I'd lived my life in blissful ignorance about TMZ until Kanye West ran his ignorant mouth off live at the studio about 'slavery being a choice'. Then I watched a couple of these shows. The way the programme is formatted to give the, let's face facts here, peddlers of gossip this faux gravitas aspect, as if what they were telling the viewer about Kim K 's arse was important. Utter bollocks is what that show is, it is made to keep America stupid.
The yelling white woman and her 'N' word rant. I'm glad America got to see who she is. There is more damage she can do than just shoot her mouth off. Perhaps she employs people? What if she's the nurse when your in hospital?. Iyanla Vanzant says when someone shows you who they are the first time; believe them! Are you allowed to watch YouTube clips? T.
Ps Make sure your cellie has access to his headphones when that crap is on.
Pls. How does a black kid get a French first name and an Irish surname?

Based on my personal experiences with drunk people, you're totally right!

Just for fun, there's many scientific studies floating around that say the same thing as you. I'll share a part of an online article by Kathryn Francis at Inverse magazine which summarizes them for easier reading:

"If someone has done something wrong while under the influence of alcohol, we tend to give them a “get out of jail free card,” rather than hold them accountable for their actions. We also extend these excuses to ourselves.

But in our research, we’ve attempted to paint a clearer picture of how drinking alcohol, empathy, and moral behavior are related. In turns out that while consuming alcohol might affect our empathy, making us respond inappropriately to other people’s emotions and reactions, this doesn’t necessarily change our moral standards, or the principles we use to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.

In a recent experiment, we gave participants shots of vodka and then measured their empathy and their moral decisions. We presented images showing various people expressing emotions to our participants. After having a higher dose of vodka, people began to respond inappropriately to these emotional displays, reporting that they felt positively about sad faces and negatively about happy faces. The more intoxicated people were, the more impaired their empathy became —having a few drinks weakened people’s abilities to understand and share the emotions of others.

But did this then have an effect on their morality?

We had people tell us what they thought they would do in moral dilemmas and then also looked at what they actually did in a simulation of a moral dilemma in virtual reality. Consider what you might do in one of these situations:

A runaway trolley is heading down some rail tracks towards five construction workers who can’t hear it approaching. You’re standing on a footbridge in between the approaching trolley and the workers. In front of you, is standing a very large stranger. If you push this stranger onto the tracks below, their large bulk will stop the trolley. This one person will be killed but the five construction workers will be saved. Would you do it?

While alcohol might have impaired the empathy of our participants, it didn’t have an effect on how they judged these moral situations or how they acted in them. If someone chose to push the person off the footbridge in order to save more lives while sober, they did the same thing when drunk. If people refused to sacrifice the person’s life in the same situation because they believed that killing was wrong regardless of the consequences, they also did the same when drunk.

It turns out that while we might believe that alcohol changes our personalities, it doesn’t. You’re still the same person after a drink — your existing sense of morality left intact.

And so you are responsible for your moral and immoral actions, whether you’ve had a few drinks or not."

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Sunday 10th Nov 12 midday UK time.
Gorgeous sunny day, I am writing this from a hospital bed. Got taken in last week Saturday, emergency surgery, won’t bore you with the details. Felt wretched. Family member brought me in a laptop as I don’t have one and saw your letter and felt immediately better.
Should warn you about the use of the word bollocks. In the UK if you have a strong slang accent like mine it’s sounds good, immediately inflames people, it means something is really crappy. BUT, if you something is ‘the dogs bollocks’, like if you just bought a car and you were telling someone how much you like it, then you would say, “My cars the dogs bollocks”. So it has two uses. it’s Irish, of which I am half.
I love Kanye new religious album and his open air religious gatherings. Hopefully Jesus will put him out of that mind con family he is in. He is a genius. Genius always come to earth like that, misunderstood, and people laughed, but he has something important to impart, but he isn’t there yet. The family are terrified every time he opens his mouth in case their wallets shrink . I particularly detest the matriarch of the family Kris, she has a cupboard full of designer purses, some of which cost over $120,000 EACH Hermes. they estimate just the bags alone are close to ten million dollars. To me that’s immoral. Each of those bags could buy a homeless person a home. why would you collect so many? But poor people in America are in awe of the family, and instead of being outraged they line up to buy their crap and believe their lies. Look how long it took to get Bruce Jenner out of there, and he lost his balls during his escape!
Regarding racism, I’m white so have no person experience of it except some aggravation when i was in India. When I travelled where they hadn’t seen white people. There is a brilliant documentary on Netflix called. The 13th. goes through the whole timeline of how black men in the 18th century were just used, abused, tortured. None of them fought back, except the slaves in Jamaica who ran the plantation owners out! Then in 1800 onward black men were regarded as figures of fun, entertainment and low down. Then somewhere the narrative got changed and black men were violent, dangerous and volatile.To be feared, so needed locking away. When the plantations lost their workers they went to the jails and men convicted of petty crimes like vagrancy and given huge sentences were made to form slave labour. So they got them in the ned maddening.
I hated dating, I had an arranged marriage of sort. I was like this bum magnet, so I asked my friend to look for me I wanted a serious person, wasn’t that bothered what he looked like. He turned out okay, we’ve been married over twenty years.. Chemistry is a real thing.
I may write more later, but I’m knackered, another word for you, really tired.
T

