Hermione's Transfiguration

Well, Potterheads, you've gone off the deep end again.  This time thanks to a new play.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (because JK Rowling just can't find anything else to write about) is about an adult Harry, Ron and Hermione dealing with kids and some magic stuff and something.  I have no idea really.  The wizard train left the station long ago for me, but it's being called book 8 in the series so there you go.  And while there's been eager anticipation by the folks who still think owls make good pets, it's being overshadowed by the fan's fury at the audacity to hire a black actress to play Hermione on stage.

First, it's a play.  Second, Hermione's not a real person.  And for all the fuss, it's a play most Potterheads won't even have a chance to see.  Do you know how expensive tickets cost?  Do you really think they'll be a performance outside of Brittain?  And if there is, that the same actors will be in it as the version you're all so freaked out about?  Look, I'm sure the lady is a fine actress and it'll be a fine play so calm down.  And if you hate the idea that much, you don't have to watch it.

God, I'm tired of everything in life being about race.

But here's the part that pisses me off.  Rowling has the audacity to say Hermione was always black.  Her race was "never specified" in the books so she could very well have been black all along.  Ok.  If Hermione was always black, who the hell cast whiter than white Emma Watson in the MOVIES?  Why was Hermione ALWAYS portrayed as white until NOW?  Don't con me lady.  This is a publicity stunt to get butts in seats for your stupid play.  It's as transparent as Moaning Myrtle.

I don't care who plays Hermione in the play.  I don't care if Ron doesn't have ginger hair.  Because it's a play and the original actors probably weren't available and things are always different in plays.  Black Hermione, more power to you.

But I take offense at Rowling making claims that obviously aren't true in order to sell tickets and to make her books appeal to black audiences by using their race to appear more inclusive.  Your books were about white kids, JK.  Don't go changing the narrative now because you're pressured to be more politically correct.  You should have thought about political correctness when you first created the characters 20 years ago.  It's a disgusting publicity stunt and I'm very disappointed.

A million points from Gryffendor, Miss Rowling.

Racism: An Equal Opportunity Problem

Listen to the rhetoric on any thread tweeting "Black Lives Matter" and you hear it.  Read the comments section in any online column regarding police brutality and you hear it.  Take a walk through the ghetto and listen to people talking in their own front yards and you hear it.  Black racism.  It's everywhere black people are in America and we can't keep looking the other way.  We can't pretend it isn't there because it isn't socially acceptable to admit it is.

There is a growing movement in the black community that is hardcore Afro-centric.  If it ain't black they don't like it.  In their ideology, blacks came first and lighter skin is a genetic mutation.  YouTube is littered with claims of "new scientific evidence" that blacks are the master race, the race all other races sprang from, and therefore are the most purest.  Blacks are the purest humans, by default the most noble, and everyone else are dogs beneath their majestic feet.  They are royalty oppressed by lesser beings who fear them.  Sound familiar?  Sounds Nazi-esque to me, but this what they espouse.  This is what they got out of humanity's turbulent history.  A big ego.  They learned nothing.

They even believe Native Americans were not the original inhabitants of the Americas.  They claim Africans settled America and that Native Americans are the result of white Europeans raping African women.  Same thing the world over.  Hawaiians were black originally and Asians raped their women and that's why native Hawaiians look Asian.  Yes. Pseudo history is everywhere and always the myth that the black race came first and was beaten and oppressed by the evil white man, who is a deformity in the genetic code.  Hell, the idea that Africa is the birthplace of all life on earth is a totally unprovable theory now taken as fact.  Pseudo history is everywhere and should be taken with a grain of salt until concrete evidence proves otherwise.  There is NO WAY to definitively determine the true origins of man.  Get over it.

But it's more than just faking history to make yourself feel special.  What's truly maddening about the whole Afro-centric movement is the rampant increase in racism and calls for racial violence that come with it.  This isn't a celebration of black culture if it ever was.  It's a call to arms for the black man to fight the white man and it's as dangerous as anything ISIS can come up with.

While the racism extends to several groups, most notably Asians, most black racism targets white people and they are quick to use a racially tense history to justify it, but does that make it ok?  Does the slavery of the past make it ok to be racist towards white people because of something their ancestors may or may not have done? I say may not have done because, contrary to the rhetoric, not all white people have ancestors who once owned slaves. A lot of whites are the descendants of Italian and Irish immigrants who came to this country at the turn of the century long after slavery was abolished.  They were usually poor as dirt and there's no indication of many of them ever owning slaves. But all white people are continuously blamed for slavery to this day even though no one alive today has ever owned a slave and no black person alive today has ever been a slave.

Unless you count sex slaves and African ladies who sell themselves into virtual slavery as housekeepers in order to be fed.  But that's not the white man's fault either because white people are not actively running an African slave trade anymore and aren't the only ones who market sex slaves and housekeepers.  Yet do black Americans hold those Indians who purchase housekeepers or their black African cousins who keep sex slaves in the same contempt they keep holding whites in for something that isn't happening anymore?  No.  Heaven forbid they acknowledge that 300 years ago blacks sold other blacks into slavery for money and alcohol.  It would mean holding their own ancestors accountable for slavery too and it's much easier on their egos to just blame white people.

The white man owes you nothing anymore.  We won't forget slavery happened because it was a horrible thing, but we learned from it.  We now will never see it happen again in this country and we fight to stop it from happening in other parts of the world.  We learned from our mistakes.  Why can't you?

Most whites are all for racial equality.  We protest for black equality too.  Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago.  Young white liberals took to the streets demanding justice just like blacks did (only probably not as violently).  Whites marched with King in the 60s.  Whites ran stops in the underground railroad. It's obvious that not all whites are out to get the black man. All that keeps getting ignored though.  All that doesn't matter.  Whites are and always have been the villains of the story.  Can you blame whites for being tired of it?  Tired of the scapegoating, of constantly apologizing even though they personally didn't do anything wrong?

Listen to the rhetoric coming from a large portion of the black community these days.  They aren't calling for equality.  They don't want to be equal to the white man.  They want REVENGE.  They want to make the white man their slaves.  That's the only way they will feel content.  Dominance is the only reparation they will accept.  It's a sick attitude that is so pervasive, it's undeniable.  Whites see it and they are afraid.  They recoil from it.  When a white person crosses the street at seeing a black man walking towards them, it's out of fear and NOTHING ELSE.  Generations of whites have been taught to be extra nice to blacks because of our past.  Don't offend black people.  That's the mantra.  Generations of blacks have been taught to hate whites for something that happened before they were born.  Then you see blacks being violent on tv.  Then you hear angry rants about getting even.  Get whitey night.  It's not a white hatred of blacks that keeps most of us away.  It's the fear of what blacks might do to us if we're not protected because we have been threatened.

I know not all blacks feel this way, but enough of them do and the numbers of those who do are increasing so rapidly that it's going to become a problem when blacks start out ranking whites in a few decades.  Reverse racism is a stupid name for it because racism is racism no matter who it's directed towards, but the painful truth is, a lot of black Americans are extremely racist and things are going to get worse the more extreme they get.  Not just towards whites, but to everyone of every color because that's how racism works.

Let's be perfectly clear about black racism.  It exists and it's just as wrong as racism from any other group.  Whatever vitriol you think the KKK may have, the Black Panthers have just as much.  Blacks can be racist too.  It's a fact.  I'm not being racist for pointing it out though I'll no doubt be accused of it by more than one reader.

Because we don't acknowledge black racism.  The media even goes out of its way to ignore it.  Never do you see it when a black cop does something wrong. Only white cops make the news.  How many Native Americans and Hispanics have been injured by police?  It's never reported.  Only when it involves a white cop and a black person.  It's like the aristocrats running the media WANT a race war so we'll be too occupied fighting eachother to pay attention to how they're robbing us blind.

I'm sick of it.  Blacks keep saying we need to have an honest discussion about race in the country but every time we do, white people are always the only bad guys and everyone else are always the poor victims.  AND IT'S NOT TRUE.

I'm not going to pretend there aren't white racists, but I'm not stupid enough to presume only white people are capable of it.  Racism is NOT a white only problem.  It's not nor has it ever been something only white people do. Every racial group has its fair share of racists.  Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, Blacks.  Doesn't matter.  They all have racists among their ranks.  Until we acknowledge that, until we approach the issue fairly instead of just bashing white people, we're never going to solve the problem.

Black people keep saying we need to have an honest conversation about race in this country.  They're right we do.  But blacks need to be honest too or there isn't a point.

You have no friends on Facebook

So there's this show called Catfish, based on the movie by the same name, that highlights stupid people who fall in love over the Internet without ever meeting the love of their life in person or in most cases, even seeing them.  I don't feel sorry for people who get "catfished".  If you do stupid things, you deserve a broken heart.  DON'T DATE SOMEONE ONLINE.  MEET THEM IN PERSON.  Duh.

But that's not what this rant is about.  In the show, the hosts often turn to the suspect's Facebook page to determine if it's a fake or not.  One of the ways they do this is by counting how many Facebook friends they have.  If they don't have friends numbering in the hundreds, they consider the profile fake.  Well, that's stupid.

