Dear Ndugu...The Gradillas/Tumlinson Voyage to Belize

Here is the lastest video, this time of our trip to Belize. I have 2 hours of footage and tried to chop it into 5 mins. Not easy to do. In any event, I hope you like it.

NOTE: You can watch this video with HD on or off. Try it in HD but if it is too choppy you will have to click "HD OFF" on the upper right side of the screen (usually because you have an old video card. Good Luck!)

Belize 07 --- PASSWORD IS "nesto".
http://www.vimeo.com/604914

Dear Ndugu...A turtle named Turbo

Some people have been asking me to put up a new video. The only one I have done is one that I don't particularly want to show because I think it (unintentionally) comes off as inconsiderate of Anna. (One of Anna's desert tortoises, Turbo, was killed by my parent's dogs.) It is a video I was using to practice editing with some new software I have. It's very complicated and takes a lot of time to get all the basic techniques down, so I was using the "turtle" video as my test footage. In any event, here is my next video - again, mainly used for testing, not to make anyone feel bad.

This one also has a password - "nesto". It is a HUGE file, so I recommend clicking on the video and waiting for like 5 minutes for it to completely load before hitting play or else you will get a lot of the start and stop action of streaming video. (For those with good computers, you can click "HD on" inside the viewing area.

Here is the link:

Tortoise

Dear Ndugu....the elk bugle. (Revised)

So, I got a new HD camera. I am completely lost on how to get the HD capture to my computer exactly right. But, here is a small video (not in HD) that is my trial run at this video thang. This video, like many more to come, will be at one of my family member's expense. You will need a password to watch, it is "nesto". Please let me know if it doesn't work.

This is the extended cut, so if you saw the first one, here is more.

http://www.vimeo.com/368573

Dear Ndugu... Google Me or: How my sister turned into Joseph Goebbels

Post deleted due to request of Madeline.

Dear Ndugu - The Literati Code

The term "literati" means Men of Letters. I suspect there are people that walk around this earth calling themselves literati, or even better, include themselves in a social class called the "literati". Kinda like the "crips" or "Trekkies". Regardless, I assume if you were ever to come across a member of that outfit and mentioned that you LOVED the last Harry Potter book or thought Stephen King's "The Stand" is the Great American Novel, they'd ask you to shut the fuck up (albeit politely) and carry on monologues about the anti-social themes predonimant within many of Wharton's final works.

Some years ago, while visiting my cousin in California, I was looking at the many books in his bookshelf. Several of them were famous pieces of literature I recognized in name only but had never read. A slight sense of shame fell over me where I felt like I missed out somewhere. I SHOULD have read these books at some point but never did. Clearly my parents and the public school system had failed me.

So, I went looking on the net for book lists...like the "Top 50 Books Of All Time" type of stuff. I found plenty. The problem I discovered early on was that most of these lists were made up by Hobbit-nerds where the "best" book was either "Lord Of the Rings", "Ender's Game", or "Dune". And while all three are good books, I was looking for more of a literati-nerd list.

And then I came across the granddaddy of all lists. It is list of books released by Georgia State University that cites 201 novels and short stories from which English PHD students are required to read a portion of. Here is a link to the list:

The List

So, instead of just reading some of the novels and some of the short stories, I decided to read them all. It will take me some time, but I have made a pretty good dent in the list so far. I am 53% through the Required Novels, 32% through the Elective Novels, and 24% through the Short Fiction. A few of observations:

Pound for pound the short stories are better than the novels. I assume it's because the short format forces the author to get to the point quicker than in a 500 page novel. I don't know, but the majority of the short stories are fantastic. I have had a difficult time tracking a lot of them down, but they are out there. Tops on my "favorite" list are:

1) Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" - a complete misdirection leads us from a typical teenage angst story to a creepy pedophile vs teenager tale.

2) Capote's "A Christmas Memory" - Required reading for anyone that has a grandmother. It's worth the effort to track this down.

3) Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" - A story about a man who remembers the greatest period of his life (the Roaring 20's) and how it was also the most destructive. Fitzgerald, like Steinbeck and Salinger, just "gets it".

4) And the BEST of them all (and its not even close) is Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" about a platoon of men in Vietnam. Not your typical Nam story. It is one story in a novel comprised of short stories, each one about a different character in the book. Find it. Read it.

Too many other stories are so good as well..it would take me too long to list them all. But if you get a chance to read some of them, I can't recommend them enough.

As far as the novels go, some are hit and miss. If you don't like a particular style, you can end up reading complete bullshit for 6 days. (Virginia Woolfe's "To the Lighthouse" is so effing bad that I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.) But, the good ones...well...the good ones are truly moving. They are better than any play, movie, video game, television show, etc.

Here is a quick list of my top novels from this list so far:

1)Maxwell's "So Long See You Tomorrow" - It's perfect.

2)Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" - It may change you.

3)McCarthy's "All The Pretty Horses" - Don't let the crappy title fool you.

4)Morrison's "Beloved" - A Slave/ghost story.

5)Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - The ultimate of the anti-establishment stories.

In any event, Im glad I started this project, I have read many great authors and stories. Hopefully you look on the list and maybe pick out a couple of books you might like. More than likely, you will be satisfied. Perhaps, one day, I may bump into a member of the literati and point out that while Joyce got it wrong, Steinbeck got it right, Austen overdid it, and Faulkner underdid it the Great American Novel is STILL "The Stand". One can hope.

Dear Ndugu...White Noise in White America!!

I havent written in a while because a lot has been goin on in my life (mi vida, for my faithful hispanic readers). The middle sister, Anna, is getting married in September to a guy by the name of Alex Tumlinson. And while I obviously wish them both the VERY best on their marriage and their upcoming move to Wales, I have to say I will have a hard time referring to Anna as a Tumlinson instead of a Gradillas. I havent looked up the roots of the name Tumlinson but wasn't the fawn from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe named Tumlinson? Very cool.

Second, I received a promotion at work. I am now a Systems Analyst which may not mean a whole lot to you...but I'm quite thrilled with it. More money more responsibility yada yada yada.

Thirdly, the last sister, Madeline, just bought her first house. She has for the longest time been very fond of downtown Tucson and has lived down there for a few years now. I for one don't even know the difference between Congress St or Grande St. Regardless, she bought her house in Barrio Hollywood which my gradfather (on the Gradillas side) refers to as the place where the "bad" mexicans live.

I obviously don't know the diff between the barrios but all things being equal I don't really have any desire to live in any kind of "barrio". I mentioned this to a co-worker and she made the allusion that I may be closet racist. I told her that was preposterous and asked if she would please pass the grits. (Im not racist, I just don't like Tucson's downtown.)

This brings me to the main point of my blog entry. I have recently done something REALLY weird which may seem racist but is actually very innocent. I was watching an HBO documentary on dysfunctional and disallusioned white kids in the deep south that were being recruited by a variety of white supremecy groups to join up. One of the main selling points of the featured racist society was a thrash metal band that played white supremecy music. One song, entitled "white america", was honestly kinda catchy. The problem (well, one of them) was that the lyrics to the entire song were just "White America!!!!!!!" over and over again. Pretty simple.

Well, I was sitting at my desk and the song popped into my head and after singing the lyrics in my head, I thought, "Man, they should have added some more lyrics...its really stupid just having 2 words." So, I added 3 more words making the verse "White noise in White America." And for some reason i cant get the damn thing out of my head. I literally will be in the shower humming my remix version of "white america." And its obviously not because the song has any meaning to me but it has just locked into my head like any other stupid songs we get stuck in our brains: "Its a Small World", "In the Jungle the mighty Jungle the lion sleeps tonight", We Are The Champions, "Y.M.C.A." and now "White Noise in White America". Very odd.