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Hello Antoine.
Great that you responded. Yes I am in the U.K., I live 25 miles outside London. Not a great place to live, high crime and we now have gangs, they are known as country lines gangs, kids get caught up in their shenanigans which usually end in death and stabbing. They use children to cross country lines to deal dope. In the U.K. you aren’t criminally responsible until you are ten. Then between ten and seventeen it’s lax too. Gun ownership is very controlled here. People do get their hands on guns, but the sentencing for being in receipt of one, usually puts people off, so we are lucky in that respect.
Nature is weird isn’t it. In the animal kingdom the male is usually prettier than the female. Like Peacocks and peahens, ducks, lions. Seahorses are interesting because the male looks after the child. And did you know that pigeons are monogamists. The pigeon only has one partner. I have a friend who hates pigeons he calls them skyrats!
I try to avoid surgery when I can. I actually removed my own wisdom teeth with pliers at home rather than face the dentist. Didn’t hurt a bit. The surgery I had last month was an emergency. And I was in so much pain I was just saying to the anesthetiser guy, just knock me out!! I got another scan Thursday 19th Dec, might need more surgery. This is the problem with ageing, you are like a car, things fall off, get blocked, need replacing. I wrote this before to another inmate, the human being is only supposed to last about 40 years, it is just medical advancement and chemistry that has made us live longer.
Came from a hard drinking Irish family. My mum was one of 12 kids, one of my aunties had 21 children. My mum and dad were heavy drinkers/alcoholic but both kicked the drinking in their 50’s. I never really had the taste for it, just binge drank when I was young, but I couldn’t put up with the hangovers!.
If you thought the price of shoes was bad when you were last out, you should see it now. Especially with Kanye’s Yeezy brand, shoes going from several thousand dollars now. Rubber, and material and some laces, crazy money.
Designing shoes is a great idea. And clothing too. I don’t know if you remember the trend for wearing jeans that slipped down to show your pants, Ice Cube and other rappers dressed like that as a throwback to jail where they take your belt and shoelaces away from you. Crime is a big seller now, many programmes on television monetising crime. Why as an ex con (God willing soon) you shouldn’t have your experience mean something, rather than something you have to hide? Do ALL the programmes they offer you, jump through all the hoops. You have to work your way out of there. Design some sneakers, send your ideas to the big names, Nike Converse Vans, shoes with an inmate twist, even incorporating your cross stitching designs.
It’s Saturday 14th December, so you’ll probably get this by Christmas so I wish you and your loved ones a great Christmas and a Hapoy New Year 2020

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Hello Antoine.
I hope you and those whom you love are safe and happy.
First Escape to the a Country, and tv show like it drive me crazy!,, I don’t know a single person who talks like that, or has funds like that. These are 1 percenters.These people with money to buy extra homes drive the prices up in areas, gentrifications and local people cannot live there. My home town is paying for that one. A house here used to cost about $60,000 now a one bedroom apartment costs $225,000 Houses start at three hundred thousand, in a period of about ten years. So we rent, will never own a home, and it is very likely my daughter never will either, unless she robs a bank successfully or wins the lottery. There are lots of show like that. Production companies make these programmes and show you, ‘look at what you can’t have’
My auntie who had the 21 kids, had three sets of twins. Her husband was a house painter and they lived on that. No rich people in my family unfortunately. My mum and dad only had two kids, which was viewed as weird by her family.
You said something odd about your dream and a mint green house. My house has wood work on the outside, very rotted but it is indeed mint green, and inside it does look like an art boutique, as I have lots of statues, Buddhas and art work from my years of travelling. And my daughter is an art student,.and I live on the rounded corner of my road! There was a red phone box outside it was removed seven years ago! Your dream was correct. I think most people in most countries think in England it’s all tea drinking, playing darts and dominoes in a pub and no poverty. Well I am here to testify England is a poor place. Many of us exist on welfare, and there are food banks. My daughter was raised wearing thrift and charity shop clothing, as do my and my husband wear it. You do get some good come ups in the shops though, Levi jeans for a dollar, my husband found a Prada jacket that was two thousand dollars in a thrift store for five dollars and it was real. So that was an exciting day for him.
When I die I will lie in a paupers grave, funerals start at about ten thousand, so even the poor are reminded they are poor when they pass!
The America you left when you entered the prison system, will not be the same as the America you enter when you are released, and you must prepare yourself mentally, spiritually and physically for that. Society is different and people certainly are changed. The internet, phones social media, it’s another world where people interact and it can be toxic.
Boys learn to be men from the men in their lives, or in the absent of these men, from the men around them. That’s why gangs are so enthralling. People in general want people to know who they are and in the lack of that acknowledgement they will exaggerate their personalities and testosterone. Toxic masculinity is a buzz word at the moment. Finding out who you are is a lifetimes journey.
Part one. More coming

