Do I think that this will stop all crime immediately? No. However, I do think that this will make 'thuggin'' more efficient for all parties involved and will create a lot less collateral damage for the rest of us. Instead of being brainless brutes, one can make a come-up (albeit illegal) from the environment that they are in. Remember, often times the smartest person in the room doesn't have any 'official' education, as many gangster rappers have proven.

Dear TMZ.......

A rant inspired by YouTuber xlNowhereManlx

Dear TMZ....*clears throat*.....F**K YOU!!!

TMZ, I once used to enjoy watching your show on television. It was funny, original, and creatively improvised. It was the perfect show to watch on a late Friday night if I needed a few laughs. However, one day I started to get bored of your repetitive show and realized that a large portion (100%) of your show consisted of following celebrities around, reporting generally uninteresting information and trying to put a comedic spin on everything in order to gain ratings, unless it was in the case of celebrities having to endure publicly-aired embarrassments. You guys would also borderline stalk (stalk the hell out of) the usual celebrities such as Perez Hilton, Alec Baldwin, and Brittney Spears and actually have the nerve to be 'surprised' when they lash out at you guys. The question I have for you guys is this: why do you guys feel like we have to know about all of this?

Seriously, why do we need to know about whether or not Perez Hilton went to McDonald's, or if Justin Beiber is driving a new car, or if Rihanna is getting a new tattoo? how is it having an impact on me? Questions like these have caused me to come to the conclusion that your program is nothing more than one huge hemorrhoid on the big, wrinkly anus that is the majority of American Pop culture. You guys are 10 times more annoying than that stupid orange and 10 times bigger dickriders than even the most avid teenage YMCMB fans. If you guys aren't going to give some helpful advice to these same celebrities, please shut the fuck up. This is not a 'leave Brittany alone message' or any of that nonsense, but rather, it is what I feel is necessary criticism for you and your media. This is why you truly don't deserve any sympathy when your paparazzi attacked by an overly egotistical Rap artist or by anyone else who feels annoyed by your presence.

I would have done the exact same thing.

The cruel irony here is the fact that you guys are obsessed with what someone else is doing 24/7, yet when someone does a study on musical tastes and SAT scores, you have the nerve to mock them. Really? That's like Jabba the Hut making fat jokes. I bet some of you are probably going through very dire financial situations, but are too busy butting into everyone else's personal life to, you know, take care of your priorities.

In the end, however, all your programming really does is serve as a mindless distraction, nothing but another hemorrhoid on the wrinkly anus that is the majority of American Pop culture. If you continue on this path, I will feel no sympathy for you if you were to end up either getting charged for stalking or have yourselves end up like this due to a celebrity's anger:

    

Heed the warning and (again) either a) give some helpful advice, b) shut up, or c) be like a virgin bird, and simply not give a flying fuck.

Sincerely,

Kev



Necessary Harshness

Things about our society that are summed up best with some cold, hard truth.

Commercialism & Capitalism:

-From the Cracked article The 5 Stupidest Lies Advertisers Expect You to Believe:

...Halloween is probably the worst time of year for it, though. Every local commercial is some dumbass auto dealership owner stuttering out monotone puns like "ghouls and boys." Or a furniture store with idiots in generic costumes, dancing around while the narrator tells you about their "spooktacular" savings... 

-From the Ezinearticles.com article The Truth About Capitalism:

 ...As students, we were brought up to believe the United States was a "Democracy." That we were supposedly a "pluralistic society" or (a belief in power). We were taught the "working class" had a say-so in elections and that power was widely distributed. This, however, is a myth. The fact is, power is held by only a few (an oligarchy). The elites in this oligarchy hold the power in big business and government offices and are not for the interest of the common people or "working class" whether it be health care, a good education, enough to eat, affordable housing etc...these elites or "owning class" are out for profit and will use the "working class" by paying low wages, outsourcing, cutting benefits, anything to make profits soar....