Anyway, congrats to the 3 Gradillas kids on their further induction into the binding institutions of our society: Marrige, Corporate America, and Long Term Debt. Keep on Truckin.

Dear Ndugu - artem de comoedia

Mildly bored...here are some funny videos to get a laugh at.

Click here to see why friends should ALWAYS let friends dance drunk.

The next 3 are all fantastic. Enjoy.

Click here to see why old ladies are funnier than you are.

If you thought that was funny, here is one of cops and ducks.

Same idea, this time with UFOs.


Name something you take to the beach.

A true embarassment for Tucson, Arizona.

It's official, I can't have children!

Red Rocket

Dear 8 lb 6 oz baby Jesus.

Rick! Rick! Rick!

Toro Totter.

Random Nacho Libre clips

Dear Ndugu...what I learned today.

"The notion of the Big Bang is quite a recent one. The idea had been kicking around since the 1920s, when Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest-scholar, first tentatively proposed it, but it didn’t really become an active notion in cosmology until the mid-1960s when two young radio astronomers made an extraordinary and inadvertent discovery. Their names were Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.

In 1965, they were trying to make use of a large communications antenna owned by Bell Laboratories at Holmdel, New Jersey, but they were troubled by a persistent background noise—a steady, steamy hiss that made any experimental work impossible. The noise was unrelenting and unfocused. It came from every point in the sky, day and night, through every season. For a year the young astronomers did everything they could think of to track down and eliminate the noise. They tested every electrical system. They rebuilt instruments, checked circuits, wiggled wires, dusted plugs. They climbed into the dish and placed duct tape over every seam and rivet. They climbed back into the dish with brooms and scrubbing brushes and carefully swept it clean of what they referred to in a later paper as “white dielectric material,” or what is known more commonly as bird shit. Nothing they tried worked.

Unknown to them, just thirty miles away at Princeton University, a team of scientists led by Robert Dicke was working on how to find the very thing they were trying so diligently to get rid of. The Princeton researchers were pursuing an idea that had been suggested in the 1940s by the Russian-born astrophysicist George Gamow that if you looked deep enough into space you should find some cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang. Gamow calculated that by the time it crossed the vastness of the cosmos, the radiation would reach Earth in the form of microwaves. In a more recent paper he had even suggested an instrument that might do the job: the Bell antenna at Holmdel. Unfortunately, neither Penzias and Wilson, nor any of the Princeton team, had read Gamow’s paper.

The noise that Penzias and Wilson were hearing was, of course, the noise that Gamow had postulated. They had found the edge of the universe, or at least the visible part of it, 90 billion trillion miles away. They were “seeing” the first photons—the most ancient light in the universe—though time and distance had converted them to microwaves, just as Gamow had predicted.

In his book The Inflationary Universe , Alan Guth provides an analogy that helps to put this finding in perspective. If you think of peering into the depths of the universe as like looking down from the hundredth floor of the Empire State Building (with the hundredth floor representing now and street level representing the moment of the Big Bang), at the time of Wilson and Penzias’s discovery the most distant galaxies anyone had ever detected were on about the sixtieth floor, and the most distant things—quasars—were on about the twentieth. Penzias and Wilson’s finding pushed our acquaintance with the visible universe to within half an inch of the sidewalk.

Still unaware of what caused the noise, Wilson and Penzias phoned Dicke at Princeton and described their problem to him in the hope that he might suggest a solution. Dicke realized at once what the two young men had found. “Well, boys, we’ve just been scooped,” he told his colleagues as he hung up the phone. Soon afterward the Astrophysical Journal published two articles: one by Penzias and Wilson describing their experience with the hiss, the other by Dicke’s team explaining its nature. Although Penzias and Wilson had not been looking for cosmic background radiation, didn’t know what it was when they had found it, and hadn’t described or interpreted its character in any paper, they received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics. The Princeton researchers got only sympathy. According to Dennis Overbye in Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos , neither Penzias nor Wilson altogether understood the significance of what they had found until they read about it in the New York Times .

Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."

From A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.

Dear Ndugu...the Middle Child.

Anna - the middle child - is 2 years younger than I am. We attended the same schools, rode the same busses, had the same teachers, ate the same school lunches. As is common with most siblings growing up close in age, I saw her as a perma-shadow on my youth, something I could never shed no matter how hard I tried to belittle her or make fun of her or criticize her. Often times I felt it was her mission to destroy me or intentionally embarrass me in front of my friends.

Example: When I was in 6th grade at Whitmore Elementary (Go Wildcats!!) and Anna was in 4th, we were required to bring some sort of junk food for our respective class Christmas parties. As we were leaving the house to catch the bus, I had my two-litre Cokes in a grocery bag and Anna had nothing but her backpack.

E- Where's your item?
A- In my backpack.
E- (Pause)
A- (Pause, knowing the inevitable question was coming)
E- What are you bringing?
A- None of your business.
E- Im serious
A- I brought dental floss.
E- I said Im being serious.
A- I am serious, I am bringing dental floss.
E- What is anyone going to do with that!
A- It's the minted kind. They can suck on it. Like candy canes.
E- (Pause)
A- (Pause)
E- MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!

There is a Sedarisian theory that as long as one has a full set of teeth, he or she can move like a chameleon through social cliques and classes. I knew that as soon as Anna handed out dental floss at the Christmas party, I was going to prove that theory wrong. I might as well have gone and found a spot on a curb in front of some Sip-&-Pump and started working on a pack of Salem Lights while picking a banjo.

We did survive our youth. Much of that had to do with the fact that as we got older we both realized Joeseph Goebbels was a gold mine for us to antagonize, place blame, and offload any frustrations. (Anna once launched Goebbels into an entertainment center, shattering her forearm.)

Nevertheless, Anna had to endure a lot of unnecessary cruelty from her older brother. And I think that helped shape how Anna acts today. As many of you know, she is a strong-headed-don't-eff-with-me-tough-SOB. She is the "doer". Once she sets her mind on something, it gets done. You get in her way and she is liable to mule-kick you into the next room (incidentally, another experiment Goebbels got the business end of). For the most part, Goebbels and I tried to avoid serious conflicts with our mom (Anna had many) and we NEVER even entertained the idea of getting into it with my dad (Anna, on the other hand, tried to fistfight him twice - a losing battle for sure, but boy was it ballsy).

Upon getting her Mechanical Engineering degree, she took a job at Boeing in Los Angeles. After making missiles for a few years, she went in the opposite direction and entered the Peace Corp. My mother wanted to sign up as well, to join her daughter on the 2.5 year deployment. My dad immediately put the kibosh on that idea. Granted, his motives were chauvinistic in nature ("Who will take care of the house; who will make me my dinner")but I stood firmly behind my dad's assertions. It was almost like, "Ok, we are prepared to lose Anna...but it will be a cold day in hell before Ma goes ANYWHERE."

Anna did serve in the Peace Corp, exchanging a high paying job for one that didnt pay anything at all. She was placed in Ghana, a sub-Saharan country that is extremely poor. It was an amazing sacrifice she made to help humanity - a sacrifice neither Madeline nor I am capable of. My dad is a doctor, my mother a nurse and a Red Cross employee, Anna financially sponsors Ghanese students to get educations. Madeline and I watch "Lost". We are just hoping Mom, Dad, and Anna have generated enough goodwill with ol' Jesus that they can get us into Heaven on reputation alone. (Well, Madeline isn't baptized so we may have to throw St Pete a couple of hundies to get her through the gates anyway.)

