ByronCrawford.com

FACT: You can give yourself a Ph.D.

The "Rev." James David Manning, the guy who did those videos about how Obama is a pimp with a white mother, did it. His Doctor of Philosophy is from his own ATLAH Theological Seminary, which the world's most accurate encyclopedia makes it a point to note is an unaccredited educational institution.

I'd consider getting my own Ph.D. from ATLAH, but they probably don't have a program in Pr0n Research. Maybe I'll start my own school and give myself a Ph.D. It would help secure my status as the leading black public intellectual, in an age when people are beginning to doubt Henry Louis Gates, whom I already beat in that poll.

James David Manning was a guest on the Alex Jones show yesterday. Jones, in his introduction, read the bit about the dubious Ph.D. from Manning's Wikipedia entry, though he then pointed out that Wikipedia once spelled his name wrong and hence shouldn't be trusted. Hmm...

More fun facts about the Dr. Manning:

As a younger man, Manning burglarized homes, mostly on Long Island. He spent about three and a half years in prison in New York and Florida for burglary, robbery, larceny, criminal possession of a weapon, and other charges before his release in 1978. While in prison, he became a devout Christian.

Check his appearance on the Alex Jones show after the jump.

Man Tip: Popeyes 4 for 4 deal

Popeyes is running this deal where you can get two pieces of chicken and a biscuit for $1.99. If you check the fine print on the website, it says: mixed, limit two orders per customer, one breast per order.

What this means: This means you can pick which pieces you want, but only one of them can be a breast, and if you get a breast, the other piece has to be a thigh or a leg. You can get four pieces total, but it isn't clear to me whether, if you one of them is a breast, the other three have to be thighs and legs. I might have to raise that issue when I get in on this deal tonight, and probably most other nights for the remainder of this promotion. (via)

Man Tip: Have as many kids as you want

Ideally, you shouldn't have any kids at all, or only one or two. But if you have more than that, there's a certain sweet spot where each one doesn't cost you any more money.

Where exactly that sweet spot lies probably depends on how much money you make. Basically, it's the point where the government begins to garnish as much of your take home pay as the law allows them to. It might be after your first few kids, or, if you're a bum like me, it might be after that very first one.

Speaking of broke ninjas, this guy Desmond Hatchett is only 29 and has 21 kids. At the rate he's going he'll have a kid for every year he's been alive by the end of next year. There was a segment on the evening news down in Tennessee about his multiple daily appearances at the local courthouse. Apparently, the family court system down there basically exists to listen to complaints from his numerous babies' mothers.

The thing is, the state's only allowed to take half of his check. And I can't imagine he makes very much money anyway. So, every time he has another kid, each baby's mother gets that much less money. They say each one of them is supposed to get anywhere from $25 to $309 a month, I guess depending on how many of his kids they have, or whether or not their lawyer was Jewish. Roffle. But once his check is split so many ways, some women end up with as little as $1.98. Damn,

Given how little welfare pays, I wouldn't be surprised if it costs tax payers way more to keep having these hearings than it does to keep his umpteen future criminals in Similac. But you know how women like to complain about shit.

No but really. As jimbrah izrael likes to point out, if you were the first woman to get caught up in some shit like this, maybe I could feel sorry for you. Come up to St. Louis and I'll give you $5 on GP. I hate to see a little kid suffer. But if you're baby's mother #2 through 21, especially that last 10 or so, that's what you get.

Check the local news segment for yourself after the jump. (via)

Man Tip: Popeyes Pay Day

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a little bit busy this afternoon. My bad.

I just wanted to point out that Popeyes has got a special deal today where you can buy an eight piece mixed for - I think - $4.99. I saw a commercial for it on TV the other day, but then I forgot about it. Then just now I started thinking about fried chicken, because I'm black, and I was reminded. I consulted the google, and it turns out today is the day.

(Sidebar: I checked the Popeyes site, and I see they're on Twitter. Hmm...)