First, not everyone on Facebook is going to have hundreds of strangers friended.  A lot of people just use Facebook to stay in touch with family.  It doesn't mean they aren't real people or that they're running a fake sight.  Your logic is flawed if you think that.  Most people don't know hundreds of people personally.  The ones who claim to are the liars.  Therefore, anyone with more than a hundred friends on Facebook are the ones to look out for.

But to another issue that pissed me off.  People, we need to learn the difference between FRIEND and ACQUAINTANCE.  Facebook may call them friends, but that's just because acquaintance was too long a word for them.  Just because you friend someone on Facebook, it doesn't mean they're really your friend.

I prefer the Twitter terminology.  You don't have friends on Twitter.  You have people who follow your profile.  Guess what.  The same goes for Facebook.

A friend is someone who will come pick you up at 3am if your car breaks down.  A friend is someone who's been to your house so often they know their way around your kitchen. A friend is someone you can fart in front of and not be embarrassed.  A friend is someone you trust watching your kids.

If you can't do any of that with your Facebook friends, then they're not real friends.  They are acquaintances.  They are people you know casually but that is where the familiarity ends.  They are people who follow your profile and nothing more.

Would you know your Facebook friends birthdays without Facebook reminding you?  You would if they were a real friend.  You know your friends favorite foods, colors, what books they enjoyed as children and most importantly, you DON'T forget.  Because you're their friend.  With an acquaintance, you only know what they post.  An acquaintance is someone you just share cat memes with.  A friend is someone you share a bond with.

And don't tell me it's ok if you've met them once and liked the conversation.  That's not how friendship works.

Friendship takes time to cultivate.  It takes effort to maintain.  You don't instantly become friends at first sight.  There is no love at first sight either.  There's an interest at first sight followed by months and sometimes years of getting to know eachother before taking the step beyond acquaintance to a real friendship.

Truth:  You have no friends on Facebook.  Ok, you may have one or two, but outside that small circle, anyone you have a strictly online relationship with or who you've only ever met a handful of times, is NOT your friend.  They are merely an acquaintance.

Catfish is stupid and so are people who mistake a friend request from a stranger for a friendship.

Let the past go or else

I'm so sick of being blamed for crap that happened years ago before I was even a twinkle in my daddy's eye.  I don't care what color I am.  I am NOT responsible for slavery.  I am NOT responsible for Jim Crow.  I owe you NOTHING.

Every African American I've ever come across seems to think the white man owes them.  That everything wrong in their life is white people's fault.  Not only is that stupidly wrong, it's incredibly detrimental.  Why?  Because scapegoating doesn't address the REAL issues.

Blaming white people may feel good.  It may make you feel better about yourself.  Go ahead, burn down your own neighborhood if it helps you feel important.  But it doesn't do a damn thing.  Blaming white people doesn't CHANGE anything.

Black folks have had plenty of opportunities to change their lives for the better and didn't take them.  They won the right to vote and didn't use it.  They won the right to an education and still have the highest drop out rate in the country.  They can be doctors, lawyers, politicians, teachers, cops.  Whatever they want to be.  All they have to do is work for it.

And a lot of them understand this.  They made something of themselves.  Kudos.

But a hell of a lot more are sitting in the hood, smoking their weed, gang banging with their pants falling off their asses, rap music blaring, living off welfare, unable to use proper grammar complaining about how oppressed they are instead of doing anything about it.  And I don't mean burning down the hood because that's stupid.  YOU LIVE THERE.

No, what I mean is they aren't interested in getting an education.  They want to be ballers, rap stars.  They may take honest jobs to pay the bills, but that's it.  McDonald's is as far as their expectations go.  Like the Civil Rights movement was a giant waste of time.

For the record, my ancestors were poor Italian and Irish immigrants who came to this country years after slavery ended. They never owned slaves.  Know something else? They were discriminated against.  Ever see an Irish person?  They're white.

If you're not going to take responsibility for your actions, it's not my fault.  Stop making excuses. Stop assuming my family owned slaves.  In fact, stop rubbing my face in slavery period.  I never owned slaves. You never were a slave.  We don't forget the past, but we can't live in it.  It keeps us from moving forward and if we don't move forward, we die.  Cuz life only moves forward.

Time to stop blaming everyone else for your own shortcomings and do something to improve you life. Only you can improve your life.  But first, you have to let go of the past.

Put down the smart phone!

I appreciate my cell phone.  It allows me to communicate with people without having to physically track them down.  It's a lifeline in an emergency.  It's something to occupy me when I'm bored waiting for the bus in the morning.  I like being able to Google something when I need to know it.  I don't have a problem with cell phones per se.

I have a problem with people never putting them down.  When I'm trying to have a conversation with my sister and she's checking Facebook every five minutes, I have a problem.  So... I'm not as important to you as some cat meme?  My feelings do get hurt when someone picks their phone over me and so should yours.

When you can't go more than hour without touching your phone, you have a problem.  Smart phone addiction is real.  Just look around you.  EVERYONE has it.  And there's NO etiquette when it comes to phone use because the addiction is just too strong to put them down.

I hate when I'm trying to check out and the person in front of me is super slow because they're on their phone instead of paying attention to checking out.  It's not just wasting everyone's time.  It's rude.  You're supposed to be polite to your cashier.  Not ignore them.  They're human beings. Show some respect.  And, hello, how do you know if there's an error if you aren't paying attention?  You could be getting screwed but glad Lakeesha got that VD cleared up.

And that's perhaps the rudest thing of all.  People have NO sense of what should be discussed in public and what shouldn't.  Why are you telling everyone Lakeesha has VD?  No one wants to know who in your life is sleeping with who or the details of your proctal exam.  They call them private things because they're meant to be private.  It's rude to prattle on about stupid stuff to an unwilling crowd.  Save it for when you're in private.

Driving and cell phone use is deadly.  It kills people and it's stupidly insane how people need to be constantly reminded of something so fricking common sense.  People don't just carry on their rude conservations.  They text them.  They post them on Facebook.  It can wait!  When you're in the car, focus on driving.   Don't even answer the phone until you're parked and it's safe to do so.  Put it in the back seat if you have to.  That cat meme?  Lakeesha's VD?  They aren't worth your life and they damn sure aren't worth mine.

People have actually been known to post to Facebook that the building they're in is on fire BEFORE leaving the burning building.  One of the easiest ways to stalk someone is by their posts on social media.  Smart phones are the number one thing stolen in the United States.  It's insanity.

I don't know why people engage more with smart phones than with other people.  Society is falling apart and technology, once our savior, is now destroying us.  I do know this though, it does the entire world good when we put our phones away and look around us.  When we talk to eachother, we understand eachother.  When we understand eachother, we get a long better.  The number one treatment for insomnia is to turn off electronic devices at least two hours before bed.  Especially smart phones.  That should tell you something.

And stop telling the world your private business.  We don't care.

On Evolution

Ah the things you discover when you have insomnia.  So I was surfing YouTube and found this random link that claimed black Africans were better than other races because they were more pure genetically.  I've heard for a while that the oldest signs of human life were found in Africa, but what this video suggested was that this meant all human life on earth ORIGINATED in Africa.

I don't think we have sufficient evidence to say definitely all human life began in Africa just because the oldest life we KNOW of was found there.

But this idea that Africa is the cradle of life is so accepted that no one questions it and black people either wanting to feel good about themselves or to stick it to white people are using this belief to say they are more important than everyone else.  Some claim Africans were the original inhabitants of North America, not the Native Americans we know of who apparently came from Asia and enslaved the original black inhabitants.  Some claim that black Africans were the original Israelites, not the Jews who came from somewhere else and enslaved the black Israelites.   Black people just keep getting enslaved, don't they?  These theories may make you feel proud to be black, but are they really true?

Reading the racist comments left by black viewers made me cringe.  It was bad enough the video called lighter skinned people an "invasive species" but then for so many viewers to suggest that every race that is not distinctly African is genetically inferior is just plain hateful.  I didn't think black Nazis existed until I happened across the movement claiming all life came from Africa.

I didn't leave a link to the video in question.  I have no desire to spread that level of hate and ignorance.  Instead I did a little research on the African origins movement and found a scientific research paper discussing possible theories for why lighter skin evolved in humans.  The writers of the paper also assumed that all life began in Africa.  They cited evidence they found in their research which suggested some 80,000 years ago or so Europeans were all black migrants from Africa.  They then theorized on why our black ancestors got pale.  A lot of vitamin D apparently.  I put the link for the paper at the bottom in case you needed a laugh.

Here's the problem I have with this whole thing.  Say all human life really did begin in Africa.  Say black people really did come first and all life on earth was black and humans only evolved lighter skin as they migrated to colder climates in order to survive.  Let's say black people are more genetically pure than other races.   Does that really make other races mutations?  Or does it really mean that black people aren't as EVOLVED as other races?  If we take the African origin theory as gospel truth, then blacks may have come first but lighter skinned people evolved into something better.  And according to the laws of evolution, species who adapt live while the species who doesn't adapt becomes extinct.  Meaning eventually black people will die out as all inferior species do.  I don't know about you, but I have a problem with that.  I simply refuse to believe that black people are the original humans and everyone else is a more evolved cousin.  Seems kinda hateful, don't ya think?

