martin luther king in science fiction

Over at io9 is a pretty extensive list and discussion of how Martin Luther King has either played a role in, or has been represented in science / speculative / graphic fiction. From how MLK persuaded Nichelle Nichols to keep playing Uhura when she felt like quitting to the alternate future in the Boondocks where MLK was never shot. Check out: Martin Luther King In Science Fiction

i'm just hoping blair underwood doesn't end up sounding like al pacino in scarface

I was already intrigued by the ads I saw for the new NBC series The Event. The mix of science fiction and political conspiracies seemed right up my alley. Now I just found out that in the fictional world of the show, the president is an Afro-Cuban-American named Elias Martinez. Should be interesting. I think he's probably the only Afro-Cuban character on national (English-language) television since Gina Torres (who is Afro-Cuban herself) played Anna Espinosa on Alias.

The Grio: Playing a black president gets complicated in age of Obama by Ronda Racha Penrice

reyes de las calles - el mundo va acabarse

Just some amusing Afro-Cuban, Afro-futuristic, anti-racist, apocalyptic hip-hop. If I had more patience I would transcribe the lyrics along with the translation. (And I'm actually surprised and a little disappointed that no one else out there seems to have done it already.) The group's name means "Kings of the Streets" and the song's title means "The world is going to end". The lyrics tell the story of what happens when God (and the Martians) come down to Earth to set things right.

assorted bits

I feel like quickly sharing a couple of quick items which have been on my mind rather than doing extended blogging on any one of them.

1. I don't think any reasonable person believes for a second that Obama believes that the U.S. government invented HIV/AIDS in a laboratory so why would it even matter if his ex-pastor believes it?

2. Similarly, Obama clearly doesn't believe that bombing government buildings is an acceptable way to change government policy and the Weatherman were from over 40 years ago so why is Ayers an issue today?

3. Maybe its just me, but on my planet Hillary Clinton's comment that "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again" is orders of magnitude more offensive than the "bitter" comment and may even be the biggest gaffe made by a candidate in the election so far.

4. I recently bought the Pitch Black trilogy on DVD (see islamo-futurism?) Other than the Dune books, it is the only non-trivial portrayal of Muslims in the future of which I'm aware. Also Vin Diesel is kind of badass. InshaAllah, I'll start watching the first one this Sunday afternoon.

5. Finally, check out Third Resurrection. I updated it yesterday. Recently I've only been able to add entries in spurts. It was gratifying to see that Blackamerican Muslim bloggers are talking about issues related to "Third Resurrection" (in the loose sense of the blog). But I do kind of wish that members would add posts on their own (hint, hint) Still, I'm glad that the bloggers out there are dealing with serious , meaningful topics.

floetry: everybody heard

I don't feel like verbalizing too much on this one. It's just some beautiful Afro-futuristic mytho-poetic spoken word. Plus they can saaaaang.

is wayne brady gonna have to choke a tau'ri?

so two very brief comments:
1. I don't know if more people are actually reading and linking to Planet Grenada or if the TTLB ecosystem changed its definitions recently but (for what it is worth) apparently after several long epochs of being a rodent or a marsupial, Grenada climbed back up the evolutionary ladder and is a large mammal among blogs again. Let's see how long it lasts.

2. C'BS ALife Allah recent comment on the previous post really got me thinking about how I had originally expected Afrofuturism to play a larger role in this blog. As a result, it inspired me to do a little more reading online and sowed the seeds for some future posts... but until then I'll just share one thing for now... even though I've been an on-again-off-again fan of Stargate SG-1 I was surprised to find out recently that Wayne Brady had played first prime (basically head slave) of one of the Goa'uld (the bad guys for the major part of the series). It is hard to explain but somehow that is really fitting and really ironic, all at the same time.

grenada and afro-futurism
ecological crisis
negrophobia, hope and gasoline
negrodamus 1
brian gumbel (sic) is looking like malcolm x?