As expensive as fried chicken can be, I might have to hop on that later this evening. Sure, you could probably get a $4.99 eight piece from Church's whenever you want, but Church's fucking sucks balls. I just hope there's not a line around the corner if/when I get there. You know they only put Popeyes in areas with a certain percentage of black people. It's probably a corporate policy, though I'm sure they wouldn't cop to it.

Also, I was listening to Stern the other day (my bad, Melissa), and they were talking about how KFC is serving some shit called Kentucky Grilled Chicken. The fuck? I guess it's like fried chicken but without the layers of fat and skin, i.e. everything that makes fried chicken awesome. Where are they even making that shit? I've been in a number of KFCs (I know...), and I don't recall seeing any grills. They're probably using a microwave.

Anyone tried Kentucky Grilled Chicken? Anyone participating in Popeyes Pay Day? Speak on it.

***

UPDATE: So I got there, sat in line for about 15 minutes, then this lady came out talking about how they were all out of chicken. I peeled the fuck out before a riot popped off.

Reparations FAIL.

Man Tip: Don't dine on Chinese

You could fuck around and get robbed.

No but really, don't sleep on this story about the Hipster Grifter. Maybe you saw it mentioned this weekend on Gawker, or Hipster Runoff and thought it was some ol' bullshit. I'm only up on it because I'll read pretty much anything posted on Hipster Runoff. Which is my shit, even if it is mostly just "quotation marks humor" and making fun of Asian people. But come to find out, this might be the most hilarious meme/story in the history of hipsterdom. Those kill whitey parties are boring by comparison.

I'll spare you summing it up and instead just point you to the story in the New York Observer, but I would like to point out a couple of things. First of all, she wrote a guy a note saying she like to give him a hand job, with her mouth, and she told another guy he could throw a hot dog down her hallway. Second of all, I'd like to point out that this just goes to show how powerless men are when faced with the prospect of some stank. In case you haven't noticed, this broad is the definition of hurt.

Checkit: The Hipster Grifter [The New York Observer]

And after the jump is a video TAN made about this for Gawker.

Man Tip: What to do when attacked by a woman

Chris Brown found out the hard way - you gotta have a game plan, in case a beeyotch just up and starts swinging on you. Otherwise, your career could fall to shit, and not all of have that Wrigleys chewing gum money.

I know there's been a number of occasions, at my various jobs in the service industry, when a woman looked like she might be thinking about tempting fate with me, and even went so far as to throw some shit at me. Fortunately, I've been man enough to take the high road.

jimbrah izrael, who usually can't be bothered to write more than 300 words at a time (I heard he's working on a book), went in today with a post about what to do when you're attacked by a woman.

Checkit: Ten Things Men Can Do When Women Attack [jimiizrael.com]

And feel free to share your own tips here in the comments section.

Where's my bailout?

This guy I used to work with used to work at a Burger King, and he once told me this story about how one time, when his parents had to go out of town for a week, they made the mistake of leaving him some money so that he could buy some food. Instead, he stole a bunch of chicken nuggets from Burger King and spent all of the money on drugs.

The only comparable story I had was when my parents left me home alone for a week when I was about 15, and I ate one of those huge things of lasagna that takes like four hours to cook, all in one setting. The plan was to eat it over the course of a couple, or maybe even a few days. But I just started eating it, and once I got about halfway through, I thought to myself, "Damn, I could eat this entire thing right now." So I did. Then I rubbed one out and fell asleep. Later that week, my grandma had to take me to the grocery store to get some more food, and an issue of The Source.

So yeah, I wasn't as much of a badass as that kid. The sad thing is, I'm sure we lead remarkably similar lives now, despite my avoidance of drugs, for the most part. Or who knows? Maybe he's lying dead in a gutter somewhere.

