Macklemore and Constraining Labels.

Ok, this has been an issue that has been driving me crazy my entire life, but the recent Macklemore and Ryan Lewis performance at the Grammys has given me a good forum to discuss it.
Some members of the LGBTQWTFGFDETC community have been condemning Macklemore for speaking for them, or for cashing in on their suffering. They clearly have not been paying attention to his lyrics nor his interviews, but that is beside the point.
The main issue is this obsession with labels. This obsession with "Us vs. Them".
Bisexuals really know this sting, because they are largely ostracized from dating the homosexual community and are often met with scorn by the heterosexual community aswell.
Everyone has become so obsessed with identifying What you are, they they have forgotten to ask you Who you are.

Gender, sexuality, spirituality and many more are much more fluid concepts than people are portraying them.
You could be born with masculine physical characteristics, be attracted to both genders sexually, be romantically attracted to mostly females, and view yourself as more sensual or pretty than is largely accepted for your birth gender. This could mean that you prefer to wear dresses and heels, or it could mean that you just like wearing pretty nail polish.
Does this make you a CIS Bisexual Hetero-romantic transvestite?

No, it makes you a human.

What is important is identifying what makes you happy, and who makes you happy, not obsessing about labels.
If you find yourself loving someone who is not attracted to you, or maybe not attractive to you, don't run away from it because it goes against the normal labels, embrace it. It's platonic love and there is nothing wrong with it.
Don't walk away from loving someone because they are a heterosexual male and you've always identified yourself as a homosexual female.

Stop trying to identify yourself. All it does is limit your options and reduce your potential happiness. On all sides of the field. Everyone is trying to wedge themselves into one particular label, when that is the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

You know who you are, you don't need a label to specify. And any label you adopt is going to fall short of the depth and the complexity that makes up each and every one of us.

Be the person you want to be and love the person (or people) that you want to love. Or don't. Maybe you just don't go for the whole love thing, maybe sex is wholly unappealing to you. That's fine too.
Do what makes you happy.

If it involves another person or creature, make sure you have their personal and legal consent for any sexuality involving them, but otherwise it's totally up to you and them as to how you express your love and sexuality.

That's the point of the song by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
We are who we are, and we should not be restricted from loving someone because of the labels that someone else has imparted onto us.

And a big step in that is not labeling ourselves. It's no-one else's business who you are attracted to, and you are under no obligation to follow any standard rules or formula. You can love a 60 year old woman and a 20 year old man, a trans female to male, a asexual, whatever the hell you want.
But it is important that you view them as people, not labels. And that other people also try to avoid labeling your love.

It's love, or sex, or friendship.


Those are the only labels you need.

Doomed Generation?

We are a unique generation. We are the first generation in the history of the world where we don't wake up with the knowledge that if we do something really wrong humanity might go extinct.
We wake up with the knowledge that if we don't do something really right, humanity will go extinct.

We are the generation that has inherited all of the mistakes of those that came before us. We don't get to just pass off our mistakes to our children and grandchildren. If we don't fix these mistakes we won't have any grandchildren.

Our massive technological and medical advances have allowed us to wallow in our pursuit of decadence. But we have reached the point where the status quo will no longer sustain us as it has for thousands of years. We need to restore our natural environment, consume significantly less resources, produce significantly less waste, and control our population growth.

All of these goals are attainable, it's not too late to save the human race. We just have to get off our asses and do it. We need to stop distracting ourselves with Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Porn, Television, etc. We need to return to a simpler way of life.

We aren't going to get rid of computers, they are still insanely useful, we just need to learn to rely on them less. Instead of hiding from social interaction behind our computers, we need to use them to engage in real-life. They need to be tools for education, science, medicine, and communication. Not for time wasting. Yes, video games are awesome, but do you want to look back at age 65 and realize that the greatest achievement in your life was getting a server-first boss kill on World of Warcraft?

I don't.

I want to write stories that my friends read when they get home from work.

I want to play music that get my friends dancing after a long week.

I want to see my friends and loved ones regularly because they are important to me, not just "Like" their statuses on Facebook.

They deserve more than that. I deserve more than that.

We all deserve more than that.

