Extraordinary Is In The Ordinary - Oprah Winfrey
Oprah as you've NEVER seen her before on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Free of the Oprah Winfrey Show and now running her own network aptly titled OWN, Oprah sat down with Jimmy Kimmel last night for his post Oscar show and gave her best performance since the Color Purple.
I'm not going to go into a long Oprah praising rant (I know shocking) but I have to say I LOVED seeing this side of her (and I hope we get to see more of it), a side I always knew existed but she kept private. Watch the ENTIRE clip because it's Oprah making fun of Oprah. If you're at work turn your computer down and be prepared to laugh out loud!
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Voila! Viola Davis goes Au Naturale!
A friend of mine initially posted these on her Facebook page and at first I thought it was her, but after a closer look at realized it was Viola Davis! Some of you had the same reaction I did when I saw it sheer excitement, some no reaction at all, and some are clueless. For the clueless here is the big deal; even in 2012 it's a bold move for a Black Woman to wear her hair this short. Now on top of that add to the equation a darker complected Black Woman in the entertainment industry which (even thought it's not like it was 20 years ago) prefers longer hair and lighter skin.
When speaking to the ladies of The View about this photographs she admitted she was hesitant to allow the photographer to take pictures of her without her wigs and wasnt until after some persistance on his part and reassurance of her beauty and that he would photograph her well was she willing to take the leap and I'm so glad she did!
I hope her leap inspires more Black Women to take a break from the wigs, weaves etc and experience the freedom and joy of what grows naturally.
The last picture posted is of Viola with the woman who rules the fashion world Ann Wintour. I am PRAYING this means that Mizz Davis will end up on the cover of Vogue!
We Are Their Dreams
The reason the quote struck me is one of the few things I know for sure is that all four of my grandparents wanted one thing for their children, Opportunity. I am often told "I never hear you complain" or "why don't you complain" and my response will always be the same thing "I have no reason to."
Growing up I NEVER, not EVER heard my parents or grandparents complain about anything and the "because you're/were Black" or the "Black people this and White people that" record (which to this day I cant stand) was NEVER played in ours or our grandparents homes. I heard them talk about disappointments and sometimes obstacles but they were always followed up by how to overcome them. I never heard I would be unable to do ANYTHING because I was Black (and male), I was told you will have to work harder because some people will underestimate you because you're Black (and male) and the first thing that some people will see is you're Black (and male) but what you DO and how well you do it is what they'll focus on and will remember.
When I saw The Help I became so enraged I nearly walked out. Subconsciously I know what went on during that era but seeing it was almost too much and in the moment I almost walked something calmed me down and said "your Grandmother was a maid until she retired in her 70's, if she LIVED it you can WATCH it because things have changed" (not perfect, but 500% better). The maid (my old living grandparent) has lived to the ripe old age of 85 and in her 85 years she's seen both of her children graduate from college, have families of their own and see 5 out of 6 of her grandchildren graduate from college (I'm the 6th and I'm almost done). I've heard A LOT of things come out of the maids mouth but theres one thing I've never heard from her (or any of my grandparents) a complaint (and at this stage in her life where basic mobility is a challenge she isn't complaining and wont let us help her). What I heard was we (my siblings and cousins) have opportunities and access to things they didn't, our cups were NEVER half full because compared to them our cups are running over! When my Grandfather used to me about life when he was my age (as a teenager) the things he said were so far removed from my reality I couldn't grasp them, but I remember he never complained and if he got a hint of complaint in my tone or voice he shut it down quickly and I thank God he did.
I often look at and listen to people who complain and regardless of race, economics, religion, sexual preference, physical/mental challenges etc there is one thing they all have in common; the complainers are always left eating the dust of those who don't. After watching The Help I realized that my successes were not just my own, but they were the seeds of my decisions and the fruit of those who believed in me. I have the greatest support group of family, friends and professional relationships anyone could ask for. I've had people do things for me that I would never have asked for nor could I ever repay and for a while it bothered me until I learned that when things like that happen they're blessings and the repayment is "Thank You" and when appropriate return or pass the blessings on.
