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