The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible (Vladimir Nabokov)
The cartoon above showed up in my Texas cousin’s Facebook feed. Now, I love my cousin from Texas dearly, and she’s one of my favorite people, but we do see the world from very different perspectives.
Continue reading “Can You See the Blatant Lie in this Cartoon?”
One commonly-played, and uncommonly dishonest, card that right-wing media likes to play is to perpetuate the lie that the present Democratic Party is ideologically unchanged from the Democratic Party of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th Centuries, and thereby the Democratic Party of Barack Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is solely responsible for the nation’s sins of slavery and racial segregation, while Republicans are the party of the Great Emancipator, Abe Lincoln, and therefore deserve credit for everything good that has ever happened to black Americans. Sean Hannity detached his lips from Donald Trump’s ass long enough to repeat this garbage in a recent broadcast, but it appears to be a boilerplate script that resurfaces regularly on Fox News and other conservative outlets.
Continue reading “Racism is a Position, Not a Party”
The Star Wars prequels are objectively, irredeemably terrible, a blight not just on the beloved franchise but on narrative storytelling itself. This is not an opinion, but a fact that I hope you will comprehend by the time I am finished here. Sadly, there is a misguided evolution in the thinking of some otherwise rational adults, a tendency to view the prequels in a more forgiving light in the post-Disney era of Star Wars.
You must resist. Do not be tempted by the Dark Side.
Continue reading “Nostalgic Prequelitis”
Throughout history, clothes have served three basic purposes, only one of them truly practical. As a protection against the cold or too much sun, clothing is genuinely useful. Freezing to death, sun stroke, and skin cancer are all bad. Also, it can protect you against the hazards of your profession. Certainly, a blacksmith is better off with his heavy leather apron than without it. I also wouldn’t recommend that a gardener operate a weed whacker without at least some long pants. And I’m grateful that the people preparing my food or performing surgery on me are wearing the proper attire.
Continue reading “The Naked Egalitarian”
Unfortunately, a Superdelegate is not someone that the Avengers send to a political convention, because that would be kind of awesome. Instead, it’s an undemocratic phenomenon within the Democratic Party that is effectively keeping old school machine politics on life support.
The facile answer to the question of why I am an atheist is that I was born this way, and it’s true that every human being ever on earth begins life without the concept of religion. That must be externally imprinted on us, something human civilization has proven depressingly efficient at doing. In my case, despite my parents’ best efforts, including six years of Catholic middle school and high school, religion failed to find a firm purchase on my mind.
The independence of the Judicial branch of our Federal government is one of the key checks and balances created by the framers of the Constitution. So long as their only master was the law of the land, including the Constitution, the Federal bench would be able to restrain the potential excesses of the Executive and Legislative branches without being susceptible to the whims and passions of the electorate.
A few days ago, I regaled you with an account of my first experience going nude on a clothing-optional beach. Today, I stuck another toe into the world of social nudism, taking the free first-timer’s tour of the Glen Eden Sun Club, a nudist resort just a little north of Lake Elsinore, CA. Continue reading “My First Trip to a Nudist Resort”
In the 2012 elections for the House of Representatives, Republics won 54% of the races despite receiving fewer votes nationwide than the Democrats. In 2016, the Republicans eked out a narrow victory in the nationwide popular vote, 51% to 49%, but ended up controlling 55% of the seats.
In short, our representative democracy is failing at being representative. Continue reading “House Repairs”
I don’t really have a bucket list to speak of, but there are a few things that I have never done that I still want to do, such as travel south of the Equator. I suppose I had better put that list in some sort of order, so I can start checking them off, but at least today I took care of one item that had been on my list of things to do for quite a while. I visited Black’s Beach, the largest clothing-optional beach in North America.