10 THINGS I THINK
1. Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who continues to refuse issuing marriage licenses to gay couples - even with a Supreme Court mandate to do so, is really a laugh. How can someone who’s been divorced three times and married four times (including the whole mess of having the third husband’s twins while still married to the first husband, and the pair eventually getting adopted by the second husband) can possibly have any leg to stand on when it comes to the vaunted “sanctity of marriage”, is way beyond my levels of comprehension.
If we are to strictly interpret the Bible - as southern Christians are wont to do in regards to gay marriage, though curiously not when it comes to shellfish eating - Kim Davis has committed the act of adultery three times over! I don’t think issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples will condemn her to God’s consternation and a ticket to Hell; this harlot is already there.
2. The legendary broadcaster Vin Scully will be back for the 2016 MLB season, and us baseball fans are all the better for it. It will be an immensely sad day indeed when he does hang up the microphone, though I think the baseball world seems to shun away Scully’s mortality deep inside a locked closet, even as he creeps ever close towards 90 years lived. Don’t dwell over it; live it one season at a time. Enjoy the great orator’s voice and wonderful stories as long as it’s still here.
3. As seen in the tragic death of the Texas Sheriff getting gunned down while refueling at a gas station, a good guy with a gun can’t stop a bad guy with a gun (as NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre so famously state to the contrary a few years ago). The time for universal and comprehensive background checks for gun ownership is way overdue. A person with an unstable mental state shouldn’t be able to just walk into a gun show and purchase a weapon without any obstacles whatsoever.
What am I saying? The gun debate is already a lost cause. If dozens of elementary school children getting massacred on campus grounds did nothing to change the status quo, absolutely nothing will. Well, that’s not true: you’ll see new gun laws enacted real quick if a bunch of minorities started open-carrying guns in States that are legal to do so. There will be no fear in the hearts of the White establishment quite like seeing a bunch of Black guys walking around in public carrying AR15s - even when it’s perfectly legal to do so. But, if a Black man can’t traverse a Walmart whilst holding a toy gun without getting shot down by police, a group of them exercising their open-carry rights will most certainly not end well.
America doesn’t get to call itself exceptional as long as gun deaths each year dwarf all other developed nations.
4. If I woke up tomorrow without any of the obligations and restrictions of today, I would jump in my car and go on a perpetual road-trip to see the world, taking photographs and writing about it along the way. It may appear to be fantasy world, but even with the societal pressures of being an able adult (read: being gainfully employed), my free time preoccupied with traveling to places, practicing my photographic hobby, and writing on my blog.
Because when you ask yourself the “what if I work up tomorrow…” question, you’ll find innately what you want to do with your life. What happens next is the magical part: you simply go and do it.
5. It’s always funny to me to see San Franciscans complain about upper-70s as “hot weather”, even though I too live in the city. When had we gone so soft? Perhaps it’s the high real estate price round here that somehow makes us feel entitled to the constant mild mid-60s that was so promised in the brochure (bring a jacket!). New flash, San Franciscans: upper-70s and low-80s isn’t remotely what’s considered as hot (and not shorts weather, either). The rest of California laughs at our childish tantrum whenever the mercury crosses the 70 marker.
6. If you haven’t please read Wright Thompson’s long-form piece commemorating the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as it relates to sports, please do so right now. It’s fantastically written, and the stories within give you a slight glimpse of what life has been like in the Crescent City since the natural disaster.
7. It’s the year 2015, and yet Microsoft Word still isn’t smart enough to provide you with a sample revision when its grammar check finds that sentence of yours to be fragmented. How long has the venerable word processor been in circulation? We’ve got massive amounts of power and information in the palm our hands, and yet Word is still as archaic as that versions I used back in middle school. It's incredibly frustrating when an error is found, but Word doesn’t provide a suitable solution. What on earth am I using it for if it’s not capable of correcting my mistakes? I paid good money for Office! Okay, that’s a lie; I receive a hefty employee discount on campus.
8. It’s surprising how as people my age at the twilight of our 20s are still infatuated with the annual MTV Video Music Awards. To steal a line from the eminent John Oliver, how is that still a thing? I’ve cut cable television a long time ago, but I fairly sure MTV has ceased to play music videos on its channel completely (ah, those TRL days were simpler times indeed). Why, then, does it still host an award show dedicated to them? I’ve sort of answered my own question, haven’t I: people my age, and presumably people younger than us, still care.
Advertising capital rules the world, if you haven’t noticed.
9. Seeing one of my friends shopping for a car and another shopping for an apartment to rent makes me glad that I am doing neither of those things. Granted, I’ve only ever done the former, and it was a painless process as I essentially did the transaction over email. The first time I set foot in the actually dealership was to pick up the car. I expect apartment hunting to be a much more involved and stressful process, though I guess that’s why real estate agents exist (they actually help, unlike a dealership salesperson).
Of course, the worse time to shop for an automobile or a flat is when you’re in desperate need of one. Sellers can smell it like blood in water to a shark.
10. I hope the racist Jeb Bush develops an allergy to oxygen, what with his ridiculous comment about anchor babies and it being mostly prevalent in Asian immigrant communities.