I don't know how accurate the theory of Africa being where humans began really is.  I'm not here to tell you it's right or wrong.  I'm saying there's no way in hell we can know with any certainty where the first human like creature originated and we should be wise enough not to assume a theory is fact.  I do know that, contrary to what blacks want to believe about human origins, whether or not we started in Africa, black people are NOT more pure or any better than anyone else.  They are NOT the chosen of God any more than any other race is.  Why do so many think God is as racist as they are?  Or that God made us all different just so he can have a chosen people?

Look, we're all human.  We're all the same.   That's what matters.  No theory is going to change that.  Read the paper if you want, but don't pretend you're better than me because your genes are more African than mine.  That's just racist garbage.

http://m.livescience.com/7863-people-white.html

Communication is essential

I'm sick of people bitching when I comment that immigrants need to learn English when moving to an English speaking country. It's not racist, you morons. It's not anti Mexican.  It's common frickin' sense.

You HAVE to be able to communicate with the people around you.  Communication is so important we invented sign language for people who can't speak so they'd be able to do it too.  It's not a racial issue.  It's not to penalize spanish speakers.  It's FOR YOUR BENEFIT.

Say there's an emergency and you need to tell the paramedics what's wrong with your loved one so they don't die.  If you don't speak the language the paramedics do, you can't tell them anything and your loved one could be toast.  Say there's some sort of disaster and you walk right into because you didn't understand what the people warning you were saying.  Not knowing the language everyone else is speaking can be potentially disastrous.

But it's not just emergencies.  It's every day life.  You struggle through basic stuff like checking out at the grocery store or registering your kids in school.  Traffic stops, trying to ask what bus you need, ordering food at a restaurant, renting an apartment.  How can you get your point across if you're relying on your five year old to translate?  If you don't know the language, you don't get far.  It's that simple.

And stop with the memes about how someone who speaks broken english is better than me because they know a second language. I speak broken spanish, that doesn't mean I'm always able to get my point across. If you're not fluid enough to hold a coherent conversation, you don't really know the language.

And stop telling me I have to make concessions for Spanish speakers because they're our closest neighbor and such a large portion of the population.  First, we have immigrants from all over the world who speak languages other than English or Spanish. If you're not willing to translate signs and what  not into ALL the languages spoken in the US, don't tell me to make concessions for Spanish.  That's not fair to everyone else.

Don't move to my country and tell me I need to learn YOUR language.  You're in MY country.  And don't even mention Native Americans. The past can't be changed, but we speak english here now and that's the ONLY thing relevant in this conversation.

And don't criticize me for pointing out the hypocrisy of making me do something for Mexicans that Mexico isn't willing to do for me.  It's the truth and if Mexicans aren't willing to learn english and have english tv stations in Mexico, it isn't fair to demand an English speaking country accommodate them.

And by the way, few countries make concessions like the US does for immigrants who don't speak the native language.  So don't tell me I'm not being fair.  That's how the world works.

Some countries even make it MANDATORY to learn their language prior to being allowed to immigrate there.

Communication is essential to life.  If you can't communicate, your quality of life sucks.  But if you really want better for yourself, you'll make it a point to learn the native language.

Parents don't deserve sympathy

I don't care how hard and frustrating you find parenthood.  The simple, unflinching truth is, it's your bed.  Only you have to lie in it.

What parents need to understand is that unless you were held captive and forced to breed against your will, no one made you have kids.  Even an accidental pregnancy doesn't mean you have to be a parent.  I don't mean abortion though if that's your choice, so be it.  But there's also adoption.  The point is, you don't have keep the baby, but if you choose to, then you are responsible for that decision.  Therefore you and you alone are also responsible for the consequences of that decision.

That means if you're unhappy that you can't go out and party like you use to, oh well.  It means that I don't care how expensive diapers are.  I don't care if your two year old is throwing a tantrum.  I don't care if you never have time to pamper yourself or use the bathroom alone.  I didn't force you to have kids.  You chose to. You deal with it.

And I'm not required to feel sorry for you because you feel sorry for yourself about your decision to have kids or to baby you when you complain about your life or your stretch marks or to tolerate you when you berate me, mock me or publicly try to shame me for not being awed by your perceived awesomeness.  So you gave birth.  Any idiot with a reproductive system can give birth.  Dogs give birth.  Procreation is not that awesome. It's just fricking biology.

I don't have to be a parent to recognize a bad one and parents that bitch and moan about how hard it is to be parents suck at being parents because they don't understand what being responsible for a child really means.

It means the child comes before YOU. It means YOU don't care if you get to go out like you used to, if you don't have as much privacy, if your two year old throws a tantrum or how expensive diapers are.  Your child is everything and you sacrifice everything for your child.  There's no sacrifice a few things and still maintain a vibrant social life.  The kid comes before YOU in everything.  You give up everything for your child for the forsee able future.

And it doesn't mean dragging the kid places YOU want to go.  It means limiting where you go to places that are age appropriate for your child.  The child comes first until they are all grown up and moved away.  That's the price you pay for being a parent and since you CHOSE to become a parent, it's the price YOU CHOOSE to pay.

And you don't have to be a parent to get that.  You just have to be a good human being.

So no, I'm not giving parents any damn sympathy.  I didn't make you have a kid.  I refuse to be held responsible for it.

Some Words On Words

Words are complicated things especially in english where the same word can mean different things.  For example, "bear" can either mean a furry woodland animal or what you think you can physically or mentally handle.  Sometimes the same sounding word can change meanings depending on how you spell it.  "Bare" sounds EXACTLY like "bear" but means empty or stripped down.

You have to be able to comprehend the meaning of SENTENCES, the words AROUND words, in order to interpret what a singular word means.  In other words, you can't take things out of context.

This happens all the time though and everyone does it.  We hear a snippet of someone else's conversation and think we know their life story.  We hear a sound bite and think we know what the person means.  Sometimes we may even be right but more times than not, we're wrong.  The word "assumption" starts with "ass" for a reason.  People who assume are asses.

Perfect example in my personal life involves the time I inconveniently hummed.  I was taking in my surroundings with pleasure and zoning out into my own thoughts as I'm wont to do.  This caused me to momentarily hum a little tune.  My sister, who was with me at the time though occupied with her son, took my humming to mean I was bored.  She was offended and though I tried repeatedly to explain myself, she refused to hear it.  To her, my humming could only mean one thing and I was in the wrong.

Bear, bear or bare?

Eventually she dropped it, but I haven't forgotten how it made me feel to be taken out of context and not allowed to defend myself.  It made me wonder how often I did it.

How many people hear of a police shooting these days and automatically assume the cop was in the wrong?  How many times has an incomplete story caused the public to vilify someone later proved to be innocent?  How many sound bites taken out of context have swung political elections?  Hillary emails anyone?  Romney's 99%?

It's easy to do the same thing to others that my sister did to me.  It's easy to be an ass and not even realize it.

But the world is a better place when we give people the benefit of the doubt, when we don't take sound bites at face value, when we take time to investigate the context before we get mad.  When we don't condemn someone without knowing the full story.

Never repost or retweet something without knowing the context.  Never respond cruelly to a post or a tweet without asking for clarification from the person who made it.  Never assume that you know what another person is thinking or going through.

In other words, sweeties, don't be an ass.

The REAL reason rap rarely wins a Grammy

Nicki Minaj recently got all pissed off because a rap song about how great her butt implants are didn't win a Grammy.  Think about that.  It was a song about her ASS and she honestly believed that it deserved a Grammy.  What an ego!

I'm sick of folks crying racism because rap music doesn't win the same amount of prestigious awards that other genres do. It's not about race and you're racist for thinking so.  Beyoncé's pretty black and she's won Grammies.  Rhianna is black and she won lots of awards even after she went all ghetto.  Black artists have been winning awards in music for a very long time proving that race isn't the factor modern rappers want it to be.  Racism is just an excuse rappers use because they're sore losers.  So why doesn't modern rap win more Grammies?

Because it SUCKS.  Songs that win awards should be songs that actually say something.  Songs that make statements get awards like Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", for example.  That was a rap song, by the way.  Some awards are based on popularity like, well, anything by Beyoncé, but let's be honest about what that means.  The nominees have to be popular ACROSS populations and not, as is the case with most rap these days, only in the ghetto.

Let's take an honest look at modern rap though.  EVERY RAP song is about the "playa" trying to have sex or about drugs or shooting people or, in the case of Minaj, a soliloquy on how awesome the rapper thinks they are.  Your large ego doesn't make your song good, Nicki.  And a lot of rap can't be played on most radio stations because every other word is a sexual reference or a swear word.  I can't listen to something when most of it has been bleeped out and neither can most people.  Radio is still how most people discover new music.  Only a handful of dedicated stations  (those that cater solely to black audiences) have the willingness to play music as racy as what 90% of modern rap is.  Some rap is so racy it can only be found online.  This means a good deal of rap doesn't find a large enough audience outside the one community it's made specifically for to even make it eligible for a Grammy.  Rap today isn't designed to be inclusive of other ethnic groups the way it was when it was new.  Rap today is made solely for the hood where it has its largest fan base.