Upon returning to the USA, Anna moved to Tucson and now works for a prominent engineering corporation. She collects turtles. She has a beautiful house. She camps and hikes. She wants to get a dog. She drives a Toyota (FUCK YEAH!!!!!!). And I can't help but think that she owes all of it to the fact she had a pain in the ass older brother growing up.

Dear Ndugu...Friends don't let friends drink Manhattans and Organize X-mas parties.

Since we are just 8 short months away from Christmas, I would like to share with you some of the "Nunn" family holiday traditions. The Nunns are made up of the Nunns, Stejskals, Wests, and Gradillasezez. Typically, we meet the weekend before Christmas in either Tucson or Tempe whereupon my mom's side of the family celebrates X-Mas together. Ususally there is talk of the Arizona/Arizona State football rivalry and the corresponding gag jokes that go along with it. (For example, last year my cousin William produced custom M&Ms that made light of the much concussed and borderline brain damaged Arizona QB Willie Tuituama - all in good fun mind you!!) Each of the siblings gets to host the yearly festivities and in 2005, it was my mother's turn.



One night some weeks earlier, my mother and my Aunt Dotty were throwing back Manhattans and came up with a novel idea. More on that idea in a second as I feel it is necessary to emphasize the Manhattan part. For some years now, my Aunt Dotty has become co-dependant on this alcoholic drink. She sucks them down in volumes that would astound even Boris Yeltsin. As a result, she has become immune to the powerful effects the Manhattan can have on the human brain. So, while she and my mom slammed these beauties down, they came up with a plan to have a "Medieval Themed Christmas." In the weeks to come, both would claim it was the other's idea, but I have a feeling my Aunt Dotty took advantage of my drunken mother. A holiday date rape pill, if you will.




Nevertheless, the plan was set and the family members were informed of the following requirements:

1) You do not talk about Medieval Xmas
2) You do not talk about Medieval Xmas
3) You cannot buy your outfit...it had to be produced on your own. (A rule violated by several members of the West family.)
4) No utensils will be used to eat with, so wash your hands thoroughly.
5) You cannot copy the costume of another family member.

Obviously, there was some initial backlash to the whole idea by the majority of the family but the two sisters held firm. So, I set out to make the greatest costume imaginable. Rumors of other costumes came filtering down through the grape vine: Aunt Dotty - a Jester, Uncle Tom - An executioner, Joseph Goebbels - A blacksmith (LOL...a blacksmith), and a variety of wenches, princes, and peons. I knew I had to come up with something that would out-do them all: A crusader. The problem was the armor. I had no idea how to make some without it looking like a Tin-Foil Man. But, after initial attempts with papier-mache turned out disastrous, I came across a nerd website in which a whole family of nerds was making "elven armor" for their Lord of the Rings fetish. I had hit the jackpot. They were using a product called "Funny Foam." After a few weekends of help from my mom and sister I completed the helmet. Once the helmet was done I knew the helmet WAS the costume. Get a sword and a red cross and no one could top me.




When the day of the party came, I woke up knowing I was going to have the best costume. And while many of my relatives looked fantastic (The executioner was everything we anticipated and my 91 year old grandfather dressed up as Peter Pan was legendary) I soon realized my father had changed tactics from being a king (blah!!) to being the Pope. Most of his costume was made from my leftover Funny Foam scraps. He even made his shoes out of it!!! Anyway, the technique I had stolen was stolen from me and his Pope outdid us all.



Nevertheless, everyone played along...we had an archery contest (for a family full of hunters..the hunters did amazingly poor) and a grog and ale drinking contest (won by my...surprise surprise...Aunt Dotty). Everyone had a good time and we did eat with our hands although we were allowed one knife.




Rumors began floating around of another Themed Christmas (The Wizard of OZ...further proof my Aunt Dotty had masterminded the whole thing) but there wasn't the same buzz about it. You can't recreate that magic more than once. I never got to see Picasso paint, Beethoven compose, or see Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear...but if I HAD...it would have looked a little something like the Nunn Medieval Xmas Party.