...These elites are not necessarily the rich alone. It is made up of what C.W. Mills coined the "Military-Industrial Complex" where there are three different groups of cooperating elites:
The Corporate or Business Elites - Which comprise of rich people with connections to corporations, CEOs, stockholders, people with big salaries. People like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Nike founder Phil Knight.
Next are the Political Elites - President, Congress, Senators, Speaker of the House and Governors (who decide what government does on a more local basis).
Then there are the Military Elites - Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals, and Heads of Services, basically, the "Brass of the Military".
All of these elites are connected to one another. The corporate elites lobby for the political elites to gain clout, change or make forced government decisions through lobbying and giving large amounts of money to political parties. And the military elites cooperate with corporate and political elites to gain prestige and hopefully be gainfully employed or somehow very well compensated once their term in the military is up. They sometimes act as spokesmen for corporate elites and/or gain seats in government administrations...

 
Literature:

-From the article 4 Famous Authors and Their Hip-Hop Equivalents:

...There's no point to this article. I'm not saying that writers are dead and rappers are running the literary world. I'm not trying to objectively argue that hip-hop is the new, like, "books," or whatever. There's no profound statement, here. Sometimes, if you spend enough time in libraries listening to rap music on your iPod, you notice a bunch of strange similarities, and even though you know these connections are just utterly meaningless coincidences and nothing more; you still want to share them with somebody. But of course there's no grand cosmic reason that several prominent American authors have bizarrely specific parallels in American hip-hop ...

... Unless there totally is...

Paparazzi:

-From the CNN.com article Why Paparazzi Are Wrong:

...They're totally out of control. It is crazy to have packs of people, whose full-time, quote, job, is to get the most embarrassing photo they can of a celebrity. How would you like to have a camera two inches away from your face, where the ... the stalkerazzi is daring you to push ... be pushed away? ...
Somebody's going to get seriously injured or killed in a car accident unless something is done about these car chases. That is the single worst thing about the abuse of these stalkerazzis, and it's got to stop. Can you imagine driving up or down the Hollywood Hills and having a team of ... desperate lunatics, one behind you, one in front of you, who are cutting you off purposely, playing chicken on the Hollywood Hills? It's dangerous. ...
Lindsay Lohan almost did get killed by some lunatic that purposely rammed her car. I mean, what kind of behavior is that?...

Medicine:

-From the Menshealth.com article The Truth About Prescription Drugs:

“Most people don’t realize that to garner FDA approval, a drug company only has to show the medication is better than nothing and the benefit outweighs harm,” says study co-author, Steven Woloshin, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. “The initial studies are also often conducted over a short period of time—usually 6 months.”
Take, for example, the sleep aid Lunesta. While it’s been proven to help people fall asleep faster than if they’d taken a placebo, it only helped folks snooze 15 minutes faster, Dr. Woloshin says. Yep. And those who took the drug experienced side effects, like feeling drowsier the next day.

-From the Rodalenews.com article The Truth About Prescription Drugs:

...How much do you think the prescription drugs you take help you? Chances are, you’re giving them too much credit. Most people assume medications work better than they do—and worse, the average person isn’t aware of a drug’s limited benefits—New Hampshire researchers recently found...

4 Most Overrated Things in Life (to Me)

Taking a look at some of the things that I feel are given way too much credit and/or attention.

1) Reality TV

What your TV should say.

I don't know about you, but I am sick of seeing shows that try to show the 'drama' and 'partying' behind the lives of celebrities and others whom we pay too much attention to. It's especially disheartening when you realize that national singing competitions  really don't do anything except give the winner short-lived fame, like this guy. Also, there's no use in calling a show 'reality' if it really isn't. Am I right? Only good reality shows I can think of are these three. The majority of reality shows are just conjured-up nonsense with predictable and idiotic "twists" to the storyline. The fact that we are still willing to watch them is very disturbing.



Some of the best commentary you'll ever see.

2) Religion/Athiesm

Oh so much confusion.

This one is the toughest one for people to accept is ultimately, since it involves a person's spirituality. It was initially hard for me to accept too, since I used to be a Chrisitan. But let's be honest, the word religion, from the Latin root word religo, which means to bind, restrain, or tie back. This is the reason why, if you really get to the root of it, religion is one big scam. The Bible is actually just African spiritual texts decorated with lies, which is why it's so controversial. Religious figures themselves really didn't aim to be a source of worship, so why would we worship them? Would you worship Dr. Martin Luther King? How about Malcolm X? Warren Buffet?