And then there's the kind of person who makes rap.  The rap persona is basically a recruitment ad for street gangs.  Rappers have to appear hard or thug. They sag their pants, use bad grammar, are disrespectful to others.  They're combative.  Violence goes hand in hand with rap.  East coast, west coast anyone? Tupac and Biggie? Why promote this kind of behavior?  In general, rappers don't appear to be very savory people and for audiences that don't like violence, this is a big turn off.

As for the fans of rap?  They live and breathe the rap persona and all its detrimental attributes.  They adopt the bad attitudes of their role models because rappers have money and it's all about the Benjis in the hood.  Fans crave money and respect and see rap has a way to get it so they emulate rappers in the hopes of following in their footsteps. That's why they play their music too loud, why crime and gang violence are so out of control in black neighborhoods.  This means that in the eyes of most people, rap is associated with crime and bad things in general.  The wanna be thug of hip hop culture is DESTROYING the black community, but they must hate white people too much to admit it.  Better role models could do wonders.

There's a reason rap dominates low income areas.  Only a certain kind of low intelligent person likes trash and most rap is trash.  The problem isn't the Grammy Awards.  It's that anyone actually LIKES modern rap.  The detritus of modern entertainment (non rap included) speaks volumes about how stupid our society has become but rap is a beacon of all that it is wrong with the world.

Back in the day, maybe rap meant something.  Rap was used as a forum for the black community to speak out against injustice.  Now the only thing the black community seems to care about (judging by its music) is sex and weed.  Wil Smith, arguably the most celebrated rapper of all time, didn't swear in his songs and he was popular with pretty much EVERYONE.  Why have modern rappers turned away from their heritage and embraced songs about their asses instead?  Where have all the intelligent rappers gone?

Trash doesn't win awards and it SHOULDN'T.  If today's rappers want to be taken seriously, they need to make better songs. End of.

The Hippie Failure

Former hippies are loathe to admit this, but they FAILED.  Yes, we have more reckless sex now and drugs are cooler, but those really aren't good things are they.  And it wasn't the hippies' peace and love that ended Vietnam.  It was the student protests and that the war was unwinnable that did that.  And we lost.  Hippies didn't give us Civil Rights.  Blacks and, again, students protesting did that and the politicians who wanted to be reelected gave the people what they wanted to stay in power.  Hippies made art that was ok, but most of the meaningful songs were either written by professional song writers working for the record companies or by sober musicians.  And drug induced movies made even less sense.  Head anyone?

Hippies take credit for liberalism, but that's a feel good myth. Liberalism was born out of college protests.  Liberalism was invented by kids who refused to go to war and who marched for equality while hippies were holed up in their communes tripping on acid.

But more than that, when the mid seventies arrived and the last of the hippie movement effectively died out, the world was left unchanged.  There is no utopia. Reckless sex just gives you STDs and drugs will kill you.  There's still war and inequality.  The former hippies even gave up their peace and love mentality for the very money they claimed to despise in their youth.  It was the hippie generation that brought us the greed and avarice of the 1980s, that became the Me Generation and that eventually brought us war in Iraq.  Never forget that.  They sold out.

The hippie movement was a giant failure.  Why?  Because you can't make meaningful changes in the world when you're too stoned to work out all the details.  You can't be a world leader when you're hallucinating from LSD, but you weren't a hippie if you didnt do drugs.  Drugs were the corner stone of the hippie movement and also it's biggest crutch.  Maybe hippies could have made a real impact if they had paid attention to the world around them instead of ignoring it.

We like to immortalize the 1960s, to reminisce as though it was the good old days completely ignoring the fact that the they were one of the most violent decades in our nation in the 20th century.  It was not a pleasant time and we shouldn't be trying to reclaim them.  We should take what painful lessons they taught us and work on a better future.

But the hippie doesn't deserve that much credit because they didn't really do that much and that's just something they'll have to live with.

Equal In The Eyes of SCOTUS

Opinions may be like assholes but that's no reason why you have to be an asshole about your opinion.  The most zealous on both sides of the argument don't seem to get that and that's the REAL problem.

So your religion says homosexuality is a sin. Good for you.  People still have a right to disagree with you.  You're just going to have to get over it.  So you're gay and proud.  Good for you.  People still have the right to disagree with you.  Get over it.

The issue of marriage equality and whether or not LGBT should be allowed to marry has NEVER been an issue of God verses heathen.  It's only EVER been an issue of FREEDOM versus OPPRESSION.  Whether or not the PERSONAL BELIEFS of ONE group gets to overrule the beliefs of another group.

This is America.  This country was founded on the idea of personal liberty.  Sorry,  Christians, but that liberty includes EVERYONE.  Even people who disagree with you.  Even Muslims.  Even gays.  We've fought for our freedom.  We celebrate our freedom.  Don't you DARE try to take freedom away from someone else.  It's UNAMERICAN.

So when you rant and rave and condemn the Supreme Court for legalizing gay marriage nationwide, go screw yourself.  In the land of the free, home of the brave, equality is more important than your narrow minded world view.

Gay people, now you're turn because that personal liberty includes freedom of religion.  It's one thing to change the law so that oppression ends.  We need to keep fighting for equality until everyone has it.  But it's something else to force someone who fundamentally disagrees with your lifestyle to do what you tell them and to use threats and coercion.  You're trying to break away from your oppression.  Don't become the oppressor.  It's hypocritical and isn't going to win you support. Because forcing someone to do something they don't want to do isn't going to change their minds.  Winning hearts changes minds and each generation grows more tolerant than the last.

For every hateful person that tells you no, there are dozens of more enlightened people who will say yes.  I don't care if one county clerk refuses you.  Suing them is stupid.  Go to another county clerk.  So this guy won't make you a cake.  Go somewhere else.  It's that simple.  Your marriage will still be recognized nationwide wherever it takes place and do you really trust someone who hates you not to spit in your cake?

It's ok to disagree with someone.  It's ok for someone to disagree with YOU.  It's NOT ok to force people to live by your religious doctrine or force people to abandon theirs.  Freedom is important.  Abe Lincoln said that anyone who denies freedom to someone else doesn't deserve it for themselves. He was right.

If you truly value freedom, you don't mind gay marriage.  You don't ban things like gay marriage or even abortion.  You WANT separation of church and state.  Why?  Because (and this is for you Christians out there) God tells us to get our OWN affairs in order and not worry about everyone else's.  You need to worry about your OWN soul.  Live and let live.  If you value freedom, your faith doesn't interfere with it.  You understand that some things aren't any of your damn business and you don't have the right to make personal decisions for anyone else.  Then you live your life as well as YOU can and stop trying to be the boss of others.

So the question we as a nation must ask ourselves is,  do we still believe in freedom?  If the answer is yes, then LGBT couples deserve fair treatment.  Other religions besides Christianity deserve fair treatment too.  Cuz this is America and we're all about freedom here.

This is a huge step for equality in America.  People who value equality and freedom are happy.  If you're not happy, you don't value equality and you damn sure don't value freedom.

I'll be blunt.  If you're honestly not ok with marriage equality, you may be a good Christian but you're not a patriotic American.  This country is about freedom for EVERYONE.

THAT INCLUDES LGBT.

So all you right wingers who blast liberals for destroying the American dream can piss off.  You're the ones who destroyed it because you don't even know what it is.

Wanna know what Jesus would really do about legalizing gay marriage nationwide?  Nothing.

Here's a link you may like:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gay-marriage-and-other-major-rulings-at-the-supreme-court/2015/06/25/ef75a120-1b6d-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html

Uncle Tom's Mansion

I'm so sick of people whining about institutional racism and the white man's out to get the black man and yaddah yaddah yaddah.  I'm not going to pretend racism no longer exists the way so many right wing white Tea Party nutjobs do because I'm not stupid.  I know racism is still very much alive.  Yet I'm also too intelligent to pretend that only white people are racist the way so many black people do.

Racism is not a whites only disease.  There are a great number of white people out there who aren't racist and there are a great number of black people who are.  There are also racist Latinos, racists Asians, racist Arabs....  EVERY ETHNIC GROUP ON THE PLANET HAS ITS FAIR SHARE OF RACISTS.

But society only calls out white people.  The media will crucify a white person for saying or doing anything that may be remotely considered racially offensive, but very rarely does anyone ever call out black people for doing the same thing.  And when someone does call out a black person, THEY'RE the ones who are racist.  Not the black person.

