Category Archives: Opinion

Existential

04/30/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

About 1 in 10 drivers in Arkansas don’t have a valid driver’s license. Those 10% are responsible for 25% of accidents.

After rewatching my video yesterday of the highly trained police officer getting seriously injured outside of my apartment, I realized it’s time to once again remind everyone that nothing protects us from the chaos of random circumstance. All those years of training and becoming a masterful motorcyclist amounted to nothing when confronted with an idiot without a driver’s license and in too much of a hurry to yield to traffic.

You can be the smartest, healthiest, most careful person in the world. You can do everything right.

There’s always going to be an idiot without a driver’s license or someone in too much of a hurry to remember that it’s not worth it to be in a hurry, to be angry, or to remember how precarious it is to be encased in a biological body.

You can work yourself to the bone, being loyal, diligent and doing your job. And that job can be swept out from under your feet without warning. Often by people who are callous to the fact that money fails to compare to the impact on human beings.

We can dedicate ourselves to being compassionate citizens, only to wake up one morning and realize that the people in charge have lost touch with their intended purpose.

The balancing act never ends. We have to find a way to keep moving no matter what craziness happens to us. Even when we’re bitter, pissed off, or unsure whether anything we do really matters.

I try to keep an eye out for the people who seem to be positive even when they’re getting slapped. It’s a rare attitude and probably more important than intelligence or hard work.

PS You don’t have to wave at the grim reaper. He already sees you.

Grammar, Humor, Opinion

Axe Me

04/26/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

We all use shorthand to communicate, even if it’s technically incorrect. That’s what fascinates me about language. Whether it’s the grammar police or people who have a pet peeve about things they perceive to be an accurate or wrong, the reality is that usage prevails over perceived correctness. Even if it makes your heart palpitate or your left eye twitch.

Lately, I’ve been biding my time and waiting. The other day, a self-appointed guardian of the imaginary rules of English stepped in it.

“F.B.I. is not an acronym. We describe it as an acronym but that’s not actually correct.”

“What? Of course it is. What are you talking about?”

“An acronym is pronounced as a word in and of itself, like ‘I.C.E.’ If you don’t pronounce the first letters in totality as a word, it is an initialism.”

Silence and confusion.

“That’s a technicality. Everyone knows what we mean when we call it an acronym.”

I smiled, a tiger trap of acknowledgment.

“Duh. That’s exactly how the rest of the world feels when you correct them. They’re communicating, not writing a thesis.”

“If I was interested…”

I cut them off, making a slashing motion with my hand. “That’s a violation. Improper use of the subjunctive.”

I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye as the person walked away.

I should have axed them if they wanted to go get an expresso with me. I could of, but I didn’t feel like being pacific about it.

¡Viva el caos!

Government, Health, Medical, Opinion

Saturday

04/11/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

Which weirdo has all the magenta light coming out of the window? Additionally, how did I not know that the word ‘gulab’ is a synonym for rose?

The thunder of the birds started early this morning as the moon drifted down.

As I walked this morning, I listened to an amazing article in Spanish this morning regarding the new unified universal health care system for Mexico. There’s no reason we don’t have the same here except for ignorance and profit motive. Maybe one day after enough people have suffered we’ll tear down what’s obviously not working here. Probably not.

New Word, Opinion, Personal, Politics, Psychology

Dumbass-Keurig Effect

03/15/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

Maximum confidence. Minimum information.

People who know the least tend to be the most certain. I see it day in and day out. I modified the original name of this and call it the Dumbass-Keurig effect, because it’s likely you’ll hear the dumbest nonsense when someone’s holding a cup of coffee and giving an opinion, completely oblivious to the fact that you want to put in an MRI order for them just to determine whether there’s a brain in there or not.

As an example, someone close to me recently had to deal with someone calling one of the most knowledgeable, educated people she knew “dumber than a box of rocks.”

It’s a tactic employed by ignorance to dismiss the presence of knowledge and intelligence. It’s corollary is the boring and clichè “no common sense” accusation.

Ignorance is a fixable condition. We’re all ignorant about a variety of things, often including things that deeply affect us. That’s okay, provided that we accept our lack of knowledge and understanding.

Which leads me back to my original point: Don’t leave your fingers inside the door frame when you close the car door.

Opinion, Personal, Psychology

Observation

03/11/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

“It’s not that evil wouldn’t recognize itself in the mirror. It never pauses for self-reflection. Evil is compromised by certainty. It’s not that all certain people are evil, but it’s demonstrably true that all evil people are certain.”

-Quote from an obscure American

Güino is incredibly close to being 18 now. I put him on a freshly-washed towel so that he could enjoy the warmth.

English, Grammar, Language, Opinion

Villainous Language

03/02/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

Very few people know that the word “villain” originally meant ‘farmhand’ or ‘villager.’ It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how the word morphed from descriptive to pejorative.

Our language is riddled with words that are based in class and hierarchy, which fascinates me.

I’ve always been interested in the pretentious rigidity some people judge language, both grammatical and orthographical.

It’s all made up. Struggling against it is a loser’s battle.

Behavior, Business, Humor, Opinion, Organization, Social Rules

03/01/2026 X Teri 2 Comments

Big Arch Madness

If you’ve not seen the McDonald’s CEO eating a Big Arch burger, you’re missing out. It comes across exactly like Zuckerberg’s reptilian testimony a few years ago.

As I see people mock the McDonald’s CEO, it fascinates me. A lot of people aren’t aware of the critical defect in most larger organizations: hierarchal insulation.