We deserve for our children to grow up to a brighter future than we had.

We deserve to grow old with our friends, not sit and regret their early death from war or drugs or car crashes.

We deserve to live in a world where you can walk to work, rather than spending 5% of your life sitting in rush hour traffic.

We deserve to be able to go to sleep every night and know where our next meal is coming from.

We deserve all of these things.

More importantly, our children, their children, and their children's children deserve all of these things.

We can do it, we just need to start making changes now.

Two Constitutional Laws that are currently being Violated.

Ok, this is something that everyone should know and should be excessively pissed off about.

#1 The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

The Law:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effect, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Violator:
The Patriot Act.
Titles II & X
Sections:  204, 209, 210, 212, 213, 217, 219, 220, 225, 1003

202 adds electronic devices to the list of things that can be spied on.
209 adds electronic devices to subpoenas.
210 allows them to track your phone number, identity, location, and banking records for how you pay for your phone.
212 allows the various electronic companies to give the government all of your personal data, absolutely anything, if they think you might be dangerous.
213 allows them to invade your property and take your stuff without showing a warrant, and gives no specific timeline for when they are required to show a warrant.
217 specifies that entering into a protected computer without contractual permission gives them full right to enter your computer. Also this law does not apply to their investigations.
219 specifies any U.S. judge can name something or someone as a terrorist and can issue a warrant for any area regardless of jurisdiction. So a judge in Florida can issue a warrant against a suspect in Oregon.
220 allows them to use the laws of other cities and states (and territories) against someone in a terrorism investigation. So like when they use the laws of a U.S. territory that has no timeframe for when you need to be charged or released.
225 specifies that any electronic entity that provides them with information regarding any investigation shall not be charged with any crime relating to it.
1003 grants further rights to spy on "tresspassers".

These laws were further amended by closed military tribunal that made allowance for spy organizations to gather information on Everyone regardless of any warrant or suspicion or probable cause.

So basically this clusterfuck of a law declares that they can spy on everyone, without cause or warrant, without specifying what or where they are searching.

A clear violation of the fourth amendment.

#2 The Constitution of the United States of America. Article 1, Section 8.
The Law:
"Congress shall have the power to...(Abridged)...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the standard of Weights and Measurements."

The Violator:
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
Section 11, Pard (D) 

"To supervise and regulate through the Secretary of the Treasury the issue and retirement of Federal reserve notes, except for the cancellation and destruction, and accounting with respect to such cancellation and destruction, of notes unfit for circulation, and to prescribe rules and regulations under which such notes may be delivered by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Federal reserve agents applying therefor."

I'd like a moment of gratitude for actually finding that quote in the wall of text that is the Federal Reserve Act. 

Now let us take one important information into account. 

The Federal Reserve Bank, is NOT part of the U.S. government. They are a monopoly corporation that was given the right to print and regulate our money. Furthermore, when we need more money than we have in gold reserve, they print out more and issue it to us as a loan, with significant interest.

So the U.S government is paying interest for using it's own currency.

This is a major violation of the Constitution because this Act specifies that the Federal Reserve Bank with the advice of the Secretary of the Treasury  have the right to coin money and regulate it, rather than Congress as specified.

What makes this more ridiculous is that all other banks are required to subscribe to this scam. If they were to refuse they would no longer be allowed to be a bank (i.e. issue loans).

Realities of economics and minimum wage.

The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 an hour. as of 2007 it was $5.15 an hour. In 1990 it was $3.35 an hour.

Visually it looks like our minimum wage has been growing drastically in the last quarter century, but this does not account for inflation.

The highest actual value for minimum wage we have ever had was in 1968 at $1.60 per hour ($10.64 in modern currency).

But look more into what is required of employees in the past as opposed to now. In the beginning of the minimum wage laws it was the wage for completely untrained labor. Trained laborers made more. But comparatively, Most if not ALL modern employees would be considered trained labor. A POS computer is a complicated program, far more complicated than a simple manual cash register. All employees are expected to be literate, have customer service skills, be computer savvy, able to do manual labor. A very long laundry list of different skills that are common now, but are far outside the scope of the initial minimum wage laws. So the employees have become more skilled and more productive, but their pay has not gone up to match. Instead all of that profit has gone to the owners of the companies and the CEO's.