It doesn't matter what black people do wrong anymore.  It's always the white man's fault.  Blacks are forced to commit crimes because of institutional racism.  Black poverty is the white man's fault even though millions of white people are in the same poverty.  It isn't the lack of education and skills that keep black kids from having a successful career, it's the white man denying them the right to work.  Even though schools have been desegregated for decades.  Even though large portions of blacks have college degrees and successful careers.  It isn't black people's faults that predominantly black neighborhoods have such high crime rates or that black teens are so disrespectful they refuse to wear pants correctly or that so many blacks have so little consideration for their neighbors that they play loud music at all hours of the day. THEY can't help it.  The white man MAKES them behave that way.

Bullshit.  You  CHOOSE what kind of person you are and if you CHOOSE to act like trash, you ARE trash.  The white man isn't making the black man do anything the black man doesn't want to do.  All the anti discrimination laws on the books, affirmative action.  What have black people done with them?  Why don't black people want to be more active in politics or in the community?  Why don't black people want to be cops?  How can you expect your circumstances to change if you don't do anything to change them?

We never want to call black people out on their own bad behavior.  We never want to suggest that maybe things would change if more black people would just stop blaming their problems on their being black and started CORRECTING the things that cause those problems.

We feel so guilty of our past, we've lost all sense of fairness.

But we have come a long way since the 1960s and we've certainly come a long way from the days of slavery.  This continued blame everything on white people nonsense makes it sound like nothing's changed at all.  Even though white people marched during the Civil Rights movement and in Ferguson and Baltimore.  Even though whites are demanding the Confederate flag no longer be flown because even whites recognize that something racially offensive has no place in our society anymore.  To keep attacking whites isn't fair.

A handful of bad seeds can't speak for an entire people, but vilifying an entire people over a handful of bad seeds will make those people not like you very much and so racism will never die.

Stop demanding the equality you have no intention of giving to others.  That makes you a hypocrite.

The only way to end racism is for one side to be the better person and stop recognizing race as anything other than an ancillary issue.  Most white people are trying to do that and I commend them for it.  It's not ignoring the problem of racism.  It's acknowledging that giving racists attention only encourages them.  It's recognizing that someone's race isn't an issue anymore and we don't have to let it be.

The only people still hung up on race are the people using race as an excuse to either hate or to explain their own inaction.

It's time to move on if we're ever going to heal.

Does affirmative action promote racism?

I can get where they were coming from when they created affirmative action.  It was designed to force white business owners to hire black employees and colleges to accept black students at a time when it wasn't their intention to do so.  I get that in a segregated world that had just legalized civil rights, affirmative action was something we HAD to do in order to enforce the new anti discrimination laws and give black people the chance to finally get a leg up in the world.  And it did a lot of good.

But at some point,  probably in the 90s, affirmative action stopped being the thing that fought discrimination against black people and started being that thing that discriminated against white people.

This is where the trolls come out to tell me how racist I am for saying anything bad about black people, but I'm not.  I'm being honest about the modern concept of affirmative action and being critical of any system that's based on race doesn't make you racist.  It's not racist to condemn racism even when that racism benefits black people.

See, what affirmative action REALLY does is forces businesses and colleges to base their hiring and admissions on RACE rather than qualifications.  It forces them to meet a quota and, in doing that, forces them to NOT accept someone who may be more qualified for the job or have better grades and have worked harder for that scholarship BASED ON THEIR RACE.

So what is affirmative action except racism against non black people?  And does affirmative action really just keep racism alive?

Now black folks are not going to like this.  They're going to say I'm racist for thinking such a thing because blacks have had such a rough time and face racism every day and need things like affirmative action to protect themselves against the big bad white people who want to oppress them.

But how does that genius Asian kid feel who got overlooked for his place at his school of choice because the school needed more black students on campus?  How does the black girl feel when she didn't get her dream job because they needed someone more Hispanic for the position?

Affirmative action doesn't just affect whites and blacks.  It isn't just racist against whites even though whites are admittedly the intended target and reason affirmative action exists.  Affirmative action is a double edge sword that can help and hurt anyone of any color.

Except white people, actually.  There is no quota of white people to meet.  In fact, white people are specifically left out of the quota which is racist in itself, but hey.

The point is that affirmative action keeps racism alive by forcing race to be the deciding factor.  That shouldn't be an issue anymore.  A person's merits and abilities should mean more than their skin color.

We don't live in that world yet and I get why we need to pressure employers and colleges to be more diverse.  But in forcing that diversity against everyone's will, we may actually only be making the problem worse.

It's a vicious truth, isn't it?

The Coming Storm

If and when the apocalypse happens, kiss your ass goodbye.  Guns aren't going to save you.  Secret underground bunkers with years of food storage won't save you.  It will only prolong the inevitable.  You're going to die.

Why?  Because when the world falls apart, when you need those guns and secret bunkers, it'll be too late to save yourself.

If the world dies, life on it dies too.  It's not that complicated.

War kills the planet.  Pollution kills the planet.  I don't care if you believe in climate change,  if you don't understand the need to have a clean environment, you're a murderer.  I don't care how threatened you feel, if you think violence is your only option, you're a murderer.  And you're not a little murderer.  You're committing genocide.  You're killing our entire species the more you continue.

So go ahead and frack the earth to death.  Bomb it to death.  Cut down the trees and kill all the bees.  If that's the kind of species we are, we deserve extinction.

But if you want to live, if you want your children to live, you care about the earth.  You don't want to frack it to death or bomb it or cut down all the trees.  It doesn't matter if you're allergic.  You don't want to kill the bees.  You want to protect the environment regardless of whether or not you think climate change is real.

The only way to survive the apocalypse is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Save the world, save yourself.

Do you believe we're on the way to extinction?  Here's a link to read:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-phase-with-many-species--including-our-own--labelled-the-walking-dead-10333608.html

Mckinney: the next Ferguson?

Is McKinney, Texas destined to be the next Ferguson?

So... some kids decided to sneak into someone's pool they didn't have permission to be in and have a loud party.  Someone called the cops.  All hell broke loose.  That's all we know right now, but that isn't stopping people who weren't even there from weighing in.

The peanut gallery has already started the race bashing.  See, the cops were white and some of the kids breaking the law were black.  So naturally the whole thing was racially motivated.  White folks being mean to black folks again.  But there's more to the story.  The comentators are just too racist to acknowledge it.

Yes.  The cops were too aggressive.  They manhandled these teenagers.  It was, in hindsight, an over reaction on their part and needs to be addressed.  I'm not going to defend the police.

But I'm not going to defend those hoodlum teens either.  They broke the law and when the police arrived to enforce the law, they were disrespectful and antagonizing.  They refused to disperse when told to and that's what led to an escalation in the situation.  Just because the brief part of the video going around social media shows a SINGLE incident, doesn't mean that's the whole story.  These kids are being held blameless but they aren't really, are they?

The neighborhood where this happened is an upscale, gated neighborhood.  Yes, predominantly white, but that's irrelevant in this case.   The pool in question is strictly for the residents in that neighborhood.  Most of the teens throwing the party were not residents of that neighborhood.  They didn't legally have a right to be there.  You can't have a free for all party even on semi public property without permission from someone.  Probably need a city permit.  But the teens behind this party didn't respect the law enough to bother with either.  It's not youthful indescretion.  There's too many resources for this sort of thing (Google, for example) and had they asked their parents, this could have all been avoided.

It's a party so there's loud music.  Most likely inappropriate music and even less appropriate behavior.  Been to any parties lately?  There's been several reports of inappropriate behavior but the media ignores that even reports made by BLACK witnesses because making this all about race is giving the people what they want. Neighbors took offense at their peace being violated and kind of had a right to do so.

Could a few of the complaints have been racially motivated?  How the hell should I know? I wasn't there and you probably weren't either, but it's a rich, predominately white neighborhood in a very Republican state so I wouldn't fault you for making that assumption.  I wouldn't say you were right either.  If the teens felt that threatened by the white neighbors, why didn't THEY call the cops or just leave?  Because they weren't supposed to be there.  It's almost as though they wanted a confrontation.

Were the cops wrong for breaking up the party?  No.  Because the teens had no right to be there.  End of.  It isn't segregation.  It's a matter of the pool being strictly for the people who pay the HOA fees to maintain the pool.  If black families live in that neighborhood and pay for the pool, I'm positive they'd have a legal right to use it. These teens didn't.  They certainly shouldn't have resisted the police when they were told to leave.  These teens are not innocent of wrong doing and no one wants to publicly acknowledge that.  Too scared people will think they're racist.

Was this just a political statement and the cops were baited into responding for the cameras?  Things that make you go huh.

But if the teens were innocent, why weren't their parents there and why didn't they get permission to use the pool?  Bad parenting may not excuse police brutality,  but it creates the situations that make confrontations with police possible.

Police brutality affects people of all colors.  Cops beat up white people all the time, but the media ignores that because it's only newsworthy when blacks are victims.  We only care when it involves black people.  Everyone knows only whites are racist, right?

And that kind of thinking is why racism will never die.

But no matter what new information comes out, people have already made up their minds based on what they WANT to believe regardless of the truth.

Watch the video for yourself.  Try to be objective.  Here's more info:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/07/us/mckinney-texas-pool-video-police/

Beauty matters

It's an ugly fact of life, but it is what it is.  How pretty you are matters.

