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.