So we now have a vast skilled labor force, many of whom have higher degrees, still stuck working at poverty level employment.

This is simply not a viable way for a society to exist. The complexity of modern life has grown vastly, and the average worker is expected to do more and make less for their efforts.

But there is a threshold, we can't simply pay all employees a maximum amount for their labors, otherwise there would be no incentive to work towards more difficult careers. Why be a doctor when you make the same amount of money as a retail clerk?

But the employees need to be paid what they are worth.

Now some economists claim that raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment, that's simply not the case anymore. Everyone remembers the excessive amounts of downsizing and merging that happened in the last few decades. Any two jobs that could be done by one person have already been merged.

Most jobs simply cannot be downsized any further and remain in business. If anything, some corporations might attempt to close multiple locations to drive all the business into fewer stores. This is kindof a wash because the compressed consumers will require more employees at the fewer locations, plus it increases the risk of brand disloyalty for the sake of convenience.


So that argument is rather moot. There will be minor downsizing as the corporations attempt to wring out every last bit from their worker pool, but there is only so much they can do.

But let's use an example of a drastic increase in the minimum wage, increasing from $7.25 an hour to $22 an hour.

A full-time employee at the current rate with no sick days or holidays makes $15,080 a year before taxes.
That means that they are taxed at a rate of 15% for $2,262 in income tax

If the wages are increased to $22 a year with no sick days or holidays full-time the same employee would make $45,760 a year. They would jump up a tax bracket to 25% and would pay $11,440 in taxes.

Take-home for the employee at current wages= $12,818
Take-home for the employee at increased wages= $34,320
(both excluding state, local, social security, etc)

So the employee, for the same amount of work is now taking home almost three times what they were before and the government is collecting five times as much in taxes. Furthermore, because of their increased pay, they no longer need additional government support, fewer people on food stamps and other social services while fully employed.

So the government is collecting more money in taxes, the employees are collecting more money in wages, the only people currently losing out are employers. But there is a solution there too. Increase government subsidies to all employers.

So after the subsidies, the government is taking in slightly more money, the employees are making significantly more money, and the employers are making slightly less money.

Hell, for further motivation, make the subsidies system based on the percentage of employees that are Americans. That would actually drastically help smaller businesses. They don't out-source overseas so they would be rewarded significantly.

Thus increasing the demand for American laborers for the bigger companies to increase their employment subsidy percentage.

This isn't hard, we just need to wrestle control of the government away from the big corporations so we can fix all of this.

Endless Beach

You wake up to find yourself standing on the edge of a beach. It's dark out, but the moon illuminates the water. You look around the beach and realize that there is no-one around for miles. No buildings, no people, no birds, no cats, no dogs, you can't even see any bugs in the area. The coast is lined with palm trees leading into a dense forest.

You look back out towards the water and it hits you. There is more definition and color in the water than there should be. There are no waves crashing against the beach, but the water ripples with the wind. The water seems to be glowing light green almost blue near the surface and seems to fade towards purple the deeper the water goes. Given how dark the sky is, you shouldn't be able to see the horizon, but you can anyways.
It splits your vision like a slashing wound. Below all the colors of the water, above just the darkness of the night, surrounding the brightly glowing moon.

Alone as you are on this beach, you start to think to yourself where it is you have found yourself.
Is this a dream?
Is this heaven?
Did I die?
Where are all the people?

Why am I the only one alive here?


That notion strikes deep into your core. You are absolutely alone on this beach.

You begin walking along the beach hopeful that you might find someone else, someone to tell you where you are, someone to prove that you aren't alone.

You search and search. You lose track of the time. Have you been searching for minutes? No, it must be more than minutes.
Hours? Possibly, but why don't you feel tired or hungry?

Come to think of it, you don't remember any of the usual feelings that you should have had by now. You don't have any spots that itch, or ache. You don't need to use the restroom. Your teeth don't seem to have any residue or film on them from previous usage. Like they have never been used.