Forget all that crap about how intelligence and integrity are more important.  Those are just comforting lies unpretty people make up to feel better about themselves.  It's never been about how good a person you are on the inside.  It's ALWAYS been about how you look.

It's an unpalatable thing to admit, but 99% of humans are vain.

And it isn't even our fault.  It isn't just the media telling us what's pretty.  It isn't peer pressure.  Think about what turns you on and ask yourself why?  You have no idea why.  What you're attracted to is written in your genes.  That's why you can't "convert" to a different sexual orientation just because a really old book tells you to.  You are what you are.  Some people like rapists and pedophiles are genetically impaired, but that just means they should be institutionalized for the good of society.

The truth is, you will always be judged by your looks.  It's the first thing people notice about you.  How they judge you will be based on what they find attractive.  Some of that judgement will be based on what we're told is pretty by society but a lot of it will come from our own animal instincts.  Because humans are animals, regardless of how you think we got here.

We see it every day.  Survival of the fittest.  The pretty people getting ahead in life while the rest of us struggle.  The pretty people getting the breaks while the rest of us are just broken.  It's not your imagination.  It really happens.  They have done scientific studies that prove pretty people are more successful.  It's that bad a problem.

And yes, if you dress and act like a stereotype,  you will be judged as being that stereotype.  So if you sag and wear a hoodie, people will think you're ghetto trash.  If you dress provocatively, people will think you're promiscuous.  It's not us. It's you.  If you don't want people thinking you're a thug or a slut, change your dress and mind the way you behave.

But is there anything we can do about this travesty?  Is there any way for not so pretty people to get ahead in life?

Sure.  Lots of unpretty get ahead.  They get money.  Money trumps looks every time.

But if you're not fated to ever be rich, don't waste your time trying to be prettier.  Plastic surgery, all the make up in the world, they may last a little while, but not forever.

See, that's the only good thing about pretty people.  They lose their looks eventually and then, if we're lucky, they're in the same boat as we.  That's karma.

You may never be pretty and you'll probably never be rich.  How do you survive?  By being ok with it.  By telling yourself you're fine the way you are and being happy with what you have.  By taking comfort in your intelligence and integrity and yes, you're being a good person.  By not letting pretty people get under your skin.

Pretty people hate being ignored.  That's the best revenge.

How the ghetto stereotype keeps you unemployed

It isn't being black that keeps you unemployed.  I know people don't want to hear that right now.  We just want to blame our problems on white people like we've always done.  If black people suffer, it's because of racism and not because they did anything wrong.   Blacks never do anything wrong.  It's always the white man's fault.

But we will never be able to address the plight of the black man without addressing his failings.  We can't keep making excuses or blaming white people.  Who lets white people be so privileged?  If you want a better life, you have to work for it.

The question today is, why are people in the ghetto having such a hard time finding work?  It can't be just because they're black.  Lots of black people have jobs.  How did millions of black folks pull one over on their white oppressors?

They didn't.  Black people can find work if they want it badly enough and they have the qualifications, but to help the job search, you have to know what employers WANT in employees and then make yourself appealing to them.

There is a stereotype that proliferates society about people who come from the ghetto.  Sadly, it's not necessarily a false one or it wouldn't be so prominent in our minds.  Ghetto-ites are known to be poor workers.  Lazy with bad attitudes.  That's what employers think of when they think of the ghetto and they don't want those kinds of employees.  Employees are an investment to them and the face of their business.  They need good employees to keep their customers happy so they can keep making profits.  The only employers who don't care about company image enough to not care what kind of employees they hire are employers with high turn over and those jobs mean low wages.

So what do employers with decent wages (white collar jobs) look for?  Someone well educated, well spoken, well dressed and who doesn't act ghetto.  If you're sagging, using bad grammar and didn't bother to finish high school, then you will never stand a chance.  But you're lack of education is due to your lack of desire.  Anyone who wants to learn, can.  There are so many other sources to learn from than school.  And, yes, appearance is everything.  Don't rock a grill and be covered in tattoos if you want to be taken seriously.  That's just the way it is.

Black people who take my advice get jobs. Those that don't, end up on welfare.

But you're the only one to blame if you do.

No more Indian call centers

I don't want to bash India, but if a company wants to sell their product in MY country, they need to hire WORKERS from my country.  End of.

I'm tired of every time I have an IT question, I end up with some guy in India who barely speaks english (or only knows enough english to read from a script) and I can't get the help I need because I can't understand most of what the guy says.  When you need help, you need someone who's fluent in your language, who can communicate beyond the script because most of what you need to know is not covered by the script anyway.  A machine can read a script.  I'm talking to a live person for a REASON.  And why do they think giving you a fake American name is going to fool us?  I know your real name is not Bob.  Why not just be honest and admit you're not an American and you're not in America?

But it's more aggravating than bad communication.  Those foreign call centers represent jobs that workers in my own country need.  People in the US are hurting for jobs, but there aren't any because corporations don't want to pay minimum wage.  Putting profits over people, corporations outsource our jobs overseas where they can pay slave wages.  We think minimum wage is bad.  Those people who don't speak your language and aren't much help at that call center are paid maybe $3 bucks an hour at most.  And corporations get away with it because that's capitalism and greed is NOT good, Gordon.

But if you want my business, you have to do right by me.  If you won't hire me, then you don't deserve my money.

If you get sent to a foreign call center, end your business with that company.  Be more patriotic, dammit.

Don't do the crime if you don't want the time

Every time you turn around, someone's belly aching about how we need to overhaul our criminal justice system.  I agree there are a lot of things we could to do to improve the system, but making prison more pleasant is most definitely NOT one of those things.

Only an idiot thinks prison is supposed to be comfortable.  You don't go to prison to be comfortable.  You go there because you did wrong and you're being punished for it.  You most certainly aren't there to get a bachelor's degree yet that's what some on the far left want.  Honest, law abiding people get screwed out of college all the time because they can't afford it, but you want my tax dollars to pay for some criminal to learn a trade?  Screw you.

They call giving rapists and murderers a taxpayer funded college education "rehabilitation".  Criminals don't need punishment, they say.  They need therapy.  They say rehabilitate and love felons so they won't commit more crimes when they get paroled.  They say without our moral support, ex cons will break the law again instead of becoming the good law abiding citizens they could be.

Bullshit.  The thought of going back to prison should be all it takes to keep parolees in line.  The only reason it doesn't is because soft hearts want to coddle everyone including people they shouldn't.  If criminals had any desire to be good law abiding citizens they wouldn't be criminals in the first place.  Stop with the frickin' excuses.  Lots of people have shitty childhoods and don't grow up to be criminals.   You CHOOSE what kind of person you want to be and if YOU CHOOSE to be a criminal, you don't deserve that much sympathy.

I'm all for second chances for those who deserve it.  First time offenders for minor offenses, kids who made a mistake because they weren't thinking.  I get it.  We all screw up and if they're repenting, give them a chance to prove they won't do it again.  I believe in a three strikes rule.  If you don't learn your lesson by the third strike, you don't want to learn it and it's time to stop giving you chances.

But there are some crimes that don't deserve sympathy period.  Rape, murder, pedophilia, and other violent crimes are not crimes you forgive.  They cross a line we as a society can't cross if we want to survive as a species and they deserve to be punished.

There are people out there who would have given Hitler therapy if they could have.

First thing we need to do to fix our penal system is to distinguish between minor and major crimes and then tailor punishment accordingly.  Why does someone get 30 years for an ounce of pot but only 5-10 for rape?  It's ridiculous how ass backwards our so called justice system is.  We need to fix that system so that it's fair, so innocent people or minor offenders don't go to jail for extended stays in the first place.  That's how you stop over crowding in prisons.  THAT'S where we need to focus our over haul of the criminal justice system.  Not on making prison more comfortable.

It's not supposed to be a vacation.  It's prison.

Bad schools: who's really to blame?

The antics of the students at Dade Middle School in Dallas are so atrocious they're making headlines.  Low income inner city neighborhood. High crime zone.  If you've ever seen Lean On Me, it's the kind of place that school was before Morgan Freeman showed up.  The problem with Dade is that there's no Morgan Freeman in Dallas and they really need one.

Recently, a huge fight broke out.  Dozens of students, possibly armed (it's that kind of place) were either in the fight or gathered to watch it.  The police came. Pepper spray was used to break up the fight.  Now, you'd think most of the parents would condemn the fight.  Instead, there are parents condemning the use of pepper spray.

What?  That's your concern?  The fact that your child was acting a fool at school is no big deal?

And then there are the parents who are blaming the school.  They say the reason their children misbehave is because the teachers are bad.  The teachers aren't disciplining the students.  The teachers are letting the students be bad.

What the hell?  No, morons.  Discipline starts at home with you the parent.  Your job is to teach your child how to behave appropriately.  If you were doing your job, your kids wouldn't be acting a fool in school. If you were doing your job, Dade Middle School wouldn't be the way it is.

