A Question: Social Media and Gun Control

So wait...It's okay to cite Twitter or Facebook as having played an integral part in the murder of a person, but it's not okay to make the same link with the gun actually used to kill him?  Yep.  That makes perfect sense, right there, media.

For the record, I don't feel either should be blamed.  While social media facilitated the argument and the gun facilitated the murder, it was, in the end, the man who decided to pull the trigger who must be blamed.  If we're going to put an outside influence at the heart of it, let it be the society that provided both the conditions and means to take an argument to such lengths. Read more!

A Thought: On the Real Threat to the American Family

"Just because me and my boyfriend live together with kids and aren't married doesn't mean anything. I mean, we just file our taxes separate. It just makes it easier to break up." 

- Quoted from a friend's post as overheard coming from a girl talking her way through a college lecture.

That mentality, right there, is a direct result of the consumer culture we've indoctrinated people with that is a MUCH graver threat to the American family than letting two people with matching genitals, who are in a relationship without thinking of how it'll be easiest to end it, get married. Read more!

A Clarification: Hurricane Preparedness

Hurricane preparedness is not synonymous with panicking and stockpiling like it's Armageddon.  It's taking a set of measured precautions to ensure you and yours are as safe as they can be and watching out for one another.  It isn't being selfish and ruthlessly taking far more than you need so that you don't have to suffer even a moment's discomfort while others aren't able to meet basic necessities because of your hoarding.

It isn't the end of the world.  It's a rain storm with some heavy wind.  Stop calling it Katrina II.  Katrina II was, at best, the hurricane that hit mere weeks after the first one.  As well, stop trying to paint the destruction of New Orleans as being the fault of the hurricane.  It wasn't Katrina that destroyed New Orleans, it was political corruption.  Many of the same politicians who are in office now.  If you absolutely MUST blame someone, blame them for pocketing the money that was meant to repair the levies and remember that the next time an election comes around. Read more!

A Thought: On Fear of the Dark

What they leave out of The Allegory of the Cave is that, even having stepped out into the light, the fear of the darkness lingers. 

Some days, it's harder to go back in than others. Read more!

A Thanks to MacGyver

My laptop has survived for months held together with nothing more than duct tape.  Thank you, MacGyver. Read more!

A Thought: On The Roots of Bullying

When your child is bullied, or is a bully, and you wonder how they could have gotten the impression that it was okay to disparage others without genuine provocation, think back to the last mean-spirited joke you tossed at a celebrity, either out loud or online. 

Yep, and with your kid, I'm sure the bully felt the victim had it coming, too. Read more!

My First Petition...

I'd always kind of hoped that my first informal petition would be because of my writing or ideology, not a legally-cleared extra two feet of fence that people with too much time on their hands have decided they don't care for. Read more!

A Thought: On the Fear of Evil and the Solace of Hope

It is not some creature in the shadow that I fear, in the cold lonely hours of the night, but the capacity for evil that dwells in the hearts of men.  And it is in the bright, boundless hope which burns through that darkness in which I take greatest solace. Read more!

A Rainy Sunday in August

I start school tomorrow.  Not in the way I had hoped, this time last year.  I won't be leading the class, but, rather, will be a student.  It's been a long and incredibly difficult decision, heading back, once again, at the age of 31.  I love teaching.  I truly believe that it is my calling.  But the world isn't always made for such romantic notions, I suppose.  After spending six years of my life working towards it, almost four looking for a permanent position anywhere in the country, I have to face the fact that, though it may be my calling, there is no place for me. 

So, instead, I'll go back to school, to train as a therapist.  It isn't as though it's not something I want to do.  I do.  It isn't a fallback so much as another option, a path more open to the other things I wish to do with my life, like having a family, owning a home and not being under crushing student loan debt. 

At the end of the day, I will still be helping people.  That's important to me, more than anything else, even those things listed above.  Still...on a rainy morning in August, it's hard to remember that we ought to let go of the past, to those things which never happened, as they seem to tap quietly on the window with every falling drop, to whisper beneath the thunder. Read more!

A Clarification: On Beauty

People too often throw around words like beautiful when describing women.  I don't. If I use the word beauty, I do so with a very specific definition in mind.