This whole time, however long it has been, you don't remember saying anything. For that matter, you don't remember hearing anything. Subconsciously your brain has been adding in the sounds of crashing waves and palm fronds blowing in the breeze, but there is no sound. You just thought there was because you think that a spot like this is supposed to have sounds like that.

Other things begin to strike your notice.
You've been walking all this time, but there are no foot prints in the sand. You seem to remember wearing shoes, but you don't remember ever seeing them.

You begin to question your own existence. You think about putting your hands up to your face to prove that you have substance, but you are too afraid to be proven wrong. You want to cry out, but are fearful that no sound will escape your lips.

Terror wracks your body, your mind, your self. Whatever it is here that can be identified as you. You are alone on this beach, but the only one who knows that you exist is you, and that is merely assumption.

What if you were to look down and see no body beneath you? What if you were to attempt to scream your own name and hear no voice calling for you?

These thoughts feel like they are devouring you. You fall down to the sand as sorrow engulfs you.

Despondent, you look out over the water. This moment, your moment, is beautiful.

Maybe you only exist here, maybe you don't exist at all, but be that as it may, it is such a beautiful place.

This is a place for postcards you think to yourself.

You decide to sit on the beach and watch the rippling of the water to pass the time. Whether no time or much time passes is unclear to you, but you've accepted your place in this world.

Once you have this memory thoroughly engraved in your mind, you close your eyes, and let yourself drift off to sleep.

The American notion of debt (and theories on what it might mean)

Ok, so money doesn't really have a specific value, it's a promise of value based on the total value of the country. That being said, although most countries have significant value, through intellectual property and such, you can't exactly liquidate intellectual property, so the countries need actual money to spend. So they issue dated IOU's to anyone who will buy them. There is a theoretical limit to how much they can issue, but the US and Denmark are the only countries with official limits.

So every country's economy exists in a sense of the value of their current currency and the debt that the owe. In the US the debt is largely held by social security (because social security operates at a surplus) but other parts are held by corporations, private individuals, and even other countries.

Now here is where things get more complicated:
These debts are on a timer, so at regular intervals they come due and must be paid in full. And we usually don't have the money on hand to pay them, so we create new debts to pay for the debts we have now.

Does your head hurt yet?


Continuing on,
The Tea Party Republicans and specifically the Congressional majority leader and his people are currently pushing us towards debt default.
The major problem with this is it doesn't all come from the same source and there is no precedent or even rules for what happens when a country defaults on a debt. The only historical example I can think of is post WW1 German where they became over-run with debt and we know where that went.

Certain debt holders may be willing to simply erase the debt. Social Security will likely just swallow the debt as they currently still have the finances to do so. Countries whom we hold debts against might be willing to let our debts cancel eachother out.

The major concern is corporations and private investors. These are people who could theoretically hold significant leverage over our government and might try to use this moment of weakness to profit off of us.


And here is where the other shoe drops.

There is no way for these private investors and corporations to force us to pay back the money. Normally if someone defaults on a debt, the government forces them to pay it. They re-possess their belongings and sell them off to settle the debt. But there is no higher court to force our government to pay back the money. It was loaned in good faith, but with absolutely no leverage or ability to force a collection. It's not like they can re-possess Florida and sell it to Cuba to settle our debt.

So depending on how the creditors behave, this could become a very economically volatile situation. If America defaults on it's own debt and doesn't pay it back, it sets a precedent for other countries to do the same. Because it's not just us, most countries follow this same business model. Nobody has tried to force a default because no-one knows how it will change the world's economy.

But now we have some idiots in the Congress who are hell-bent on causing a default, they claim so that the US can get out from under it's $16 trillion debt. But we have no idea how it would play out. Currently all major investors are throwing their money off-shores to try to shield it from any sort of collapse.

But we don't know if that would be enough, with a big enough crash, the dollar could be de-valued so vastly that their off-shore fortunes could become pocket change.

Ideally, this won't happen. Cooler heads will prevail, and the country won't default, but if the default does happen, there is potential for massive upheaval.

Keep your fingers crossed, and as always, everyone try to stay safe out there.

Racist America

This post will be discussing my own personal experiences with racism in America, along with some general theory. Any names used will be changed.