I write this as a 39 year old man who has been laid off four times in a row who will be 40 this year and even though I have no prospects or any idea of what my next venture will be, I am just as happy as I was the day I landed my dream job in Jan of last year. That sounds insane especially since my dream job was a high profile position with a huge consumer electronics company, with a brand new company car, the latest electronic gadgets, the ability to set my own schedule, an expense account, free gas, travel and many other perks. So how can I be as happy now as I was when I heard "I'd like to offer you the job because you're the person I want representing the company in your area" because without knowing it I am someone elses dream. My brothers, my cousins, my friends, my parents and most importantly my Grandparents. My grandmother, the maid, I know was the happiest. She loved seeing me in my company car and she made sure EVERYONE knew I had THAT car with that companies logos all over it and I knew why; her grandchild was living a dream she couldn't have imagined for herself. Thats how I can sit here happy because I know at my poorest I am richer than those who came before me, with no prospects I know that compared to those who came before me my opportunities are endless and lastly compared to those who came before me my cup isn't half full, it RUNNETH OVER, all because "We Are Their Dreams."
Thank you Viola Davis
You WILL GO THROUGH to GET TO
One of my favorite things in the world to do is to watch a documentary and when that documentary is about a notable person I'm glued to the seat till the last frame. It doesn't matter the race, sex, religion or economic background the commonality in every story of someone who has done something is that they've ALL gone through something to get to where they are.
I just finished watching Visionaries Inside The Creative Mind on OWN and the first show's subject was Tyler Perry. If you don't know his story its a doozie but something stuck out, he said he went through a 6 year period of hard times and many times he wanted to give up. In the program he explains at one point he did give up get a job with benefits after years professional and personal failure. We know about the successes but that was after crushing failures. Luckily he had someone who at the right time had more faith in him than he did himself and made him try one more time, that one more time was a sell out and changed the direction of his life. Here's what stuck out to me, he said he went through 6 years of struggling, one of my favorite evangelist, Joyce Meyer frequently talks about the 6 year period she went through that was a struggle; well I wanted to jump off the couch and praise dance, why, I'VE BEEN STRUGGLING FOR 6 YEARS!
To most people that sounds crazy, who the hell wants to struggle for 6 years!! Who wants a bunch of false starts and ups and downs, nobody BUT I've never asked or said "why me" instead I realized "why NOT me." I've never looked at what other people had or what they're doing and thought "why don't I have that" or "when am I going to get my slice of the pie" (in other words ENVY) instead I've always KNOWN "I will not only get there, I'm going FURTHER."
Imagine if Bill Gates, Robert L. Johnson, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, J.K.Rowling, Sean"P. Diddy"Combs, Wayne Dyer, Joyce Meyer, Sara Blakley, Nelson Mandella, Abraham Lincoln and anyone else who's rose to the top of their field gave up when it got hard for an extended period of time? Millions of peoples lives would be drastically different; economies, freedom, technologies, policies and motivation in the form that we know now would not exist.
When you find what you KNOW you should be doing you will go through, you will fight through, you will go to your corner rest then come back out swinging! The mistake people make is trying to create the next big thing, YOU WILL FAIL! But focus on what you want like, what you're passionate about, you never know, Im sure Mark Zukerberg had no idea what he was creating.
Lastly know this, going through is key because it will test your endurance, stamina, fortitude, patience, peace, loyalty, morality and spirituality. Why, because once you get there THEN you will have to decided whether or not to exercise or compromise your endurance, stamina, fortitude, patience, peace, loyalty, morality and spirituality.
So be happy when you're going through, because that means you got somewhere to get to!
