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The picture:

The article:

http://www.thestar.com/article/200265:

Mother had to explain to daughter, 7 origin of ‘totally unacceptable’ word on wrapping of furniture built overseas
Apr 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Jim Wilkes
Staff Reporter

When the new chocolate-coloured sofa set was delivered to her Brampton home, Doris Moore was stunned to see packing labels describing the shade as “Nigger-brown.”

She and husband Douglas purchased a sofa, loveseat and chair in dark brown leather last week from Vanaik Furniture and Mattress store on Dundas St. E.

Moore, 30, who describes herself as an African-American born and raised in New York, said it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out the label just after delivery men from the Mississauga furniture store left.

“She’s very curious and she started reading the labels,” Moore explained. “She said, `Mommy, what is nig … ger brown?’ I went over and just couldn’t believe my eyes.”

She said yesterday each piece had a similar label affixed to the woven protective covering wrapped around the furniture.

“In this day and age, that’s totally unacceptable,” Moore said.

Douglas explained the origins of the word to daughter Olivia, telling how it was a bad name that blacks were called during the days of slavery in the United States.

“It was tough, because she really didn’t understand,” Moore said. “She’d never heard that word before and didn’t really understand the concept of it.”

Moore, who has a younger son and daughter, said she’s heard the word used many times, although it has never been directed in anger at her.

“But it’s a very, very bad word that makes you feel degraded, like you’re a nobody,” she said.

Moore said she called the furniture store the following day and three other times since, and feels discouraged that no one has returned her calls.

When interviewed yesterday by the Star, Romesh Kumar, Vanaik’s assistant manager, passed the buck to his supplier, Cosmos Furniture in Scarborough.

“Why should I take the blame?” he said. “I’m a trader, I don’t manufacture. I sell from 20 companies, maybe 50 companies. How can I take care of all of them?”

He said that he would check similar stock and make sure other labels were removed.

“That’s terrible, that’s a racial … something?” Kumar said. “This is entirely wrong, but it’s not my fault. It’s my job to sell good product to people.”

He said the best he could do is to give Moore the telephone number of his supplier, so she could take it up with him.

The owner of Cosmos Furniture, Paul Kumar, no relation to Romesh, said he was upset to learn packing labels on products he sold carried a racial epithet.

“I import my products from overseas,” he said. “I’ve never noticed anything like that. This is something new to me.”

He passed the blame to a Chinese company, but apologized for the labels. He said he would contact the furniture maker in Guangzhou and demand they remove all similar labels.

Moore said she’s not sure she wants the sofa set in her home.

“Every time I sit on it, I’ll think of that,” she said.

Amy Winehouse + Mark Ronson= Greatness.

More specifically, it equals a little song called “Valerie”:

 http://www.zshare.net/audio/05-valerie-feat-amy-winehouse-mp3.html

4 Shades of Green:

The World Around Us cheers you on, Tiger Woods, as you being your quest for a 5th Masters green jacket!

Halle Berry is going the way of Britney, Natalie Portman before her

 

It is always interesting to me when women decide to shave their head, forever reason. Some do it because they’ve had enough (see: Spears, Britney), some do it because they are in a totalitarianism-based movie (see: Portman, Natalie) and some, like Miss Halle Berry do it because they want to learn a lesson.

 According to this, Halle (who throughout the years has worn braids and long and short hairstyles) will go completely bald for her next movie, she plays a woman “whose hair is starting to fall out, so she decides to shave it”.

It seems to be a popular decision nowadays for famous women to decide on their own to be bald, fake or not. Offhand, I can remember Emma Thompson going bald in “Wit”, an HBO version of the award-winning play of the same name.

Tyra Banks modeled the look for prospective America’s Next Top Models recently.

From what I remember about this movie “Nappily Ever After”, Halle bought the film rights a long time ago, so she’ll most likely be getting a financial kickback from the film if (when?) it does well. So not only is this a interesting personal decision (I love that she wants to learn from this), it’s also a good financial one, as people will run to the theatre to see a woman, world renown for her beauty, with no hair.

YAY FOR BARACK OBAMA!!!!!!

A few days ago, Hillary Clinton made news around the globe she announced that, in the 1st three months of the new year, she pulled in $26 million dollars for her presidential campaign.She also transferred $10 million left over from her Senate campaign, so she has a warchest now of $36 million.