There are a thousand words, gorgeous, pretty, stunning, to mean aesthetically pleasing, something nice to look at, and just as many to mean sexually attractive.  Beautiful, though, is a word that I treasure.  It's a rarity, in the world, and so much more than just those things, though they're a part of it, when it comes to a woman.  Any woman can be pretty, or even sexy, but a beautiful woman, one who is as attractive inside as out, who stirs the heart as well as the loins, stimulates the mind and trips the muse to spinning, is a much less common thing. Read more!

A Thought: On Perfection in Love

Looking for perfection in another person is futile.  Everyone's broken, in some way or another.  Perfection, in love, is just a matter of finding someone who's broken pieces fit yours. Read more!

A Thought: On Chance and First Times

Being able to say that something never happens to you only applies until it does.  Remember that the next time you risk yourself or someone else. Read more!

A Thought: On Bryan Cranston

Who'd have ever thought, watching Bryan Cranston's fantastic portrayal of Malcolm's father, Hal, that he'd have such astonishing depth and diversity?  He's quickly becoming a favorite of mine. Read more!

The Booth at the End

The Booth at the End is back!  Check it out on Hulu. Read more!

The Propriety of Pooping

So there's work being done to the house here. They arrived at 6am, which is awesome. But we're currently on our second workman, in a row, who's come in to use the bathroom. Not a big deal. But both of them have come in to go number two. Am I wrong in thinking they should have gone before they came to work? Read more!

The Sounds Outside the City

Living in a real house, outside the city limits, for the first time in my life, I initially thought there was no sound without the comforting susurration of the traffic, the scream of the siren.  Having been here for a week now, though, I realize there are things to be heard as the house breathes, creaks, moves and settles in the sunlight, adjusting to the humidity.  I still miss the cars, though. Read more!

A Thought: On the Benefits of Poverty

I've always seen my lifelong poverty as buffer against the constant state of fear which seems to motivate the rich in most of the things they do. There's a freedom in never having had much, because there's never much to lose. Read more!

A Thought: On Remakes

If you've made the choice to remake an old movie or television show, rather than developing and creating something new, you lose the right to complain when people make comparisons to the original.

Shut up and get back to your rock, Sisyphus.  Until you learn, you've earned it. Read more!

The Little Things: A Mailbox

For the first time in my 31 years, I have a mailbox that doesn't require a key.  It's a nice feeling. Read more!

A Thought: On Love and Butterflies

More often than not, those butterflies you feel in your stomach when you meet a new love end up just being moths, eating away at the fabric of your soul. Read more!

A Thought: On Darkness and Light

It is within those with the greatest awareness of their propensity for darkness that there lies the greatest potential for goodness and in whose light the world may shine the brightest. Read more!

A Thought: On a Woman's Eyes

Say what you want for anything else, but I love a woman's eyes.  Everything else ages, changes, but a woman's eyes are the same from birth to death, affected by the passage of time only in that they're made deeper, somehow, and more beautiful. Read more!

A Thought: On Belief

Faith, a belief in something, anything, must be built with thorough, rational thought and mortared with emotion.  Either, without the other, is useless. Read more!

A Thought: On Moral Ambiguity

I'm not really sure if I have an ethical problem with moral ambiguity. Read more!

Obscure, self-indulgent post #1

All we needed was a river to follow...and fall in... Read more!

A Thought: On Fear and Hate

I have come to take issue with the phrase, "hate speech," these last few days.  It isn't accurate, as it's far too incendiary and shuts down any chance for the kind of conversation our country desperately needs to have.  I prefer the term, "fear speech," if it must be given a name. 

On one side, it's fear of something which is different, which isn't understood, and which motivates otherwise rational people to justify terrible things.  On the other, it's the fear of marginalization, of being forced outside when the basest of human instincts is to seek to acceptance.  Regardless of the source of the fear, it is fear far more often than hate.  Hate is easy, is simple.  Fear is much more insidious.

And it doesn't just apply to this Chik-fil-a kerfuffle, but to politics, religion and all the other things polarizing this great nation so that we're unable to enact the kind of change necessary to keep it going. Read more!

A Thought: On Christian Christians

I'm still waiting for someone to show me the part in The Bible where Christianity's namesake turned someone away. Read more!