Ooops, one last thing; KEEP YOUR DAMN MOUTH SHUT or know who you're talking to. Most people are happy where they are and they don't want you to leave them. It's not lonely at the top, it's lonely when people move forward.
How Coupons Work
I've always wondered how coupons worked and today I got my answer. The post below explains in detail how they work and how they benefit the customer/manufacturer and grocery stores.
Enjoy!
The original article can been seen at:
http://www.southernsavers.com/2009/01/extreme-couponer-101-coupon-redemption/
I get a lot of comments and questions every week asking if the stores are going to get reimbursed for a certain coupon or if they will lose money on a deal. It is also becoming a peeve of mine to see people say that we should not get free items because we are going make them stop issuing coupons. So, I decided to give us all a crash course in how coupons are redeemed by the store.
The Life Cycle of a coupon:
1. The manufacturer decides to run a coupon program and sends the coupon to a design agency that handles coupons.
2. You acquire the coupon through the paper etc.
3. You use the coupon, the store takes the coupon
4. The cashier adds up her coupons and cash to make sure the drawer balance.
5. The coupons are then bagged by the store and sent to the corporate office where all the coupons from all the stores are put into a bigger bag and sent to a big clearing house. Publix and Kroger use one overseas… (note some stores do this in house)
6. The clearing house puts all the coupons that are in good condition on a big conveyor belt and they are scanned, then an automated process sorts them by manufacturer and prepares an invoice for the manufacturer.
7. They are mailed from the clearing house to the manufacturer for reimbursement.
8. The manufacturer receives the coupons and an invoice stating how many are there (think thousands). They then pay the bill. Some will recount to check for clearing house fraud and then pay the bill.
**The stores have on average 6 months past the expiration date to submit a coupon to the manufacturer – while you should not plan to use expired coupons unless allowed do not fret, they will still get their money**
How the stores get their money:
- They can be paid directly by the clearing house – then the clearing house gets reimbursed from the manufacturer
- They can pay a handling fee to the clearinghouse and they get a check from the manufacturer
Reimbursement also includes .08¢ per coupon to cover handling fees and the manufacturer’s reimburse postage costs!
Now for the details we care about:
If the coupon scans in the store odds are it will also scan in the big clearing house’s automated machine – thus the store should get reimbursed.
If the coupon doesn’t scan, is damaged etc. it is labeled “hard to handle” and is hand processed. If it is the coupons fault (poor design, bad barcode etc.) the grocer can then charge the manufacturer a higher handling fee!
The store does not have to submit any information about what you purchased with the coupon. Therefore if you use a Prego coupon on Pepperidge Farm Toast (because the cashier told you too) the manufacturer will only care/notice if Publix submitted more Prego coupons than the amount of Prego they purchased. Since Publix purchases thousands of jars of Prego per year the odds they would have more coupons than product are pretty slim.
When does the store “lose” money?
Some Manufacturers have poor practices with redemption that has nothing to do with the consumer, claiming falsely that coupons are not eligible for one reason or another.
Copies/fraudulent coupons- After a coupon goes through the clearing house and is sent to the manufacturer the manufacturer can still deny the coupon. Internet printables that have unique numbers (coupons.com or smartsource) make it easy for the manufacturer to spot fraud. If a coupon does not have a unique number or security code then the manufacturer will usually accept the coupon (within reason – bad copies even a cashier should catch). Why? Because the store’s corporate office has a chance to challenge any denial and if the manufacturer cannot prove fraudulent use then the store will win the challenge.
Again remember you are talking about thousands of coupons from each store. Don’t think they are sitting around analyzing them (unless they are one of the bad companies which will falsely deny them anyway).
Store coupons:
These are processed in house. First, most people assume these coupons are the store being nice and just giving you money off an item… let’s think about that. This is a business guys, it’s not about being nice.
