This week, besides being my birthday week, is also National Banned Books week. It’s a week when we “celebrate” banned books, as a reminder that the rights we hold dear in the United States are easily abridged or outright removed by determined people with agendas. Looking over any of the lists of banned books, you’ll […]
Read MoreThere is a lot of talk of heroes these days. The thing about heroes is, it’s very easy to admire them for one aspect of their lives, and completely ignore other aspects that don’t fit the narrative we desire. My dad was a huge fan of Babe Ruth in his time. Living in small-town Wisconsin, […]
Read MoreIN a shocking development, there’s a debate raging on the Internet — I know, right? Anyway, a group of self-entitled fanboys are trying to raise money to REMAKE The Last Jedi. The Star Wars movie that JUST CAME OUT a couple of months ago. Disney apparently did it wrong, according to these folks. The first […]
Read MoreIn a shocking departure from tradition, a discussion broke out recently on Facebook. I started the ball rolling by asking if anyone else was tired of seeing Marvel’s superheroes fighting each other rather than the bad guys. I was amazed at the passion from the other side of the debate — people who enjoyed seeing […]
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately, and what it means to me. I’ve had people declare that we are friends after we’ve just met, and that strikes me as odd; to me, a little bit more needs to go into the relationship to truly declare someone your friend. Growing up, there were only […]
Read MoreAfter last week’s events, the post I was going to put up will wait for another week or two. I was going to write about an experience going target shooting with a friend of mine, but right now I can’t stomach even seeming to sympathize — in ANY way — with the psychotic horror show […]
Read MoreThere’s been some discussion in recent years about safe spaces. Women-only, People Of Color-only spaces that allow those folks to get away for a few minutes or an hour, to decompress and refresh. Arguments have been made for years that these spaces are unnecessary: that they are a drain on resources, and create an exclusionary […]
Read MoreI’ve been trying to provide a good mix of content for people to read here on my blog, but after more than four years of weekly posts, I’m running out of ideas again. So I’d like to offer up some choices of subjects for future posts and have my readers vote on them. Please make […]
Read MoreI work in retail as my day job. More specifically, I work at a game store, and as you might imagine, it gets pretty busy this time of year. Games are common Christmas presents every year, and with the popularity of tabletop gaming it’s no surprise that the store would be packed with shoppers looking […]
Read MoreFor the last two years, I’ve been using Facebook to spread a little bit of joy. Facebook, for it’s MANY faults, does have a few useful features: one that I’ve found particularly handy is the birthday feature. A line-item on the right side of the page tells me that “Person X plus 4 other people […]
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