Don't you dare refuse to parent your child and blame it all on the teachers.  Don't you dare leave it up to teachers to parent your child.  What the hell are you doing?  Letting your brats run wild because you're too busy smoking weed or whatever you do instead of parenting and you're doing it on the taxpayers' dime.  We're paying for a school that isn't being used for education but as a day care for your misbehaving brats.  You're bad people and your horrible kids are proof of that.

Behavior is learned by watching the world around us and our primary role models are first and foremost our parents.  If your child is a monster, it's your fault.  Take responsibility and do something about it.

Here's the link to the story:

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2015/05/12/mom-says-daughters-dallas-middle-school-is-in-total-chaos/

The price of free speech

Free speech has consequences.  Like it or not, how free your speech really is will always depend on the whim of the majority.  Every day you're judged in the court of public opinion.  When you say or do something large parts of the public find offensive, they will punish you.

This means a single comment that enough people disagree with can cause you to have your basketball team taken away from you or get you fired from your radio show.  You can lose your job.  You can be sued for slander.  And in the case of some folks in Garland, TX, you can even be targeted by terrorists.

This isn't to say we need censorship.  I believe in the right to say whatever you want, but with the knowledge that you WILL be held accountable for it.  Maybe it wouldn't hurt to think before you speak.  Consider the ramifications of what you want to say and how others may take it before you tweet it.

Stop whining about sensitivity.  Everyone's too sensitive towards your "innocent" remarks until YOU'RE the one offended.  Don't get all offended when you offend someone and they call you on it.  That makes YOU a douche.  They're just being human.

How dare those morons in Garland pretend that a contest to draw rude pictures of Mohammed shouldn't be offensive.  They are so outraged that anyone dared to question their actions, that it garnered any outrage from the Muslim community.  WHY?  Did we learn nothing from Charlie Hebdo?  When you INTENTIONALLY do something you KNOW will offend an ENTIRE COMMUNITY, don't be arrogant enough to assume nothing will happen.  And don't have the audacity to claim it's ok for you to be offensive to this community because it's just poking fun at a religion you personally despise.  If Muslims were to have a contest drawing Jesus masturbating, you'd be up in arms too.  Yes, morons of Garland, you DID do something wrong.

It's not ok to kill someone for saying something you disagree with.  Blasphemy laws are stupid and I will never condone terrorism, but let's not pretend you don't know what's offensive to say and what's not and let's not antagonize people just because you don't like their religion and the law says you can.  That's not defending free speech. That being an asshole.

Bad parenting is no excuse

I'm tired of excuses for bad behavior.  I'm tired of everyone blaming their parents for their own failings.  I'm tired of people blaming poverty for crime or the reason they're not as successful as they want to be.  I'm tired of the black community blaming the white man for why black folks in the hood don't act right. Enough is enough.

Poverty isn't the reason you're stealing things. Be honest.  Pretty much all the money gained from armed robbery doesn't go to pay bills or buy food.  It goes to drugs, alcohol and stuff you WANT, not stuff you NEED.  You didn't steal the copper from the church AC because you were desparate to make rent.  You did it to buy cigarettes.  And with all the welfare programs out there, even if you are desperately poor, you DON'T have to turn to crime.  You're a criminal because you WANT to be and NO other reason.

The white man isn't the reason the ghetto is a shit hole.  Race has ZERO to do with why you aren't respectful of your neighbors.  White people are NOT the reason you don't take pride in your neighborhood or why you don't do right.  They aren't the reason you refuse to wear your pants correctly or insist on using bad grammar.  The white man isn't forcing you to play your music that loud, drop out of school if you bother going at all, commit crimes, smoke weed, throw your trash on the ground, get pregnant at 16 or be confrontational to everyone (especially the police) to show how hard you are to your homeboys.  The white man isn't forcing you to do ANYTHING.  You CHOSE to act badly.

And it's not really your parents' faults.  Unless you live in total isolation, the world shows you what's good and what's bad.  There are billions of people on this planet and they are ALL role models.  It doesn't take a genius or even someone all that wise to recognize what kind of behavior is acceptable and what kind isn't, what actions get you ahead in life and what actions will guarantee you never amount to anything.  There is NO SUCH THING AS IGNORANCE.

You choose the kind of person you want to be.  There are no outside factors controlling your decision.  You either want to be a good person or you don't.  You either want to do good or you don't.  And if you choose to do bad and suffer the consequences, the only person to blame is YOU.

Cops kill white people too

The media has a double standard that drives me nuts.  When a white cop does something to a black person, it's national news.  One more case of white people oppressing black people. There are riots, social media goes wild and the rampant racism of our white majority is condemned by blacks and whites a like.  And the media plays up the racial tension to massive ratings, but it's not a fair portrayal and it isn't accurate.  Here I was thinking journalism was supposed to be about facts.  Guess I was wrong.

I don't condone racism and I won't pretend it doesn't exist, but when it comes to police brutality, I can assure you, cops are equal opportunity offenders.  And the media IGNORES it.

Take Gilbert Collar, an unarmed WHITE teen shot by Trevis Austin, a BLACK cop in Alabama.  Where was the media coverage?  Where were the cries of racism and the condemnation?  Only after the violence of Ferguson (an eerily similar event to Collar's murder) did ANYONE bring up Collar and the fact that his killer wasn't charged either.  And those who dared to mention Collar in relation to Ferguson were immediately deemed racists.  Because black people can't be racist and all white people must be.  Yeah, right.

Dillon Taylor in Utah, also an unarmed white man shot by a black cop. Where was the outrage?  The media didn't even give it a blurb.

Cops shoot white people too.  It's a fact.  Cops shoot Hispanics, Asians, Arabs and pretty much everyone.  It isn't just white cops that are too quick to shoot.  Black cops, Asian cops, Hispanic cops all do it too.  The media ignores all that.  They only care if it involves  a white cop and a black man because that's what gets the idiots watching their shows.  Double standard.  The media is the most racist entity ever.

Police brutality is not solely based on race.  It's CULTURAL.  It's in the training of police officers.  It's in the mindset and attitudes prevalent among police officers.  It's a by product of a gun happy nation.  If we refuse to acknowledge that, if we insist on making it all about race, we're NEVER going to stop the problem.

And the media should remember they're journalists and keep the opinions in the editorial column.  Get your facts straight and burn your race card.

Stop police brutality against EVERYONE.

Israel: Is it worth fighting for?

What's so holy about the supposed holy land?  What makes it more important than the rest of the world?  I don't think Israel is all that great as far as countries go and I definitely don't think it's worth fighting over for anyone outside Israel.

It's just land.  So it got a shout out in the Bible.  Who cares?  That was 2000 years ago.  Jesus doesn't live their anymore.  Muhammad doesn't live their anymore.  Neither of them imbued the land with any magical powers.  It's just dirt.

But we humans are petty, stupid little things and we fight over dirt.  Geez.  It's not even very pretty dirt.

Pay attention, sweeties.  God doesn't live exclusively in Israel.  God is everywhere.  You can talk to God from anywhere.  Israel is NOT the holy land.  The whole damn world is the holy land.

So give it a frickin' rest.  2000 years we've been fighting over this particular patch of dirt.  We're stupid.  Israel needs a reality check.  They aren't all that.  They aren't more special because they're Israel.  Jews aren't the chosen people of God anymore than anyone else is.

God made the entire world and He loves every bit of it.  Not just stupid Israel.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherent the earth.  That's what the Bible says.

Israel, time to be a little more humble.  Time to come down from your self made pedestal and start being NICE to people.  Maybe then your neighbors would like you more.

Time to throw the race card away

There's no easy way to put this so I'll just come out with it.  Everybody's racist to some degree.

I don't pretend to know why.  Maybe it's just society conditioning us.  If behavior is learned, naturally our attitudes regarding race are also created by our observations of the world around us. We soak up the way race is handled by our parents, the media, etc and it becomes imprinted in our minds.  We then copy what we see.  The level of our racism would, therefore, be determined by our exposure to it.  So it makes perfect sense for rednecks to be more racist than liberals.  It's a matter of breeding.

Then again, it could simply be a biological predisposition to favor what is like ourselves over what is different in much the same way dogs prefer other dogs over cats. It's an unconscious reaction we aren't necessarily even aware of.  This could also explain our divisive nature over politics, religion and a host of other ailments, but some other time.

In the end, the reason behind racism doesn't matter.  The ugly truth is, there will never come a day when we look beyond race.  We're shallow creatures who form our first opinion of someone based on how they look to us.  Appearance will always matter.  The best we can hope for is a day when race doesn't bother us so much.

We need to stop looking at race as a whites only disease because that's not being honest.  Every ethnic group on the planet has it share of racists.  You may have been conditioned to not want to accept this, but it's still the truth.  Most white people aren't out to oppress black people.  A lot of white people aren't overtly racist.  A lot of black people are.  And so are a lot of Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, Aboriginals and anyone I left out.

It's not pretty.  It's hard to swallow, but there's the painful reality of racism.  Everybody does it.

