“Of course I vote,” the dude told me, as if that would reassure me instead of frighten me.
.
“I’m turning over in my grave. Not that I’m dead. Or going to be buried.” – X

.

“20 Most Affordable Places to Live” no longer includes “Mom’s basement.”
.
Of course I understand cruel jokes. I’ve seen Springdale’s new logo.
.
I believe in miracles, because after suffering two major head traumas when I was young, it is a miracle that I don’t vote Republican.
.
Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty. A very smart man. I can’t stand him, though. His idea of religion chokes my eyes and ears and his rube smokescreen evokes memories of bigots I grew up with. If I were a filthy-rich millionaire, I’d be just like him, except I wouldn’t be spreading fear and disgust at the ‘other.’ His appeal to his fan base is masterful, though. He has some great points. I can admit that. But the hateful B.S. he says drowns it out. Even if you are reciting the most poetic truth in the world while drowning puppies, you are still drowning puppies – and that is all I’m going to notice.
.
“Old solutions always lose to new distractions.” –X
.
I’m not a grammar-nazi at all. The message is much more important than the package containing it. Violation of known rules is often a great way to get your message across. However, there is an obvious difference between ignorance and knowingly using error to increase the impact of your message. You might think you are saying something magnificent and eloquent but sometimes, your words seem like the disjointed shouts of someone armed with two crayons and the inability to speak complete sentences. If you don’t see yourself in this criticism, the Dunning–Kruger effect indicates this might be a problem.
.
40% of all white people have no non-white close friends. (This is true.) In other news, the non-whites want to sincerely thank you all.
.
“Most life on Earth exhibits a pattern.” Yes, and unfortunately some of it involves people like Trump and people who like Trump.   (Fibonacci…)
.
I took a class on cursing. I thought it was a “how to” course and studied hard, despite my natural ability. Man, was I surprised when class started. Sorry to all my classmates.
.
A recent study claimed dogs don’t like to be hugged. That explains the weird looks I got at the game when I bought a bratwurst.
.
I used to worry about bad people sneaking up on me. Now I get really concerned when I’m in a room of people who think they are normal, all of whom are figuring out the best angle to punch me in the face without getting recorded. You always see the bad people coming, but the normal ones are sneakier than the Allies at Normandy.
.
Instead of spending $500 on one of those communication courses his company sells, the salesperson told me that there was a much simpler and cheaper solution: give employees time to communicate when appropriate, listen attentively without distraction, and always insist that communication isn’t concealing motive or occurring to provide a record of culpability. (He also showed me the evidence to support the fact that while owners/mangers spend 40%+ of their time in meetings, they spend only 3% of their time communicating directly when the other person has time to engage without hurry.) He also told me that when he tells business owners these things, they still buy his product, because the easiest fix means that they are failing in the most fundamental way possible with other human beings. Old solutions always lose to new distractions.
.
Truth is despised until it becomes undeniable. A million people signed the petition against bathroom policy. That means it holds just as much weight as the fact that 46,000,000 Americans didn’t want black people using their bathrooms, either. But somehow, people think history will not equate ‘now’ to ‘then.’ Personally, it is a non-issue to me. I expect people to behave regardless of who and where they are. I don’t care how they look or what they are wearing. Behave and we are all happy. Or should be. But we’re not, because fear keeps people angry.
.
Once again, I was offered a chance to write one of those targeted blogs. I considered doing it until I discovered I’d have to talk to several politicians who would insist on knowing a simple, wrong answer to almost every problem. I prefer to talk to people who might be wrong, as those who don’t think they are tend to be the cause of many of the problems.
.
Be careful when you tell kids to pay attention. When I was young, I tried out for football. Well, I kicked two smaller kids on the way into the tryouts. The coach acted furious. “Why did you kick those smaller kids?” I couldn’t understand why he was asking, so I told the truth: “Based on the way your players have bullied me, I assumed it was behavior you enjoyed seeing on your team.” ‪
.

