June 2020

Ode to the 1st amendment

Here in America, we like to talk a lot about freedom. It’s a word you hear quite often. People take its meaning and importance for granted, but at least we’re aware of the word. We have a lot of amendments, and they all speak to situations in which people may find themselves in their American lives. But the first amendment is the only one that dictates how we live and behave every day of our lives. Unfortunately, in liberal cities like Seattle, people are willingly giving up their first amendment freedom. Having lived in five cities in the United…

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There’s no systemic racism

There’s racism within the system. There’s nothing inherently racist about a system founded on the idea that everyone was created equally, with equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yes, the system originally allowed for slavery and considered blacks to be 3/5 person. But we’ve since rooted out those laws, regulations, and court decisions that allowed racism to exist. (Although, I’m sure there are some arcane, little-known rules out there somewhere.) One could argue that there are still biases. For example, equal access to lawyers, when one is either defending oneself or wanting to pursue legal…

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The goal of cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation is everywhere and unavoidable. Everything we say, wear, and do has origins from some culture, somewhere. Even something as basic as the English language borrows from other languages, like Latin, French, Spanish, German, and the lazy misspellings of texters all over the world. To those who claim to be all about science and data, this is the evolution of which Darwin spoke. As the world spins on, people discover and incorporate different aspects of past and current cultures. These new uses and blends represent our evolution as a society and our increased understanding of our history. But…

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Step into my Parler

It’s a trap! And conservatives are falling right into it. Twitter has made themselves such a difficult and unfriendly place for conservative voices and freedom of speech that conservatives seem to have decided to pick up their ball and go home. Or, in this case, take their voices to Parler, a relatively new alternative to Twitter. When you read all the messages about it on Twitter, it’s spoken like a bold act of defiance. Like we’re sticking it to Twitter. I think it’s just the opposite. I think Twitter is fine with this. They’ve been slowly driving conservatives away…

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Stand in the street? Get run down.

For the last week, during the night, Seattle protesters have been routinely spilling out on I5, the main freeway running from Washington to California. In a recent KING5 article, I saw this quote: “”WSP Trooper Rick Johnson tweeted that an SUV ran through the closure from Dearborn to northbound I-5 and “nearly hit protestors.” Trooper Johnson asked anyone with information to call the WSP.” Perhaps some may call me heartless, but my parents taught me to stay out of the road, lest you get hit by oncoming vehicles. I think with all the militant pedestrianism and crosswalk flags, we’ve…

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A flag for everyone

Our town is having a fairly small, but still lively, debate on whether or not we should be flying a Pride flag at our town hall. I couldn’t help but think of how many flagpoles we’re eventually going to need to fly everyone’s flag. We’re going to need flags for gays, straights, transgenders, men, women, blacks, asians, Indians (both American and those from India), whites, hispanics, conservatives, liberals, Catholics, atheists, agnostics, jews, nerds, brains, geeks, athletes, tall people, short people… (and the list goes on). Then I was thinking, wouldn’t it be easier if we just had one flag…

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Gay pride and misophonia

It’s a tough time to have a cause. With everyone busy ripping down statues, erasing America’s past, and paving the road for communism, gay pride and misophonia have gotten lost in the shuffle. Gay pride takes a greater hit because of the black community’s general lack of support for the alphabet soup community. With all of the destruction of urban black communities work that needs to be done, the Black Lives Matter movement simply doesn’t have time to raise a rainbow flag. And of the three groups, misophonia survivors are truly the underserved, underrepresented minority community. Misophonia sufferers experience…

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Separating the good psychics from the bad

This has been a hell of a year, and we’re not even halfway through it. We’ve had an impeachment, a booming economy, a pandemic, a recession, race riots, and so much more. All of this has created an almost unprecedented opportunity to weed out the bad psychics from the good ones. If you’re looking for a good psychic, I think the first question should probably be, “”Did you see all of this coming?” If not, I’d probably move on to one who did. (The Yelp reviews should be far more helpful now.)

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