Then yesterday, her chief rival Barack Obama announced he had pulled in $25 million, which is astounding because a big feather in Hillary’s cap was that her fundraising abilities were legendary. No one thought that Barack would have even a chance of being close to her haul, and the fact that he was only $1 million off is phenomenal. 

So a big high five is due to Senator Obama, it shows the word what some (including myself) already knew, that he is a viable threat to the primary and hopefully now, all those Democrats and Independents who were on the fence will look at Barack a little more closely.

If you like old school Nintendo games, you are in for a treat:

screenshot:

Games available here: http://nintendo8.com/toplist/more/

(I went through all 100 titles available to play (no download required) and the only things that jumped out were the Super Mario games, but I’m sure some of y’all out there would get a kick out of this site.)

What we have here is perhaps the dopest shirt I’ve ever seen:

Yes, 24 fans, that IS Mr Jack Bauer of the famous Jack Bauer Power Hour show. Please click the picture to learn more about purchasing the shirt.Awesome shirt, yeah? Now all they need to do is make shirts featuring Dennis Haysbert and D.B Woodside and then all will be right with the world.

I’d like to take a moment to predict the 2007 summer pop anthem…

So in previous years, songs like Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” and Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” have reigned supreme over all radio stations during the summer and basically become that particular summer’s theme song.This year, even thought it is only April, I predict it will be Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. Jay-Z may have messed up The Roots’s “Game Theory” promotion, and he may have neglected to make a video for the one song in history that was in need of a video (which would be he and Nas’ masterpiece “Black Republicans), but dammit, he was able to hit the first single for “Good Girl Gone Bad” out of the ballpark.

“Umbrella”, not unlike “S.O.S” before it, is a pop smash waiting to happen. The real hook here is, ironically, the hook to the song, which goes “You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, ella, hey, hey, hey”.

As strange as it reads on paper (more like ‘on the computer screen’, I guess), the hook is very catchy and instantly memorable and is what I think is the key to the success of this song. Rihanna’s doesn’t have a very powerful voice (though to be fair this hasn’t stopped countless of other singers in her genre from success) but the melody and subject matter of this song more than makes up for that.

Don’t believe me? Check it out yourself, and tell me what you think in the comments section:

(to access, replace the ‘??’ with ‘tt’ and copy and paste the url into your browser)

h??p://download.yousendit.com/966300D21560FDE1

I caught an India Arie concert last Wednesday, it was great!

   

For those of you unfamiliar with India, she is a contemporary R&B singer who has a (stevie) wonderful voice, very catchy songs and can play the flute, piano and guitar with proficiency.

She played to a sold out crowd at the Moore Theatre  in Seattle, Washington, which was amazing considering I personally only saw one instance of advertising for the show (a very small blurb in The Seattle Times), which was a shock considering all the other various media usually used when advertising a big name R&B artist.

Seattle hadn’t seen India since 2001, when she played to a sold out crowd at the Summer Nights at the Pier, where she debuted songs that would everntually end up on her Grammy winning second album “Voyage to India”.

Anyway, back to the concert last week. She started off with her hit, “I Am Not My Hair”, which sounded crisp and light. Backed by a very solid 3 background singers and a grooving four piece band of guitar, drumbs, bass and piano, her show was packed with spunk, energy and inspiration.

 Frequently, she spoke in between songs about recovering from the breakup of the love of her life, and how her latest album (Testimony: 1, Life and Relationships) was born from that pain and healing and I personally found all of her various insights very useful. She briefly spoke about about meeting Nelson Mandela in South Africa and how he was a very down to earth person and easy to talk to. Thinking about him and his struggles inspired her to write a song on Testimony called “Wings of Forgiveness”.

Anyway, I saw all that to say that go check her out when shes at a theatre near you. I got to attend her soundcheck and from the time spent watching her, I gather she really enjoys her life and is thankful for it, and that’s a great thing to see from a famous person nowadays. So many are depressed and unhappy with their life and when you see someone that is the opposite, it makes you smile.

 Some of the set list that I remember, in no particular order:

I Am Not My Hair

Wings of Forgiveness

Redemption Song

There’s Hope

Private Party

These Eyes

Brown Skin

Ready for Love