United Blood Nation - did you know?

Cyber Italia again. Feel like I should just bring a pillow and move in here, I'm here so much lately.

I did finish the fictional story yesterday. I also changed a few major details to make it easier to write. I'm sure this isn't even remotely interesting to any of you, but after changing the gang that my main character is in, I found out some stuff about that gang that really blew my mind, so I thought I'd share it with you anyway.

The United Blood Nation, or UBN, is the east coast "branch" of the gang I was talking about yesterday, The Bloods. What really struck me about the gang was something I found out from a History Channel documentary about the bloods. Apparently, in the 90's, the gang was really taking over the gang activity on the east coast, and they became especially big in New York. They identified themselves by wearing red clothing and especially bandanas on their head and around their wrists, obviously making the job really easy for law enforcement to track down the members on the street, but that's not the point. The point is the initiation process you had to go through to become a UBN member. They have a notion that is common for most violent gangs, the idea of "blood in, blood out", usually meaning that to become a member, you have to kill someone, and the only way to get out of the gang was being killed. Once you were in, there was no turning back, essentially. Anyway, the UBN did this initiation process a little different from the typical gangs.

" 5 poppin', 6 droppin' 
Crip, kill it, or my casket drop
5 alive, 6 must die
rest in peace, the OG tie." 

If someone wanted to become part of the UBN, they had to go up to so called "neutrals", meaning a non gang affiliated person and ask "What's poppin'?" As the neutral, if your answer wasn't that little sing song rhyme, you would recieve a "buck fifty". The aspiring gang member had to cut you in the face to the point where you would have to get 150 stitches. The thought behind it was that instead of having their prospects killing a rival gang member for initiation, they would leave the UBN trademark of the buck fifty on the face of a neutral person, for ever reminding them and other members of the general public of the actions of the actions of the UBN.

When I heard this, there were chills running down my back. I mean, it's bad enough killing a rival gang member to be initiated into a life of violent crime, but that rival gang member had probably done the same at some point and would in my eyes be more "deserving" of the fate than a peaceful law abiding citizen that just didn't know enough about the gang to be aware that remembering four lines of gangster rhymes would keep them from being dismembered for life.

At some point, I might post the story I wrote on the blog, but since I haven't handed the essay in yet, I can't do it now. The university check the assignments we write against the internet to find out if the piece we've handed in is plaguarized (not sure that's how you spell plaguarized. Plagurised. Plaguariced. I don't know).

Anyway! I have 800 words left on the assignment and then I can go home! Looking forward to it already. I have lectures at 9AM tomorrow and really hope I'll be able to get a descent amount of sleep before that. 6 hours of lectures is pain when you're sleep deprived!

Update: I should probably also mention the meaning of that rhyme I was talking about. The Crips are the main rival gang of both the UBN on the east coast and The Bloods on the west coast. The Bloods and the UBN identified them selves with five pointed stars when they graffitied their gang name on the city walls. The Crips used a six point star. This is why the UBN wanted you to reply "5 poppin, 6 droppin" and "5 alive, 6 must die".