Edit: Spelling errors corrected.

Dear Ndugu...Weather on the 8s.

On occasion, when the extended family gets together, we are compelled to play games in which we are divided up on teams. Games like Charades, Pictionary, or any of the many hybrids. Typically, after an hour or so, the competition degenerates into a yelling match where each team would swear in front of a Congressional hearing that the other team has cheated. It is our own little "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!" moment. If you took a poll of the competitiors, by and large most would point to my dad as the main trouble maker. One of my dad's tactics is to tell everyone he isn't going to play and then yell out the answers to questions. The crowd turns on him and he back-peddles saying "I'm sorry I'm sorry ok ok ok." Wash, rinse, repeat.



Well, during one of these episodes, my dad revealed a small glimpse into one of his guilty pleasures. My sisters and I were playing a game on the computer "You don't know Jack." It is a Jeopardy type format but the questions are typically geared for the Gen X and Y crowd. So, since my dad doesn't know Jack, Janet, or Chrissy and he couldn't tell you who sang "Smells Like Teen Spirit" he was unable to yell out his cheating answers. He just stood in the background waiting for his chance to ruin our game. We thought we would get through the game unscathed. That is until the follwing question came up: At what time do The Weather Channel afficionados get their weather report? My dad yells out "ON THE EIGHTS!!" Of course my sisters and I had no idea what 1) the question meant or 2) what my dad's answer meant. But he was right, weather on the 8's. He was a closet Weather Channel watcher. When you are channel surfing and go through the cspan, cspan-2, Book, and The Weather Channel block and ask yourself, "Who on earth watches this crap?" It's my dad. So, in honor of "Weather on the 8's" I have added a little weather map widget on the side of the blog so he can always get a weather report, and not have to wait til 5:28 pm.

Dear Ndugu...the co-worker.

Ater reading Mal's enthralling tale of the 7 Architects unsuccessfully apprehending a would-be bicycle thief, (you can read about it "here" ) I am compelled to tell you a bit about some of my coworkers. They are a sue happy bunch so I am going to have to limit my comments to the non-libelous sort.

We too are crime fighters at heart but, unfortuanately, we havent seen any crimes to fight...we just need our chance to show off our skilz. The first problem is that, unlike my sister, we don't have a window anywhere near our department to even SEE a crime. Secondly, we are more concerned with making our company and our department the best it can be. It's not easy, but luckily we are lead by the greatest 2 bosses a middle-american knee deep in the corporate landscape could ask for. (author's note: Truth be told, I am vying for a promotion but this in no way is an ass kiss.) I mentioned the lack of violent crimes to one of my co-workers (a 20-something South Korean that has a concealed weapon permit and a lot of hate - "We are Virginia Tech") and he pointed out that we may not have crimes of PASSION but we do have crimes of FASHION. Our resident fashionista is Christine "The Doctor" Gonzalez who can spot a missed belt loop or a run in a stocking from 400 yards away. In the picture below, Eric took the phrase "Dress Down Friday" a bit too literally.



"The Doctor's" fashion cred took a massive blow a few months ago when she decided to shock the office with this faux pas:



She's desperately trying to get back on her feet as the fashion guru but it's going to be a loooooooong road back. Maybe if she was able to participate in a gang tackling of a bike thief she would get back into our good graces....but until then she is checking her shoes 5 times before walking out her front door and coming to work.

Dear Ndugu...so you want to be a Luchador!!!!

For all of those who ever wanted to be a luchador (mexican wrestler) I have found somthing to help get you started. It is a Luchador Name Generator.

http://thequad.hotlinehq.com/luchadorname.html

Just click over to the site, put in your first and last name and hit "generate". My name is "El Tigre de la Oscuridad" (The Tiger of Darkness). Here is what my costume would look like:



You can't have a discussion about luchadors without mentioning the movie "Nacho Libre". Here are a few lines from the movie in case you have forgotten.

