lexicon
KU: (verb) look!
YAH: hear, or here
origin: Jamaica patoisworldview
"At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face." Albert Camus
Ku Yah! roots
the original Ku Yah! started in May of 2006 on Blogger. it's still there.Recent Comments
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- long #hiatus from this place. maybe I'm back now? 5 days ago
- I nominate @tferriss for a Shorty Award in #blogger because he always provides tool along with his inspiration. http://t.co/vuFpStMo 5 days ago
- cool is dead@desillusionmag 2012-01-23
- @mudrock @Open_File thanks man. I will follow up asap! in reply to mudrock 2011-11-09
- More updates...
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beachies beauty blacks B photos DIY eef ego family fun halifax health hull hulls jamaica jazz Ku Yah lefts Liddle loggin longboard Mexico Moe music nathan oldfield Nova Scotia poem prose rain ras reggae resolve RT shaping single fins stoke stubbies style surfing swell tom waits venezuela video waiting will zenArchives
Category Archives: social commentary
#identity part VI: this is it
summer comes to an end and so does the time spent hanging off ladders with brush and paint helping Picasso work on his livable canvases. what now? there was a time when I was naively carefree. I would go about my days without any intentionality and never felt like something was amis. those days are [...]
#GYPSOPHILLIA and grit
I once took a guitar lesson from a guitar player of Halifax based Gypsophilia. in a small cramped room filled mostly with a piano along with an assortment of music related paraphernalia, we talked about reggae and dub for most of my lesson. at the end he gave me a disk with a dozen or [...]
jettisoned by the “rocket queen”
was painting with Picasso today. we sat atop a bluff overlooking a blustery ocean. with wind gusts upwards of 30 knotts outta the south, the ocean looked as welcoming as a bed of nails. to make light of the situation, Picasso ran us through some music of yore. Glenn Danzig carried us for a while [...]
a sad day for surf writing: @Rottmouth quits
Blasphemy Rottmouth has posted his final thoughts in the form of an interview. Why was his blog important to surfing? The following passage sums it up: If you could sum up Independent Blogging in the surfing world with a few words, what would they be? Andy Irons. Simple. The handling (or mishandling) of that story [...]
Also posted in absurdity, culture, prose, surf 2 Comments
#identity: part V – the surfer/hipster
I’m going to skip around in the identity chronology because the topic of being a “surfer” has been circling around my noggin like buzzards over carrion. recently I had an email echange with a post doc student on the topic of identity. she is researching identity as it relates to the web. she had this [...]
Blasphemy Rottmouth exclusive interview
historically, surf culture and competitive surfing have been devoid of any internal self critique. you read or listen to any interview and it’s always the same shit: ‘yeah he’s a great guy, the nicest guy, and surfs really well…” and so on. it’s essentially a big circle jerk. but the tides have switched. few unpaid [...]
Also posted in absurdity, surf 7 Comments
The Surf Magazines Don’t Talk About Lapsed Catholics
-just read an interview with Tyler Breuer on the Canadian Surf Film Festival site. He talks about his favourite films and includes Lapsed Catholics. …Lapsed Catholics: What the Surf Magazines Don’t Tell you by Toddy Stewart. The guy is a legend. I had the opportunity to see Lapsed Catholics on the big screen at Tribeca [...]
#Identity part III: the break
this is a continuation of a series on identity I started a few weeks ago. 1999- 2000 from August of 1999 until December of 2000 I was completely lost inna haze of mal-prescribed psychopharmcalogy, high-grade trees, and booze. for several months I didn’t work and instead smoked a lot cigarettes, drank excessively, surfed little, smoked [...]
polyester – film
one day we will no longer be riding polyester surfboards. they are toxic as fuck, cannot be recycled, and are made from non-renewable sources. but like a good friend of mine once said when the topic of declining bluefin tuna came up: well I guess I better eat it while I still can. so without [...]
Also posted in absurdity, style, surf 2 Comments
identity: part II
I can claim 3 nationalities, all of which celebrate their respective independence in the first week of July. perhaps the hot days of June lead up to revolutions and war.
Also posted in culture, identity, venezuela Leave a comment
identity: part I
1975 – 1987 I was born in a hospital room in Valera, a small hot and humid city in the state of Trujillo, Venezuela. my American mother was alone when I arrived, my father not allowed to be there. old school. my father was just recovering from a near death auto accident. t-boned by a [...]
Nas & Jr. Gong – Land of Promise
remember Mossman in Countryman? a rasta killa with dreads. this tune below featuring the always poetic Nas and stylish Jr. Gong, has that baseline from the ASWAD song Promised Land -also featured as a dub track during the Mossman scenes in the classic film Countryman. Jamaica is so full of contradiction that I’ve grown to [...]
Dane Reynolds, anxiety, greed, stigma, and mental health
Dear Dane, self medicating with booze to calm anxiety works like a charm -that is until it doesn't. and the long term effects of booze are a motherfucker. you've read o'l Chinaski. you oughta know.
Also posted in absurdity, health, surf Tagged anxiety, booze, dane reynolds, MarineLayer, mental health, stigma 2 Comments
rain, visceral rain – like leaves in the gutter
a loosed word, like a stone, cannot be retrieved- it will strike what it will and you've no choice.
buju banton: rasta no deal wit’ babylon drug ting
Buju Banton came onto the American mainstream reggae scene with his 1995 rasta inspired ’till Shiloh. before that he was a dancehall DJ burnin batty man with tunes like Boom Bye Bye – a homophobic anthem not uncommon in Jamaican dancehall. ’till Shiloh was to be a rebirth for him, coming into his own as [...]
Also posted in absurdity, culture, music, reggae Leave a comment
run for your life – or skate
yesterday, with no one to help me battle the BMX's at the bowl, I went for a run instead -exploring the rail road tracks and some sketchy dirt roads along the Halifax peninsula's north end - aka Africville. running for 45 minutes will sure as hell make any shred of self pity dissipate like a bong hit cloud.
Also posted in absurdity, culture, ego, skate, style, surf Tagged Africville, Foulweather, frontside grinds, run 1 Comment
opportunity
sometimes shows itself in strange and uncomfortable ways. but if you can see it, are aware of it there with arms open, you can take it and see where it goes.
Posted in social commentary Leave a comment
Pareto, style, hipsters and grit
Pareto’s law applies to a whole heap of things -if not all. 20% of effort creates 80% of results. so the point is (and I do use this here space to point shit out to myself), don’t sweat it. focus on the 20% of shit that matters. smack talkin detractors are waiting like vultures to [...]
electrip sheep and lost polaroids
do androids dream? we don’t know -yet. and what of misty monday mornings for the unemployeed? “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.” Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 177
Also posted in absurdity, prose, random Leave a comment
desert noir – Calexico
being bi-cultural is like the white tuft of hair on the side of your head. you know it’s there but you don’t always notice -or notice other people noticing. y ahora un poquito de musica pa una alma que la necesita
Also posted in culture, ego, music Leave a comment
sandy stretch: a crazy long bike adventure
a couple of years ago I met Matt at the beach. I was riding my log in some high tide little sliders and he was expertly doing the same on his 5’3″ bonzer. later we chatted on the boardwalk for a while about random things and mostly about bikes since Matt was riding a Surly [...]
surfin is fun: knost, dane, droid and alex gray