(Originally posted to Twitter, then I remembered I had this blog…)For anyone trying to talk to friends & family who either won’t vote at all or who are dead set on voting 3rd-party in the general election, here is how & why I changed my voting habits:As a former 3rd-party voter, it took me acknowledging:1….
On complaint, suffering, and “help”…
As I sit freezing in my 3rd floor, (blowing outside air through to push out a neighbor’s cigarette poison), I’m reminded of the “I hope you can finally get the help you need” meme people throw at hopeless people as they’re dragged off to a psych ward. “…the help you need…” Repeated word-for-word by countless…
Blade Runner: “what does it mean to be human” is the wrong question
I finally watched Blade Runner 2049. I had no expectations, especially after learning it’s (thankfully) not a Ridley Scott film (I hate his Alien prequels). I had only some apprehension of being irritated by a potentially lousy movie. I had not noted that the director, Denis Villeneuve, was also the director of Arrival, a film…
The hardest part of writing…
… is doing the writing. It’s easy to sit and think, and it’s actually pleasurable (or indulgent) to outright daydream (and I have no argument against some self-indulgence). Putting those thoughts into formalized language, via sitting still and typing it up (or writing it, for you traditional media lovers), is the part that requires self-discipline…
Cold Civil War
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now asked the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson (who are calling to have confederate statues removed) “As you watched what happened in Charlottesville, do you feel like there is a kind of new civil war in this country?” Let’s be clear: we are not seeing a “new civil war” in the USA….
Overcoming, and sustaining, inherited beliefs
This article was brought to my attention on Facebook some months ago: http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a43702/transgender-child-kimberly-shappley/ There’s so much to respond to in this article. I wrote this response to it, but sat on it without publishing until now. It’s no longer timely, but I think the issues are still relevant. First of all, this story is a…
Why blog?
Spending hours crafting a responses to random internet denizens’ Facebook comments feels foolish, but I do it often enough. Because Facebook is a horrible tool for writing anything but a snarky one-liner, I have taken to crafting these time-wasting commentaries in a note app on my mobile devices. I started saving them. It seemed a…