Largely speaking I am a white American. I have some Native American and who knows what else from my Creole side, but if you were to look at me, you'd say I was a white guy. I also have red hair, which is celebrated in some cultured, and discriminated against in others.

To start off my story, let me begin with my childhood. I grew up going to very mixed ethnicity schools, but I was one of the very few ginger kids. So rather than picking on someone for being Black or Asian or Hispanic, they picked on me because I had red hair. It didn't help matters that I was already a very creative yet disconnected kid. I liked living in my dream worlds, because in there I had friends and adventures, rather than just getting beaten up a lot.

Then when I hit puberty I was introduced to my most hated anti-Ginger ethnic slur.
"Fire Crotch".

Firstly, very vulgar.
Secondly, when a kid is already experiencing the discomfort that is puberty, why go the extra mile to point out to them that their genital area is a different color than everyone else's?

It was more singling me out for something I had no control over. Numerous boys my age bullying me and trying to force me to pull down my pants to show off my different colored pubic hair.

Rather unpleasant.
I endured it for awhile, but then fortunately I hit my growth spurt early and people stopped trying to bully me.

But then comes my encounter with unintentionally being on the giving end of racism.
When I was in Junior High it was still during the days of hazing and casual violence, so a regular tradition amongst my male peers was "birthday punches". One solid, but not overly painful punch to the arm for every year in your new age. You'd walk around with a bruise on your arm for the rest of the day, but otherwise good-natured ribbing.

When it was my turn I ran for a bit, but eventually they caught me and I took my punches.
But important to the story is that most of my friends at this time were black. My friend Mark and I were both interested in rap culture and had just ended up associating with the Black clique in our school. So we were the two token white kids in a otherwise dark-skinned friend's circle. We didn't mind, they were our friends, we never considered it to be an issue.
They liked the same music as us and we all got along, race didn't make a difference.

Then came the day of Chris's birthday. He was one of our black friends and when it was his turn he also decided to run. Mark and I were the two fastest guys in the group so we gave chase, the rest of the group cheered us on.
Chris sprinted all the way across campus but Mark and I eventually caught him. We gave him his birthday punches and walked away, we considered the scene to be over and we went on with our morning.

What we didn't know was that apparently our school was also home to some white-supremacists.
They saw two white guys chase down and punch a black guy, and they took it as an excuse to get in on the action.
After Mark and I left they beat Chris brutally. I saw him later and his face was bruised and purple, his lip was cut open. It was horrible.

And I had the horrifying realization.
This was my fault.

My inattention to my surroundings led my friend to being savagely beaten by opportunist assholes. I didn't have the common sense to make sure I was seen as his friend and not as his attacker. He knew we didn't intend for this to happen, but that didn't change the fact that it happened. Chris was forced by campus authorities to point out who had been the people who chased him. Not who were the people who beat him, but who was it that incited the violence.

And that was me, and Mark.
Mark served a week of study hall during Christmas break, I had some family event I had to attend during that time so my punishment was delayed until after. When we came back campus authorities had forgotten about me and I never ended up serving my punishment.

But even without it, we already lost what was really important to us. We lost our friends.
Our circle of friends knew that we didn't intend to cause all of those problems, they had even cheered us on at the beginning, but now we were branded on campus as the racist guys who beat up that black kid.

It took the rest of the year of us telling the white supremacists to go fuck themselves and behaving as best as we could before people were able to look us in the eye again without flinching.

Our old friends couldn't remain connected to us, it made them a target.

We never did get back the closeness that we had with them, even after we salvaged our reputations.

More importantly, we unintentionally had led our friend Chris to be forced to have the memory of being beaten because of the color of his skin.

As a guy who was beaten because the color of his hair, I hate that I had anything to do with that.


As I got older things largely improved. My friends circle was made up of multiple ethnic groups, and none of us considered it to be an issue. Hell, we hardly even discussed it. Any discussion of it was usually just making fun of eachother's culture, not race, not skin tone, just culture. I'd be made fun of for Irish music and Shamrocks, and in return I'd poke fun of my hispanic friends for Mariachi music.