Hello Antoine part two.
In 1996 in a Scottish town a caretaker of a kindergarten school went mad and shot and killed 17 children. After this happened the government immediately banned hand gun ownership. And restricted shotguns to farmers and clubs with strict licensing rules. If you are found with an unlicensed gun it’s a life sentence. In the UK life usually means eighteen years with a good lawyer.
We haven’t as yet had anymore school shootings. People tend to use knives, even the terrorists find it difficult to get arms and explosives. Into the uk anyway. France they seem to be able to.
I love TD Jakes, that man makes a lot of sense. The Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist whatever speak about a God. But, in my mind God is a notion that we as human beings are intellectually incapable of truly understanding. We just to have faith that there is an energy there that is loving and accepting. Religious zealots worry me. I have had some uncomfortable conversations with people, young men in particular that do not see anyone, or recognise anyone outside their faith as sharing the same humanity as them and it scares me. In the future we won’t fight over oil or land or property, we will go to war over culture and religion.
Most people walking around’free’ will definitely at one time during their lives done something they could have been jailed for. I know I have. My dad did time, many of my uncles did too. I have a friend who did a big sentenced, armed robbery, he is out now and doing great. We are not the sum total of out mistakes, what I did, or what you did shouldn’t define you. Polish your legacy. Someone in jail told me that one. Polish your legacy. Gandhi did jail time, as did Nelson Mandela.
I watched a USA prison tv show called 60 days in, they got general public people to fake being in trouble and set them into a country jail to try and find out how drugs were getting in. County jail turned out to be a very scared place. The whole jail was like a microcosm, it’s own internal world where the rules between the prisoners was set in stone. No snitching, there were pod bosses, or shot callers where it was all race, and gang separate. You got bullied for your food, your commissary your shoes even. And the prison guards seem to accept this because it cuts the violence down. It was a great show. Mohammed Ali’s daughter was one of the participants. One guy got beaten up by a prisoner who was clearly insane. Another guy turned himself into a boss, it was crazy weird.

Hello Antoine part three

Regarding the shoe idea. Don’t need to make lasts, just be aware of the shapes that make up the style of each sneaker. The front part, the part that rises to the tongue where the laces or Velcro pass. The side panels, sometimes they have several of them, sometimes just one. Then your definitive brand. Could even put some of your writing on them, parts from your poetry. Have a close look at the construction of these shoes. Perhaps sone of the inmates have or are allowed to wear branded footwear. (Not allowed in the U.K.)You got to get your designs to the sneaker design departments. Even try contacting, Kanye Wests team or Converse ideas marketing department or Jay z, find out where they go to church,. I can see an orange shoe designed by you on the streets, a message to the kids, a reminder on their feet. Shoes are so important to kids these days.

People think we live our lives in obedience to the main holy books, the Vedas, Bible (which is actually a library not a book) The Koran, Talmud. Between the paragraphs the sentences the verses. But we live between heartbeats. We make our decisions between heartbeats. We just got to listen to it. That’s where God is, where he speaks to us. There is a great debate going on in the medical community at the moment regarding ‘consciousness’, where and what it is. People thought it was in our heads, in the brain, but now people are starting to find evidence it actually resides in our hearts. Just as the first people said it was 3000 years ago.
One of the screaming differences between the US and U.K. prison system seems to be poverty. In the U.K. you can get a pretty good legal representation for free. But in your country you get what you pay for. There seems to be a terrible recipe for a long sentence, it’s male, black, poor and single parent family. Although I have noticed a lot of ex army brats seem to be making a showing, I wonder why that is? Maybe a discipline rebellion thing? And a lot of ex service personnel who find themselves on the other side after they leave the armed services. Which is terrible considering these people put their lives on the line to protect the `USA,
I LOVE the way you write and express yourself. It is so liberating and authentic!!! We English tend to get all caught up in syntax semantics and structure. When a newly formed structure, like the one you use is so brilliant, and is actually the dogs bollocks! Actually the correct term for expression that disobeys grammatical norms is ‘streams of consciousness’ form. It’s almost like unimprovised jazz music. I love the way it moves, and demands your attention as a reader of it .
I hope 2020 exceeds your expectations
Keep in keeping on
Much love to you and those you love
T