I Hope This Helps

Dear Persons of Color and non-whites in general: You can skip this article. These behaviors, while the result of truly astonishing mental gymnastics, sadly, will be nothing new to you. I reckon you have better things to do with your time that be reminded that white skin apparently gets in the way of basic human empathy. This is my attempt to tell my fellow crackers to stop acting like crackers. However, if you are a regular user of the narcotic that is white privilege, I must encourage you to read on, because I have observed you fucking up and I would like you to stop it. The first reason, before I get to the rest of this list is this: The concept of whiteness robs EVERYONE of his or her identity. That means you, too. You are not Scandinavian, English, Irish, German, French, Syrian, Afghani, Kenyan, Egyptian, Libyan, Israeli if you are too light-skinned. You’re white. Does that suck? Hurt a little bit? Yeah, it’s like that for non-whites but 350% worse, dig?  5. Justifying Poli...

This generation get off my lawn. Get off my lawn get off my lawn, however get of my lawn. Get of my lawn because get off my lawn. World War II get off my lawn get off my lawn. Get off my lawn because Vietnam. Get off my lawn because 1970's. Get off my lawn because video games. Get off my lawn because feminism. Get off my lawn because gay marriage. Let's be honest get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn. If they want better lives they should get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn. Finally, it's time these kids too take responsibility and get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn. If they don't get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn get off my lawn.

I drove out to the county to the house where all my nightmares take place, under gray skies. It was like that all five days of the week. Great grey sheets covering everything like the furniture in a dead man's house. My sister called me Wednesday before the day I drove to a dead man's house and she was angry. She was angry because I was not coming to the house that she lives and making things happen. Like cleaning, like fixing things. Doing all the things that I do in my own apartment. Doing all things I mostly hadn't been able to do this past semester. But I had to drop everything and do for her what she should be doing for herself. She had got a new roommate and they had been cleaning. Like you're supposed to do. The house was a shambles. As though it weren't depressing enough that both our parents died there, it was filthy. Grime on everything. All the random things my father refused to throw away, piled high in the garage. About a quarter inch of duck shit...

5. Looking down on people who use two-ply toilet paper Any toilet paper that isn't that single ply, not perforated stuff that comes in white box with black Arial font seems completely decadent to you. For some reason all the other hardships you have experienced in the military you'll just accept and drive on, but GOD FORBID someone you respect use the toilet paper from the commercial with the adorable animated bears. They could have horrible hemorrhoids or something, but you don't care because you had to eat shit sandwiches daily in a desert country filled with people who either want to kill you or are completely terrified of you. Meanwhile, everyone else had air conditioning, fast internet with access to porn, and steak houses that will actually serve a steak at a temperature other than well-done shoe leather. The only way to deal with this is a kind of minimizing, which can quickly get out of control. . . Seriously, this bear to you becomes like ...

It's important to note, this article has two purposes: to make light of some things and allow me to vent. That's all. I'm sure it's shot through with political feelings that not everyone will agree with. If that's the case, I encourage you to go to whatever website it is that only posts things you agree with 100%. Also, this post contains the most offensive phrase I have ever heard.  5. Nothing can prepare you .  . . for all the singing Basic Training, Boot Camp, or whatever the branch you join calls it, has more singing in it than a Broadway musical. The first two to three weeks you barely go to the field. Mostly it's classes about the how's and why's and history of your branch. You get three meals a day and every time you march to the chow hall, you will be singing your fool head off. It's the same five songs over and over and over again so it's like radio in the late nineties if they never got past Rag Time. You know Do Wa Diddy? T...

The Immoral Officer Corps It's very hard to believe that anyone reaching a high enough point in Star Wars Imperial republic military would have any illusions about what they're doing.  This begs the question however, WHAT is higher up in a galaxy level military?   As an example, the U.S. Military has 38 4-star generals. Now, under them there are 818 other flag officers (Colonel [O-6] and above). Not all 919 of those officers would be necessary to fight a war of course, we only need a hand full of generals to run operations (ideally) in the Central Command Area of Operations. But on a galactic level? Just how many commissions are we talking in the Imperial forces? We can safely assume that four star officers (Generals, Admirals, etc) are even more abundant even as the Imperial forces were clearly spread thin even before the Battle of Yavin. It's entirely possible that they also have 5-star officers who command planetary sections if  warranted  by population....

While there’s a certain kind of strangeness in a place that’s constantly filled with people where no one actually lives, I've never had a problem with airports. Until I meet Mr. Shot&Bud. I was flying to Atlanta, and since I got there early, I wasn’t running around like a crazy person. Naturally, I took a seat at a bar after making it through airport security without incident. I ordered a Yuengling and a caprese salad. Mr. Shot&Bud, of course, orders a Bud Light and a shot of Jack Daniels. Okay sure. My salad arrives and as I glance over as this guy looks at the salad, looks at me, and sneers like I’m wearing a painted on Chiquita Banana Lady costume at a Gay Pride Parade. You know this type. This is the guy who needs to judge everyone. He will decide certain things about people based on tiny fragments of information, and use that information to make himself feel better. In this case, I assume the thought process is something along the line of “It’s okay if I’m drinking too...