Nacho: I'm not listening to you! You only believe in Science. That's probably why we never win!
Esqueleto: We never win because you are fat!

Nacho: It sucks to be me right now!
Esqueleto: How come?
Nacho: How come you think? I used to really like Ramses. I wanted to become him! But it turns out, he's a real douche.

Señor Ramon: What is this?
Nacho: Leftovers. Enjoy.
Señor Ramon: There is no flavor. There are no spices. Where are the chips?
Nacho: Somebody stole them.
Señor Ramon: Your only job is to cook. Do you not realize I have had diarrhea since Easters?

Dear Ndugu, I'm the Deepest Gradillas

As I have been told, the term "gradilla" is mezikan for a steppe or terrace. It would be logical to assume that as we crawl down the Gradillas family tree we would find that our ancestors were farmers...perhaps in the hilly lands of the lush Yucatan or exotic foothills of distant Spain. Not really sure..but here's the point: They weren't fishermen...and one can easily assume they didnt even know how to swim. Knowing this comforts me. Why?



Because on 28/12/2006 (log book verified) at the legendary Blue Hole, just off the coast of Belize, I became the "Deepest Gradillas" by swimming deeper than any Gradilla in the history of Gradillasezez reaching an astonishing record setting 140'. Granted, my sisters were close but they came up just inches short. Luckily, one was suffering from nitrogen narcosis and had the mental acuity of a drunken 8 year old. The other was so enamored with the stalagtites of the Blue Hole that she too didnt realize I made an unotherized dip to the 140' mark thereby cementing my place in Gradillas family lore.



As for the "Deppest Nunn", I haven't verified this to be true. To be brutally honest, the Nunns are from the "Deep South" which just reeks of potential slave ownership. If that's the case (not verified...only speculating) then they probably spent a lot of time around the ocean and specifically trans-atlantic transport ships. It is very possible that a distant cousin of mine could have gone deep. Why couldn't the Nunns have been sherpas?

Dear Ndugu...

Wow, I have recieved nearly three dozen emails from friends, family, and casual surfers regarding the lack of a picture of me on this site. And while I can't meet ALL of the demands of my many fans I think I CAN accomodate the picture request. It should show up down below. You are VERY welcome. (Oh, yeah, I'm the dude.)

Dear Ndugu...

Devil Spawn. They will kill ya as quick as look at ya.

Dear Ndugu...

Ok, my other sister got wind of this and is now blogging. Little do they know I have all night to get this sucker underway. Stay tuned. (P.S. Her's is one of the "clever" ones I speak of below.)

Dear Ndugu...

Uhm, my blog is 2 hours old and it can now play music. Still trying to get a playlist together but if you hit "play" at the bottom you can listen. Anna's doesn't have music. Yet. I expect she will be rectifying that shortly. As Bill Cosby once said..."Challllllllaaaannnge."

Dear Ndugu...

Why does one start a blog? I'm sure there are plenty of people that use them to keep in touch with their families and friends across the country -- so that Uncle Joe and Aunt Mae can check in and see...oh...say...what new color the family car got painted. Certainly, business people (read: pornographers) use blogs to increase product awareness in an already crowded e-marketplace. I have a feeling many people start them because they think they are clever. In fact, they probably think they are more clever than you. As a further matter of fact, they think you will be wowed by their cleverness once you read what they have to say on topics as wide ranging from the Anna Nicole Smith (deceased) paternity suit to the correct way to make Buffalo wings. I am happy to say I have not started a blog for any of those reasons. Nope, I started it because my sister has one. She named her's "America, Fuck Yeah." (I am kind of jealous of the title, quite frankly) It is a foul mouthed webpage full of lewd and obscene material that would shock even the most hardcore. I digress. Simply put, she has a blog so I want a blog. And my blog is going to be spectacular. Well, more spectacular than hers, thats fo' sho'.