I couldn't help but think of my former coworker, when I saw this video, after the jump, that suggests that Goldman Sachs should have spent its bailout money on people who work at Burger King, which is owned by Goldman Sachs. With the amount they spent on bonuses for their financial employees, who obviously failed to keep the company from the point where it needed a handout from the government, they could have given each and every Burger King employee in America $18,000.

As I recall, the point of the bailout was so that banks would have money to lend companies, so that they wouldn't have to lay so many people off, or do whatever the fuck it is they're doing over at Vibe magazine - not necessarily to give people bonuses, regardless of where they work. But it would seem to me that giving the money directly to bums such as myself would do more to stimulate the economy. Even if we spent it all on drugs, I'm sure it would do a lot to stimulate the economy. After all, drug dealers spend a lot of money on clothes and what have you.

I'm sure at least a few of you will beg to differ.

Man tip: Steal the Paste sampler

This morning, I had to meet with my Jew landlord, to make sure my shit didn't get set out on the curb. His office is near a Borders, so I figured I'd stop in and have a look at the magazine rack, to make sure there wasn't anything worth reading.

Mostly, there wasn't. But I saw there was a new issue of Paste - the magazine for grown people who know from good music, film and what have you - with Neko Case on the cover. Of course, I copped on GP, even though it's only 20 pages long. Shit, I'd even cop a Joe Budden album, if it had Neko Case on the cover.

Neko > Taheezo

The copy I picked up didn't have a free CD, so I picked up the next one. But it didn't have a CD, either. So I picked up the whole stack of them, and none of them had free CDs. The fuck? I figured they might have done away with the free CDs, because of the economy, but then it said right there on the cover that it came with a free sampler.

So I grabbed one and flipped through it to the page where they list all of the songs on the free CD, and I realized what was going on: They didn't get rid of the free CD, but you have to subscribe in order to get one. Otherwise, you can download all of the songs for free from the Paste website. You just have to buy a copy to get the 16 digit code.

Or do you? It's not like the magazine is in a bag, or the code is covered by something you have to scratch off. You could just as easily write down the code in the store, or take a picture of it with your cell phone, and not bother buying the magazine.

Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, since CD samplers that come with magazines usually suck balls. But those Paste CD samplers are my shit. Back when I used to cop Paste on the regular, I could put one of them in the CD player in my van and listen to it all month long. I see this new one's got joints from the new Neko Case, M. Ward, and Andrew Bird albums. It's even got the Kool Keith joint from that N.A.S.A. album.

If next month's issue has some ol' bullshit on the cover, I might have to break out my camera phone in Borders. No Boutros.

Real estate is for suckers?

I hardly even own the shorts that I'm wearing as we speak, let alone any homes or anything, but I've always wondered about these people who buy and sell homes at a profit and/or own rental properties.

Common sense should tell you that you shouldn't be able to go from not having any money at all, or even a job, to buying umpteen different houses at a profit, but it's the rare occasion that you hear of anyone actually losing money on some shit like that.

On the contrary, all you hear about are these people who lack the sense god gave a dead bird making a killing in real estate, while college educated saps like us work (er, talk shit on the Internets) for a living. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had several different people try to convince me to read shit like Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Enter Casey Serin. According to his blog, this dumbass somehow managed to buy eight houses in four different states in eight months with no money down in order to fix n' flip. He ended up running up an insane amount of dept and has since either forclosed or sold them all at a loss. He reamains up to his ears in debt to this day.

How has he managed to get away with all of this? Because he's white, obviously. No but really, according to this article on Cnet, he managed to take out mortgages on eight houses by lying on loan applications, which is illegal the last time I checked. There's a petition going around to have his ass thrown in jail, but so far no dice.

The thing is, the guy's become somewhat of a celebrity, as well as a poster child for the housing bubble. Thousands of real estate types now visit his blog on the daily for the sole purpose of berating him. If he manages to avoid prison, he could very well turn said infamy into a book deal or some such and actually pay off his debts.

Checkit: 10 mistakes that made flipping a flop [USA Today]