what it means to be wholly unnecessary

Don't know about you, but my facebook has been a-blowin' up with Michael Brown stuff. Got a bunch of people that are suddenly law experts, posting and sharing inflammatory and borderline illiterate collections of words, skewering "white people", and police officers.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin incident, and now with the Michael Brown thing, I may or may not have made a comment to my wife, that the world will be fine without Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, Michael Brown, and/or Darren Wilson. Their absence from this world means, or would mean, nothing outside of grief for their family.

In short: the universe doesn't care. 

Anyway, my wife replied with something along the lines of, "Trayvon could have grown up to be a scientist that ends up curing cancer". After cleaning up the milk that I spit in unexpected laughter all over our sick 8 million inch LED flat screen, I just nodded my head in semi-agreement so as not to cause a row. I'm not sure but picking fights with Hispanics, uttering slurs about white people, stealing cigars, beating up older Asian store owners, and rapping about killing and hating while people is hardly the way you prep to become the future scientist that could potentially cure cancer.

I'm not going to deny that Darren Wilson is an asshole, and Georgie Z is scum. I think most reasonable people would agree that this is true. In fact, I'd take it a step further, and list them as unnecessary. Where we might diverge is on the opinions of Brown and Martin. I believe them both to be, as people, wholly unnecessary too. An unreasonable person might insist that is due completely to skin color: mine is white and theirs is black. Obviously that's not the case, as a dude's skin color is pretty low on the totem pole of things that make my hair turn grey/gray. But that's just me.

I don't believe that the world would miss any of the four previously mentioned people. But what about the rioters? I actually would prefer that subsection of sub-humanity to up and vanish. Destroying the community in which you live, which belongs to your family and friends, their livelihoods, in the name of perverted justice, well that's just downright fucked up. Raging and destroying are one thing, a shitty thing, but stealing too? Horrible.

But it's deeper than just rioting and stealing and assaulting and destroying. Uh, no it's not. That's exactly what is happening. It may be part of a bigger problem, or actually part of many. But it's still a problem, not normal, and not OK. Basically this whole chain of events is not OK - from Wilson harassing Brown and Brown possibly looking to brawl with a po, to Wilson shooting him. I think it's pretty clear there is a population in Ferguson that does not want white police officers anywhere near them. If I were the Ferguson police chief, I'd be more than happy to oblige. Refund them a percentage of their taxes every year and let them prosper.

What you may have not heard is that a young African American teenager beat up an older Asian man. Obviously that doesn't sell advertising, so that horribly racist and ageist action goes by without a peep. Michael Brown's hatred for Asian people, and those older than him is a cosmically-sized injustice that I refuse to let go unreported.

In a perfect world, crap like this doesn't happen. But to have good, you must have bad, and I think at least the one thing we can all agree on is that everything related to the Ferguson situation is bad. While the president and democrats are championing this cause as some sort of weird rallying cry to unite and strengthen the democratic base, some mother still lost her son, and Darren Wilson, while not guilty, probably shouldn't be a cop. That, and Ferguson as a political talking point is further dividing the country, nice job.


And then we have the human versions of bowel movements, with actually the same intellectual value as bowel movements, penning exactly what you would expect: shit like this. Want a summary? Blame white people, for anything, every single time. Most black people I know don't feel that way, it's sad that this type of garbage is what gets pushed.

Friday Sadness

It's been a week, eh.

Woke up quick, at bout 7:34, checked facebook, and this was the first thing I saw





I'm not making this up, a news station posed a question to their facebook followers about whether or not it's fair that Old Navy charges more for plus-sized clothing.

For real.

What is worse - having an opinion one way or another, or shopping at Old Navy in 2014?

And yep, you guessed it, somebody, somewhere in the comments said this was "a gender issue". I can't even walk out the door and shit on my neighbor's lawn anymore without somebody making it a gender (or race) issue.

Here is what should be the final word on the question: shut the fuck up.

Next, we have a diatribe against the vile, racist entity known simply as "brunch". Spoiler alert: NYT content.

No shit, there is an author out there with enough time on his undersized hands to courageously speak out against brunch. While the article, intentions, content, and author's life are all truly unnecessary, I do agree with his point that brunch food is often times covered in sauce that is too rich.


Then the dude from The Strokes found time to weigh in:

In an interview last month in GQ magazine, when pressed for an answer on why he left New York City for an unnamed “upstate” locale, Julian Casablancas, the lead singer of the Strokes, said, “I don’t know how many, like, white people having brunch I can deal with on a Saturday afternoon.”

Prayers, condolences, and all that stuff go out to Mr. Casablancas for suffering the indignity of having to deal with white people eating breakfast later in the day than usual. Must have been truly horrifying.

One time, on my way to Milwaukee for one of my first punk shows, I got lost in the hood. Kinda sketchy, but punk rock, right? Found my way, still in an unsavory neighborhood, parked my car, walked by a porch with a bunch of nonwhites hanging out, menacingly watching me. Then to my terror, a bunch of white people having brunch popped up outta nowhere and that was it, I took off running. Ran back to my car, never to return. #Scarred4Life

Forget climate change, my money is on complaining ourselves to death as what eventually gets us.