It’s not that I don’t like baseball; it’s that it is one of those ‘sports’ that seems to have been designed by an unimaginative bored sadist.
.
Baseball: the kind of sport that no one wanted to play, but once it starts, you kind of have to keep pretending it is a real sport.
.
My grandpa loved watching baseball. The best time we watched a game together was when a yellow jacket came in through the screen door and stung me.
.
A universal human experience: It’s cool how someone can post about how amazing their friend, wife, or parent is. Meanwhile, even though I’m trying hard not to, I’m thinking that the person in question is actually worse and more evil than a bagful of popped pimples and wondering whether the poster is high on drugs or delusional. Because if there ever were a face that needed to be in the middle of the dartboard, it is the person my friend is gushing about. When someone who is as big a jerk as I am thinks poorly of someone, you can be sure that the bar was set very low to begin with. No matter how horrible the person being praised really is, nothing you can say or do, including showing the person gushing about their friend or family member pictures of the corpses of the victims, will convince them otherwise. The people you despise all have close personal friends and family members who won’t see them the way you do. Trying to convince them that their friend or family member is a Hitler clone will only serve to convince the person that YOU are the evil one, regardless of evidence.
.
If you operate a fine dining establishment, please have family seating in your restaurant. If there aren’t at least 5 tables which seat 6 or more, you’re doing it wrong. I hear the complaint of “we can’t sit together” being used constantly as a reason to avoid eating at certain places. The negative consequence of such a complaint is that people then decide to avoid it completely if they can’t go anytime they want to with a group of family or friends. But people operating boutique restaurants won’t listen to this type of observation. Also, if I’m eating in a great place, I don’t want to hear “we have limited seating” more than once during my meal. (Not just because no such “unlimited seating” restaurant can exist in space-time, either, although that’s a great observation.)
.
The old man was giving me directions: “Go a mile down Tubbey Road, and then turn into a gravel driveway.” I said, “How can I turn into a gravel driveway? You got some kind of magic device there?” I woke up an hour later after he punched me.
.

One of my oldest rules of restaurants: If the coffee isn’t fresh, you can’t trust management to insist on fresh quality for everything else, either.
.
Isn’t it strange that you often want to defend your hometown, even if the KKK originated there? As if your geographical birth was in any way subject to your influence.
.
The fact of where you were born makes phrases such as “Southern Pride” suspect for their motivation, as you didn’t have a say.
.
The elegance of a hotel lobby is one thing, but the cleanliness of the bathroom is another. For anyone managing a hotel, write that down.
.
Another rule for restaurants: I don’t care how well your food is prepared, but if I use the restroom and there are things on the walls that are encrusted, you can’t be trusted.
.
I can imagine what celebrities must go through. All you see is a report of them getting angry. What you don’t see if how horrible the staff was to them, or that there is human spit on the edge of their burger. All you see is them losing their s#@$, angry at being treated like trash. Context is everything in any accusation.
.
I watch shows about billionaires getting violently angry. Not me. Give me a billion dollars and I will give one million people a million dollars each – and we will relax in the shade next to the pine trees. All of us.
.
No matter how good your excuse or reason, the internet will transpose your motive to equal human cannibalism. Be yourself and say, “Kiss my butt” as needed.
.
One of my favorite snacks, black licorice, kind of reminds me of what it would be like to eat the innards of a crow partially dried out in the sun. But it’s delicious and the more someone says “That stuff stinks,” the more gleefully I chew it.
.
They asked me to install a swing in the backyard. I didn’t even know they liked jazz. But whatever.
.
Twisted old joke: Mark, the analyst where I work, couldn’t figure out why his corner office was always hot, until we hired an intern who was majoring in geometry in college. She told us it was because corners are usually 90 degrees. She said ‘usually’ because she was attending community college.
.
Rectal thermometers aren’t very commonly used to measure body temperature. I think we should rectal barometers, given the usual accuracy of the daily forecast.
.
Do y’all remember the old joke: “How do you get a dog to stop barking in the front seat? Put him in the back seat.” This joke echoes exactly how I feel listening to politicians drone on and on about social policy.
.
I used to chew on pencils all the time until I learned that most of them were #2. I didn’t know if that meant what it was made out of or density but it sounded suspicious anyway. “Do you have a #2 in your mouth?” is never a good question to be asked, regardless of context.
.
People complain that Facebook is just re-posted memes and babble. Some people complain, I should say. On behalf of those who create personal content from scratch, whether it is humor, commentary, or glimpses of who we are, I’d like y’all to know that you ‘see’ what you want to see. If you scroll down my wall, you’ll see a barrage of zany, intimate stuff I’ve thought up and created. I can’t remember the last time I shared a meme from someone else on my wall. Everything bears my ridiculous signature. And while some of it veers into the absurd, some of it is also intensely personal and echoes who I fundamentally am. I would love to see a world where people would voice their own idiosyncrasies and thoughts. I have some posts that are seen by 500 people but only 2% interact, which is proof that people want to see ‘new’ or ‘interesting.’ They just don’t want to be caught enjoying it – or despising it either, for that matter. The average person is a spectator in life and on social media. Some of them are afraid their employers and family will see what they’ve been seeing and judge them, too. I am literally the overweight girl on the moped – if anyone gets that joke.