Earlier this morning, I was contemplating health. I was contemplating healing. When my mother had a brain tumor, someone who spent more time in college than she did suggested she fantasize about some sort of healing scenario. This manifested, so she told me, as teddy bears slowly mining away at the cancerous tissues. It probably didn't do anything medically, but it brought her comfort. I wonder about my mother sometimes. Once she told me a heart monitor she was hooked up to stopped beeping and started saying, to her, "help me, help me, help me, help me, help me." Hearing her tell me about this was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I was sternly warned about lying and flights of fancy as a child, mostly by my mother, so to hear her recount something like this, it was the burning hot truth of the thing. Mom was quite religious, she was certain of the power of the man called Christ. As sure as putting your foot on the gas would make the car go faster, Jesus ...

Terminator: Salvation imagines, finally, the war with that machine enemy that John Connor has prepared for just about all his life to fight.  Connor was put through all manner of training by his mother in preparation for the war after Judgment Day, in addition to at least two attempts on his life by Terminators, putting all that training to the test, which Connor of course passed or he wouldn’t be here. Of course, Connor will probably stop talking about his feelings when the first bomb is dropped on Judgment Day. T:S imagines a never-ending conflict through time and space in which a coldly calculating machine attempts to wipe out an insurgency by sending back its toughest operators before the war even starts to kill the potentially toughest people before they are tough. More on the flaws in that plan later. But chronologically (in one sense) the first Skynet's worst plan is Marcus Wright, a character who is apparently supposed to be the ultimate sleeper agent, built at some ...

This post contains spoilers  In the game Dead Space you are the ONLY competent member of a repair crew tasked to fix a mining ship called the Ishimura, which bears more than a passing resemblance to a rib cage. Strike one. Within five minutes of arriving on the ship, a warped mutant thing with scythes for hands that moves like a member of the Cirque de Soleil on a Meth bender drops out of the ceiling and wastes all but two of your repair crew. This is part where I'd leave, I don't mind saying. Most people who write about video games say "Because in real life, I'm a coward." Well, I'm just not about believing I'm a coward when the undead shit hits the space-ship fan. However, quite apart from the how brave I am as the sole member of this team who is actually useful, it's actually the hard fact that our computer technician, welder and probably our equipment guy are now dead. If that happened to a real life construction crew that I was working on, I wou...

The year is 1951 and Humanity is getting an ass-kicking from beyond the stars by a race of leather pants wearing humanoids called Chimera. Generally, they are very slimy. You take on the role of Nathan Hale, the only survivor of America's push into England against the Chimera. Hale is a generically handsome Bruce Willis look alike with a dash of grizzled and a touch of glam rock. Hale only survived the first attack due a fluke in his genes that allows him to harness a disease that has turned most everyone else into the alien nemesis. Turns out, Hale isn't alone either, as several other stereo-types from throughout the armed forces have the same genetic trait including the Mini-Gun Toting Italian From Philly, The Smooth Voiced Black Sniper From Baltimore and The Stocky Rifleman from South Bend. The game gets off the cracker-jack start with the skies of San Francisco filled with alien fleet bearing down upon earth with near biblical might. After nearly being eaten by a Kraken at ...

"Once this city used to pulse with energy; dirty and dangerous but alive and wonderful. Now it is something else. The changes came slowly at first. Most did not realize or did not care, and accepted them. They chose a comfortable life. Some didn't. . . . they became our first clients." Video games become more cinematic each day. Mirror's Edge, by Electronic Arts and Dice, is a truly astonishing narrative achievement. The voice work is outstanding, the story is inventive and the plot twists happen in such a way as to be consistently shocking and entertaining. As a matter of fact, the story is so good that you'll barely notice a lot glitches and errors through out the game, because if your standing still in this game you're doing it wrong. You take on the role of Faith, a young lady of prodigious agility, and little else. In the dystopian world the story is set in, the only secure way to communicate is to have a person physically carry correspondence. These peo...

This past weekend, I watched Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. It's one of the most misogynistic movies I’ve ever seen this side of American Psycho. Giger’s Alien is a pretty horrid creature with its perverse use of the human body as an incubator after an oral sexual assault from the infamous face hugger, the beast that dehumanizes everything around it. AVP:R was more violent and disturbing than I remember from what I caught in the theater, since this time, I watched the director's cut. The first time I tried to see this in the theater, one of my friends was and is a staunch opponent of violence against children, pregnant women, animals, and men, with equal weight given to tall.   Now they just hate all violence in movies.  I can't blame them. The first time I tried to see this movie, he cried out with his signature, “Aw, heelll-naw!” as one of the creatures prepared to assault a pregnant woman, and we left before the true nastiness could begin. We left and went to get ice cr...

The story of the war waged by the Empire the final (first released) chapters of the Star Wars trilogy is an insurgency speculated on a galactic scale. The enemies come from within, rather than from without, and in fact are the unknown children of a major player within the regime. The first figure we are introduced to in the large terrorist cell in Star Wars is the Princess Leia Organa. Raised by Bale Organa, a major player in the old regime, rendered mute over the years by the new power structure, Organa apparently raised a fierce and single-minded young woman whose only goal is to restore the old regime at potentially great cost to herself. She did so boldly, using nearly anyone loyal to her to strike a blow against the Empire. She employs spies and eventually, with the help of a member of the Imperial Navy, secures the plans for the Empire’s ultimate weapon. The Death Star was a costly endeavor, no doubt, judging from its size and the amount of personnel required to run it. ...