Todd's Mischief Blog

It seems obvious to me that comparing an entire race of people to animals is racist. What is less obvious is how comparing an individual or a coterie to animals can be called racist without smuggling in the decidedly racist notion that race is a person’s defining characteristic. Might I suggest that if a 2000-word essay, complete with citations and footnotes, is necessary to explain how uniquely  racist it is to compare a black person to a monkey, then maybe it's not as obviously racity-racist as you thought while you were furiously researching. Why, yes, I am aware that racists have called black people apes and monkeys. Racists tend to say mean things. Yet, somehow, calling people "stupid mother f***ers" has escaped the "racist" designation. By all means, please remind me how scientific racism relied on pseudoscience classifying blacks as simians to justify Social Darwinism. It's important to not forget how racist the Progressive Movement has historically b...

“I will interpret your well-known figure of speech as a literal statement to make myself seem smart.” ~~~ In the year 2052, The Southern Poverty Law Center reluctantly adds itself to its own list of hate groups, as it is the only organization left not on it. ~~~ The Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack is the best album of 2001. 2001 was a bad year for albums. Very few that could be enjoyed beginning to end. Though Napster was shut down, the writing had been on the wall for some time that albums were on the way out. Beautiful Garbage was a good offering that year. The Strokes’ Is This It  gets a lot of praise but it’s actually a slog to take in from start to finish. Slipknot isn’t my jam, but Iowa is probably their best known work. Most of the other albums that year were just vehicles for popular singles. See: Gorillaz, Alicia Keyes, Daft Punk, Weezer. ~~~ Runza makes the best onion rings. Don & Millies is 2nd. I’m never leaving this town. ~~~ Democrats today: Isolationism will ...

With all the Trump/Russia conspiracy theories in the mainstream news, constant handwringing over which country will declare war on Trump, and general criticism of Trump’s bombastic, hyperbolic oratory, it amuses me that such conventional complaints as “broken promises” continue to be leveled at the president.  It becomes especially amusing when the chorus continues unabated while the US moves its Israel embassy to Jerusalem, fulfilling a promise every president of the last quarter century has made. As I see it, this criticism comes mainly from three camps, with a few other varieties in between and at the margins. ● The person complaining is a wall-head. It won't matter if, at the end of eight years, unemployment is at 0.5%, the Democrat Party is in shambles, the race-divide is healed, Korea is reunified, Iran is led by a woman, and we're all puttering around the moon in self-driving Tesla-Xs. They won't be happy unless there's a border wall between the US and Mexico and...

The Masculine Ideal

Catholics in Space is a TV show that should totally exist. "On the next Catholics in Space, the crew of the Jesuit answer a hail from a band of Klaatu’s Witnesses. Thursday night at 7/6c." ~~~ The maximum allowable number of hashtags in your bio is zero. ~~~ Except... Walmart has free 2-day shipping on >$35, no membership.  Streaming video abounds now, including many decent free options.  The same is more true of music streaming.  Amazon Prime now includes some books, but it only has 37 titles so far.  Also, there's the library and most have digital lending. Plus, most box retailers have free site-to-store shipping with no minimums. So, no, there’s no all-in-one alternative to Prime, but one can have all the same benefits for a lower price tag if one cobbles a few things together. ~~~ The enemy of my enemy is such a flaming douche that not even my enemy can stand them. I am not inviting them to my birthday. ~~~ Toxoplasmic masculinity. ~~~ I'm taking a stand: Roll...

So, I did something crazy the other day. Sit down for this: I made a map. No big deal, right? Maybe it is. I was trying to follow the stories about the US Embassy in Israel moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the protests supposedly in response. Many stories framed the events as though the Trumps and Israelis were laughing and cavorting while poor Palestinians were being slaughtered just next door.   I have a passing familiarity with the geography of the area, but I wanted to lay it all out in front of myself. What I ended up seeing was so comically at odds with news reports linking the violence to the embassy that I just had to share. I posted it on Twitter with the caption: “Just because not everyone seems to know this.” That’s it.   As they say on Twitter dot com, RIP my mentions. For some context, for me a typical tweet that isn't a reply to someone gets about one response. A dozen retweets and replies is a successful tweet. The lifespan for any given tweet is typically ...

There are a lot of strong feelings about the Boy Scouts of America going co-ed. You’d think that by having a son in Cub Scouts, I’d have a strong feeling, too, but my views are mixed. It’d be easy to be up in arms if I thought BSA was giving in to pressure from left-wing political groups and feminists, but from the ground, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The official line from BSA is that families today are busy and want the convenience of a single program for their sons and daughters. Unofficially, according to the grapevine an influx of parents approached BSA because they were pulling their daughters out of Girl Scouts and wanted to enroll them in a more active and values-based program. Individual stories tend support this, from complaints to troops being overly focused on cookie sales even in the off-season, to concerns about GSUSA’s ties to organizations also tied to Planned Parenthood. There is no room for doubt that GSUSA has attached itself to the left wing of the politic...