People do not want to share bad news or criticism. The people with authority seldom get exposed to those on the ground doing the work. It’s filtered by successive layers of containment, each motivated by their own objectives.

Additionally, if you’re not familiar with The Abilene Paradox, you should look it up. Summed up, it explains why a group of people can end up deciding to go eat somewhere that no one really wants to go to. It results in Jessica being as pissed as everyone else.

That’s how you end up with a strange marketing video with the CEO coming across as alien and off-putting. The majority of people watching the video immediately recognize that something’s off. There’s no question multiple people at McDonald’s wanted to speak up. But they don’t have an institutional means of being heard.

Who in the McDonald’s corporation would dare question all the departments and people involved in the result? Much less the CEO.

The insulating factor of organizations is everywhere once you recognize it. Products that defy customer wants. Logos that look like someone dropped pixie sticks on the floor. (Studiously NOT mentioning Springdale’s from a few years ago.)

Our laws, which often ignore what most people want because committees have to come to an agreement, and often only because someone needs to pee really badly – or realize that no one’s going to get what they want. That’s how we ended up with the platypus, by the way.

If you haven’t seen the Big Arch commercial, I highly recommend it. It is the embodiment of what happens when a vocal cross-section of other people aren’t involved.

“The people who know have no say. And the people who have the say quite often don’t know.” – X

Government, Justice, Opinion, Politics, Security, Social Rules, Trump

The Boy

02/03/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

If and when this national lunacy ends, we can’t get a broom, sweep it into a box, and then pronounce ourselves whole again. We are a nation of the 3/5s, of the Epstein files, and of letting our rights slip away in the name of security and cultish loyalty to a man whose entire life contradicts who we say we are.

Some of us will retain our squinted eyes as we look at the people around us. We’ll try to make sense of the fact they endorsed basic violations of our Constitution and hurting people, all under the guise of protecting our borders. Borders lose significance when you degrade the people inside of them.

Though it’s not my story to tell, I will be the speaker for the dead and the oracle of things that require reckoning.

Children are sponges. Despite their lack of understanding, they absorb what’s around them. Whether it be kindness and love or fists and anger. How some children grow up without releasing the toxicity is a question that never leaves my mind.

The United States has a problem. Yesterday, upon hearing about the death of his beloved great grandmother, a boy asked his mom if the “evil police” had taken her. Just two little words, both packed with backstory, accusation, and a comprehension beyond his years.

It’s not that the boy had been soaked in specifics or propaganda. He takes in what’s around him.

Just a boy, already trying to grapple with loss, echoing and powerfully saying what a lot of us are feeling.

If you’re in favor of all the nonsense going on, it would be easy for you to discount a little boys concise concern. But it is often the voiceless, the naive, and the ones who are powerless who provide the strongest condemnation.

Though you may not recognize the validity of his reality, he and countless other people in the United States and around the world now possess a primal fear and recognition of what we’re capable of. How many generations will it take to dispel?

And maybe we never will at all. This is the new us and those of us who are horrified will become silent. The justifiers and idolaters of power and money will get their way.

I hope the little boy finds reprieve from his thoughts of the “evil police.” And that he’ll take this formative observation and be one of the people who works to keep it from being duplicated. We can’t blame him if he grows up to be mentally looking over his shoulder at the shadow of what we’ve become.

We’ve managed to take a little boy’s grief and amplify it with the immediate thought that our government may have had something to do with it.

X
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Behavior, Brother, Government, Opinion, Personal, Social Rules, Trump

Cut By Cut

01/28/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

My brother Mike sometimes lives in my head for reasons that would irritate the piss out of him. When I listen to AM talk radio, it is his voice I hear, superimposed on whichever oversimplifying demagogue is talking. I used to call him Mike O’Reilly. “I don’t know” was not a phrase you would ever hear from him. “Is there a better way” is a dangerous question for those who are possessed by certainty.

My brother was an authoritarian at heart. There’s no question of this. The tendency escalated as he grow older. Authoritarianism brings dominance and violence.

He loved begging the question. All of this swirls in my head because of what’s going on with all the dubious ICE activity.

“You can’t lawfully stop someone or detain them just because you want to.” My brother’s answer to that was that I was naive. That police everywhere can and do exactly that. Some do. Which of course, is true. He conveniently ignored the word “lawfully” in my observation, just as all the Trump-supporting constitutional simpletons are currently doing.

Almost all of ICE’s abuse would evaporate instantly if they followed the Constitution. But they don’t – and the more people argue that what they’re doing is legally justified is pushing us collectively down a dark road.

Anyone denying the political motivation of choosing Minnesota over Texas is breathing the fumes from their gas tank. I don’t mind a little idiocy because it keeps people like Tom Cotton entertained. The problem is that abuse has tendrils that reach unexpected places. That which we permit anywhere will eventually reach us.

Does anyone believe that if every person not lawfully here left the country today that the huge military apparatus ICE has become would disappear? That their budget would be given back and used appropriately? In the same way that police or prison budgets almost never decrease, ICE isn’t going anywhere because this administration is using it in a way that it wasn’t intended to be used.

If your argument is enforcement, we have the technology and the ability to “solve” that problem for 1/1000th the cost. Without the violence, mayhem, and turmoil. It is so obviously motivated by the desire to engender those consequences.

PS I am in awe of the mental gymnastics some people are employing to justify encroaching on our constitutional rights. Once abridged, they rarely return. You may support those who are currently encroaching them, but you’ll be wondering what happened once the dust settles. We will all be 3/5ths when it’s over.