But here's the rub.  You can't use racism as an excuse for you not making anything of yourself.  I'm tired of hearing about white privilege and the white man's trying to oppress you.  If it bothers you so much, get off your ass and do something about it.  Vote.  Better yet, run for office.  If you don't think the justice system treats your kind fairly, go be a cop or a lawyer or a judge.

Is it really the white man's fault that you don't take care of your own neighborhood?  That you throw your trash on the ground or are disrespectful to your neighbors?  What kind of person plays loud rap music at 3am anyway? Does the white man make you do that too?  Is the white man really forcing you to commit crimes (even smoking weed) or join street gangs?  Is the white man keeping you from getting a job or is it your lack of education?  Is the white man really keeping you from going to school or did you skip class today because you wanted to?  When's the last time the white man actually made you do anything you didn't agree to do?  You can think for yourself, can't you?

There are way too many successful people of color out there for your failure to be all due to your race.  These successful minorities aren't flukes.  They didn't pull one over on the white man.  Their skin color didn't hold them back so why should it hold you back?  You'll have to pull your pants and put more effort into school, but I think you can accomplish more than you want to admit to.

It isn't poverty or even skin color that makes the ghetto so awful.  It's the bad attitudes of the people living there and you chose to behave that way.  No one made you.  Hard truth is you're responsible for most of your own mess and you're the only one standing in your way to cleaning it up.

Listen, racism isn't going away.  There will always be someone out there who isn't going to like you, but you can't let that dictate your life.  If you want something, you have to work for it.  You have to say "I'm gonna succeed despite the haters" and keep trying.  Blaming your failures on someone else will never bring you success.

It's time to throw the race card away.  Time to stop blaming racism for you're own shortcomings.  It's not productive.

The real person holding you down is yourself.  Now fix it.

Mutual Respect

There really is a war between the ages.  The old condemn the young for not respecting them.  The young condemn the old for not taking them seriously. It's been happening since humans first realized we aged.

I'm 35.  Not exactly young but not yet a senior citizen.  There's a brief moment in our lifetimes when we're in between the warring factions, the "middle" age years.  While it's tempting to pick a side, this period of transition between young and old can be used for much more.  It should be a time of reflection and personal growth.  Our time to look at young and old alike and not make the same mistakes billions of people have made.

First, let's understand that respect is earned.  It is NOT given to you just because you've lived a little longer.  Old people, don't demand respect from the young if you aren't going to give respect TO them.  You may not think the problems of teenager are as serious as your more adult issues, but they're serious enough to that teen.  Don't blow them off because you mistakenly believe they're too young to have anything worth contributing.  Remember, that kid you blew off today will be taking care of you tomorrow.  Keep on their good side.   Young people, you can't earn respect from your elders if you act a fool so learn how to be civil to others.  You will be treated in the manner in which you treat those around you.  Don't assume someone is less important or irrelevant because they have grey hair.  Remember, it's still their world until you reach their age.

Age does not lead to wisdom. Experience does and not every old person out there is wise.  If they were, they wouldn't vote Republican.  So old people, don't assume you're smarter than someone younger than you.  You've probably just had different experiences.  The world also changes constantly and the young are better equipped to keep up with it.  They are your most valuable asset when it comes to technology among other things.  Appreciate that.  Young people, you probably haven't had as many life experiences as your parents. Take the opportunity to learn from their experiences, both good and bad, as you can.  You'll still have to figure most things out on your own, but most parents really do just want to help you so listen to the advice before making up your mind.

The young fear getting old and the old are jealous of the young.  Neither side is perfect or better than the other, but both NEED eachother.  The old help guide the young and the young give the old meaning.

So think on that before you criticize eachother.

Your car's too big.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of the quad cab with the extra long bed taking up two whole parking spaces and the sidewalk.  Something that big should have to park in the back fifty where the big rigs and RVs go.  It's rude to take up that much space and dangerous to boot.  Ever try backing up when a giant truck is next to you? You can't see if cars are coming because their ass end is sticking out into the lane.  And they can never park them straight because they're trying to squeeze a watermelon in a parking space designed for an orange.

But the real question is why does someone NEED a large vehicle?  I think it's purely ego.  A man who's confident doesn't mind driving a Prius.  It gets him where he needs to go and that's the reason cars were invented.  Only a man with penis issues needs a Hummer.  Or a quad cab with an extra long bed.

It's bad enough we insist on super sizing our meals, our houses, our hair (if you live in the south).  Why do we need to over size our cars too? Are we really carrying that much crap around?  Then we have a hoarding problem.

It pisses me off when some trophy wife in her big SUV has the audacity to complain gas prices are too high.  If everyone traded in their gas guzzling SUVs and pick up trucks for compact cars or hybrids, the demand for gas would go down and so would the price.  As it is, Big Oil knows they can financially rape you at the pump because you NEED the gas.  Because you TELL them you'll pay anything by USING MORE GAS THAN ANYONE SHOULD NEED.

Because you drive an oversized car with 10 miles to the gallon - and that's a generous estimate.  That Hummer only gets like 2.

Ever wonder why car makers don't make cars with 50 mpg?  The technology exists, but Big Oil won't let them cut into their profits.

As for the moron in the quad cab with the extra long bed?  Parking spaces were designed for normal sized vehicles.  There is nothing wrong with your parking space.  The problem is your truck is too big.

Oh how much cleaner the air and happier the commute if more people used public transit!

But the hard truth is, there is no physical need for that SUV or quad cab with the extra long bed.  No amount of soccer games or safety concerns or towing capacity can justify it.  The need for a large vehicle is purely psychological, something for people with low self esteem to feel important.

That's all the desire for material wealth of any kind really is.

Stop being a loser.  Do the environment and your neighbors a favor.  Ditch the big vehicle.

Customer Service: You get what you pay for

Everyone's had a bad customer service experience.  Everyone's encountered that unhappy cashier who doesn't really care if they're particularly helpful or if you had a good shopping experience.  We bitch about it all the time.  Companies force feed "good" customer service techniques on their employees, brag about them in commercials.  Giving bad customer service can even cause you to lose your job, but we never stop to consider WHY customer service is as bad as it is.  What causes someone in the service industry to be rude or uncaring.

People in customer service, whether they are cashiers, waitresses, call center representatives, etc, are human beings that we treat like slaves, work like dogs and pay very little money.  If you worked like a dog and barely eked out a living, you'd be unhappy too.  If you knew your company thought of you as an easily replaceable, unvalued peon, would you care about their image?  No.  And you'd be unable to hide your feelings of discontent even if you cared to do so.

There's something that happens to a person when they become a customer.  Suddenly, they are incapable of seeing the person waiting on them as being an equal.  No, that person is a servant and therefore beneath them.  It isn't just rich people who are affected like this.  Even those in the service industry will treat their fellow service people as inferiors once they step on the other side of the check out line.  It doesn't matter the psychology behind this.  It's wrong and we should know better.

How many times have you grabbed the wrong item and insisted you be given the sale price anyway?  How many times have you knowingly made a mess at the convenience store coffee counter and not cleaned it up?  How many times have you not tipped your waitress or only left a handful of change?   How many times have you or someone you've seen yelled at their server?  Or threatened to have their server fired if they didn't comply with an unreasonable demand?  People take out all their frustration on cashiers and waiters.  You may not get to be a dick to your boss but you can be a dick to the girl in the drive thru.  Why are customers so nasty?  Because they know they can be and that the cashier or waiter will be unable to do anything about it.  It's a power trip.

Not all customers set out to be assholes, but there are enough of them to leave a bad taste in a cashier's mouth.  When you have a bad experience over and over again, you start expecting it and you become suspicious of every customer you meet.  If your cashier is apprehensive towards you, it's a self defense mechanism and you can hardly blame them.

But the horrible attitudes exhibited by customers is just one of the mental stress factors that negatively affect our service representatives.  The work is hard and the reward is very little.

Service jobs are by definition bad paying ones. There simply isn't any reason for it.  You shouldn't need a fancy college degree to earn enough money to survive on if you're putting in the work.  Service jobs are hard work, but they're paid like it isn't work at all.

Money is an incentive.  Like it or not, people don't get jobs because they want to help others.  They get jobs because they need money to have a roof over their head and food to eat.  The world runs on money.  You work for the money.  So if someone works hard and isn't paid accordingly, they have a right to be upset.

Minimum wage is slavery.  No one can survive on minimum wage.  And no one who works hard and makes little money is going to care that much about their job.  No one who is taken for granted is going to care about doing a good job.  They'll do just enough to KEEP the job until they find something better.

But low pay comes with other draw backs.  It affects the QUALITY of the worker too.  Workers with skills are going to go where those skills will be appreciated - to higher paying jobs.  The only people who voluntarily take a service job are the ones who CAN'T get anything better.  Low skilled, ghetto, stoners, etc.  The kinds of people who will never care about good customer service.  Or you get older, better educated people who have tried to find something better and failed who will never be satisfied with low pay work and will never care about it.

In essence, when it comes to the service industry, you get what you pay for either financially or with respect.  Until we're willing to treat our servers with dignity and pay them accordingly, expect bad service.  Because we've earned it.