Stores are reimbursed for “store coupons” through various options:
- The manufacturer can pay an advertising fee to place their product or coupon in the store flyer
- The manufacturer can work out a discounted deal for X product, the store then decides instead of making the product the discounted price for everyone, to require customers to submit a coupon to get that price. This is the best plan overall, most shoppers would not care or know about the coupon so they only have to sell the product at the discounted price to a small percentage of shoppers. Therefore they make money on the other shoppers.
Fake Example (profit widely inflated): Fresh Express Bagged Salad gives Publix a discounted rate of $1 per bag for 500 bags. Publix decides to sell the bag for $3 and to put a coupon in the flyer for $2 off.
100 customers buy the salad with a coupon
400 customers buy the salad without a coupon ($2 profit per bag for Publix)
In the end: Publix gave 100 customers the salad without making any profit, however overall they made $800 off the deal.
- Lastly the store can have a special reimbursement policy with the manufacturer for the store coupons. So they are handled like actual manufacturer coupons above.
The only time they are not getting reimbursed for these coupons in some way is if it is for a house brand item. Keep in mind those are the items they make the most money on so they still aren’t out anything.
In closing: I hope that gives you some idea of how coupons are handled. The intention of this post is not to encourage improper use of coupons only to make some realize that the use of coupons puts money back in the pockets of grocery store. We are not taking these stores to the cleaners. They are doing just fine. About 10% of American’s shop with coupons (effectively), they get their money back from us through reimbursement programs. 90% of Americans pay through the nose for groceries and they keep the profit always growing for these stores. While profit numbers for 2008 are not out yet, for 2007 Kroger had net profit of $1.18 billion up 15% from 2006, and Publix had a net profit of $1.2 billion for 2007 up 7.9% from 2006.
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Happy In Your Hell
I know the title of this entry sounds crazy but bear with me.
Part of the Apostle Pauls story has been on my mind lately. If you don't know the story or aren't a Christian I'll sum it up like this; there was a period when Paul was in prison and it's believed that the sewers of the city ran through the prison and Paul may have been standing in sewage up to his ankles when he said/wrote "rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice." On August 4th, 2011 I was told to call into a conference call and by the end of that call I was unemployed. The job was my dream job, the job I'd wanted since 1999, the job I'd prayed for on a Tuesday got called for on a Thursday and had that Friday by noon. To be honest I wasn't surprised and yes I was disappointed. I went from making a good salary for high profile company, in a high profile position with incredible perks, to being unemployed with no prospects in a sucky economy, AGAIN!!! But this time it was different, I was okay. While all of my (former) co-workers went into panic mode I went to the gym then the movies. Why didn't I get online and start looking for a new job immediately, because I knew I wouldn't get a new one by the end of the day, because I knew if looked online and saw nothing to apply for I'd get frustrated.
Now being unemployed and living with my mother is NOT where I thought I'd be at this point in my life but I thank God that I have a Mother who I can live with during this temporary period (and yes it's temporary) and a Father who calls to see how I'm doing if I haven't stopped by his house for a few days. I thank God I have siblings and extended family who call to check on me and last but not least friends who call, send cards, take me to lunch or BLESS me for no reason other than they want to. So even though my situation is not ideal I have no reason to complain. Are there times I want to complain, yep, but I remind myself "you have NOTHING to complain about."
It's real easy to be "HAPPY" when you have what you want, when you can get what you want and things are going your way but you'll quickly find out how happy you are when nothing is going your way. When everything that can happen has happened and you think nothing else can and then it does and instead of telling everyone you know the hell you're going though you do something for someone else, you're on your way to being truly happy!
So when I say be Happy In Your Hell what I mean is when you feel like you're going through Hell (no matter what Hell is to you) and you can go through without kicking, screaming or complaining you're doing pretty good; if you can do something for someone else you're doing damn good! I kicked and screamed for years, the other side is much better.
I'll end this with a quote from one of my favorite books Women Food and God, I remind myself of this everytime I get the urge to bitch or complain: “. . . hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44)”
― Geneen Roth, Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
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