The religious elites are banking on the fact that you are a very spiritually and historically ignorant individual, which is why they can get away with filling your head with lies. Look at David Koresh, for example. People followed him without thinking for themselves, and they ended up paying for it with their lives.

Don't let leave out atheists, who are just as foolish as the people they make fun of. The truth is, God exists, just not as a deity. So the next time you walk away from someone handing out religious pamphlets, don't accept anything from an atheist either. They're both wrong.

3) Celebrity Gossip News & Culture

Wait....we're supposed to care about this stuff?

Oh, celebrity gossip, how unnecessary you truly are. I feel no sympathy for people who get in trouble for bothering the heck out of famous people. "But they ask for it when they get famous!" you might say. And to that, I say this. No amount of fame should excuse what is basically legalized stalking. If you truly feel that way, then either switch places with them, or do something more productive with your time.

Look, I sometimes wonder about what my favorite rappers are doing. But, at the same time, I'm not going to stalk them about. I hope I can meet them in person, maybe even hang out sometime. But that doesn't excuse creepy, obsessive behavior, like what Eminem once addressed. If you continue to basically be a stalker, then you deserve everything that happens to you. If still insist on being obsessed anyway, then *cue song hook*. Just don't expect any sympathy from me.

Who's up for a complete waste of time?

4) Euro-centrism/Western Civilization

This should throw up some red flags about what we're being taught in school.

...99% of my life I was lied to...

 Eminem, "My Name Is"... 

As some people have pointed out, why exactly are we only concerned with what goes on in European and/or European-controlled nations? Why do we have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world countries in the first place?

onereenchanter 4 years ago

I hear you'd like to change a few things if you could. As it is we are paying with our lives as our collective activities poison and destroy the planet that sustains us. As a culture we seem to have the words profit and exploitation confused. Profit should mean a real positve value is created from an activity not a transferrence of suffering as when someone or something is carelessly exploited. We have granted rights to corporate entities that actually operate against or own best interests as Human Beings and citizen's Democracy. I don't think waiting for the government or corporations to change is a good strategy, more like we are the government and we need to be working on a better way to live together. I' support a system of work-study or community service-study that continues or opened up peoples' opportunity to educate, experience and integrate a good path for themselves to sucede. This would be a continuation of public education I say we build less weapons to pay for. That's one idea. 

Living in a culture, ie. western civilization, that has proved no understanding of how Human Beings can live in peace or even sustainably on this Earth for the past several thousand years, suggests good advice is hard to come by, especially from one of its institutions. Since cultures are "our stories of who we are, what we do and why we do it", everyone should learn who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it. The less you know about yourself the more likely you'll be railroaded down a path for someone elses benefit. 

We all have a great deal of power and rights as citizens to change the framework of our culture. The trouble is most people don't learn (and certainly those in control of the system don't teach) the understandings and principles that frame our system of government, or our rights, or where we lost our rights. 

Start with The Declaration of Independence, "very inspiring", and The Constitution of the United States of America. I must admit I have not read the whole Constitution line by line, funny how that was never part of my formal public education. But I have read through it enough to be a trouble maker if someone's trying to pull the wool over my eyes. This is free at the library. That's good for becoming wise and knowledgible AND STAYING OUT OF DEBT.
Everyone needs to "Know thyself" and learn the real way we are going to have to live on our planet and with each other, to hand any kind of a livable future to our children.

 -"The College Lie!", Hubpages.com

I talked about this somewhat in depth when I published my previous article. A lot of what we have been made to believe about human nature, the purpose of economics, the functions of the universe, and other cultures is based off of a fantasy and not what really goes on. This has been documented by not only people living outside of and/or opposed to this system, but also by people who are living or have lived inside this same exact system. This is why I will personally rely on  information shared from someone such as Romany Malco's alter-ego named Tijuana Jackson, rather than a news organization that is well-spoken but is largely full of crap. If you don't believe that, just look at this Yahoo article.

I remember a scene I saw in the classic miniseries Roots in which Captain Thomas Davies exchanged conversation between him and one of the men who was a part of the slave trade. He said something that struck me. When asked if he wanted his pockets (or purse) full (maybe it was the other way around?), he said something like:

Do you think we're the ones really being put in chains by this [slavery]?

Yeah, that sounds about right. I think that perfectly sums it up.





Further reading:
http://realhistoryww.com/