Half the time the jokes didn't even make sense. We used to refer to my friend Tony as the "Cuban Love Machine" even though I don't think he's even Cuban.

It was during this time that I realized; Racism is not inherent. It is a state of mind.
It can be taught to a child, or it can be decided upon during life, but a person without outside influence will not consider someone to be automatically superior or inferior to another based on their skin tone or hair color.

Because really, they are just minor adaptations for climate. Dark-skinned people are adjusted for warmer weather, light-skinned people are adjusted for colder weather. Red-haired people are adjusted for extremely cold weather and very little sunlight.

But these are all minor adaptations, they don't make us superior intellectually, spiritually, or emotionally.
Nor do they make anyone inferior.

I get sun burned during a full moon (Yes I'm that pale), how the hell is this supposed to imply that I am somehow superior to someone with dark skin who doesn't burn as easily?

It doesn't.

And violence towards someone because of something they have no control over is absolutely disgusting.

Attacking someone because they are black, female, gay, etc. These are all bullshit excuses for someone who really just wants to hurt people. They want a target that they can get away with bullying.

Well fuck that, I'd much rather kick a dude's ass for being a racist shithead than for what continent his ancestors came from.


Last anecdote:
Also during my Junior High years, for awhile I kept running afoul of a hispanic kid who was really intently of the belief that he was a gang member. Our city has had precisely zero gang activity in the past 30 years, so it was all for show. But he really wanted to make a name for himself, so he kept trying to pick a fight with me.

This was after my growth spurt so this guy would have had a very hard time beating me in a one-on-one fight, so he kept trying to convince his buddies to gang up on me.
I just told him that they were welcome to do that if they didn't think he had the balls to fight me on his own.
They never did try to fight me. The lead guy tried a couple times, but I was much bigger than him so I just deflected him away and moved on with my day.

One particular day he was ranting about how the white people had invaded California and taken it away from his ancestors and how awful we are for doing that. He stepped up to me and said something to the effect of "Why don't you just get off my land White-Boy?!"

To which I replied:
"How many generations has your family been in California?"

He smirked, kicked his head back and said "Three Motherfucker!" Clearly impressed with himself.

I just chuckled at him.
And said:
"Well, my family has been in California for five generations. Why don't You get off My land?"

He looked affronted, then stormed off. He never said anything like that to me again.

And it's actually true. I've had ancestors in California for five generations. My family first entered America in the 1500's, before this was even a country. Our most recent immigration, I.E. the most recent blood relatives to enter the country, was in 1890.

My family has been here for a long fucking time.

And that's not even counting my Native American ancestors.

So from my perspective, most Americans are "Immigrants". The vast majority of Americans have immigrated to this country more recently than my family did.

So none of you get to give immigrants shit before I do.

Furthermore, despite the fact that my family has been here for a long time, we did originally come from somewhere else. We're all immigrants from somewhere, no-one gets to claim moral authority because their ancestors came here slightly before someone else's ancestors.

From the perspective of the Native population (who also immigrated here, albeit a much longer time ago) all of us are foreigners who arrived about the same time.

It's a stupid bullshit argument, no-one has the moral right to anything on this planet, everyone was an immigrant from somewhere. I may have ancestors from Britain, but their Ancestors came from France and Norway and Germany. The British Isles changed hands dozens of times. The Celts, Romans, Saxons, Anglos, Vikings, etc. So claiming you're from "Pure English Stock" is basically saying that your ancestors got conquered and intermarried with their conquerors a lot.

Not exactly bragging rights.

Be proud of what you do, not where you came from. It's just a place to hang your hat. It's especially pointless if neither you nor anyone you know ever actually hung their hat there. I can't have any personal pride in something my ancestors did back in Ireland.
I wasn't there, nor were any of my surviving relatives. It's amusing to note where we came from, but it is of no importance.

What matters is what we do now, not the color of our skin or where our ancestors came from. We must define ourselves by what we do, and a good start would be for us to stop with all the bullshit about "Race".

Heads up everyone, here's some shocking news:

We're all the same race. Homo Sapien. We're not even different enough to denote a sub-species.

Get over it and stop being idiotic towards eachother.