Love how you handled them. For some reason I thought of this wonderful tuba player marching alongside KKK morons, playing in such a way that you can’t help but laugh at the ignorance, completely stripping them of any power.

You are part of an ancient thing that doesn’t know what it is, and can’t.

I’ve missed you

The night was a thirstfest. We got Miley doing the most, just white feministing(?) all over the place along with Taylor and her model gang, Kanye thinking people actually care about his opinion on anything just because he’s popular, then there’s Justin, who was trying his hardest to show everyone he’s really close to…

Rovell: Maybe it turns out racism isn’t even racist. Maybe it turns out the invisible hand is black.

My family originates from Irish peasant stock, which contributes to a somewhat no-nonsense attitude to death. When I was about six, my grandfather died in Ireland. Far-flung sons, daughters and their families gathered for the funeral.

This is kinda triggering for me, bc we are almost at the 30-year mark. It’s probably not funny, or strange, but it will be cathartic to write.

When my son passed away, he was 14 months old and a friend had brought his young daughter up from KY for the funeral. It was late January and she had never seen snow so she started doing snow angels and playing in the snow at the cemetery. The other kids who were there were looking at their parents for the same…

HGTV by way of Faulkner is the single best descriptor I've ever read.

After being dead for 18 years, my father in law still has a stalker.

Alright, I obviously was not there, but this is one of the best funeral/memorial stories I’ve heard to date:

Just this summer, my uncle died. His cremated remains were brought from his state of residence to SC for interment. The graveside service, attended only by family, was held in the middle of the day during that godawful heat wave we had. It was 108 degrees. Three generations of my family stood around in our Sunday…

I basically babbled. Something along the lines of, “I’m so glad he has such an open minded and loving family, but I’m not a sex worker and I really only know him from the amazing stories my new coworkers tell me. I’m so sorry for your loss, and I’m sure I would’ve loved him but maybe not that way but maybe that way…

So a week after I started this job, a guy who no longer worked at the publication I worked for died in a car accident. I never met him, and he was a copy editor so it wasn’t like I was familiar in any way with him through what he wrote.
But nevertheless, the EOC said everyone needed to go. So I went. And somehow the…

Many years ago one of my very good friends died suddenly. The circumstances were pretty bad but he had this super cool hippie mom. His mom was the mom who’s house we always wanted to hang out at as teenager. So when he died she decided to bring him home and some friends made him a pine box and she decorated it with…

I’ve worked in a busy mall pizza shop and at a big box electronics retailer for over half of my working adult life. There is one thing I learned. There is no boundary on decent people vs total a-holes. It spans all races, cultures, genders, and economic statures. There is a sprinkling of good and bad in every camp.…

I have part time hours on the weekend at a climbing gym. One guy asked me, after I gave him an orientation and tips on finishing problems, what my “real job” was.

We pretend it won't happen to us. We feel impotent and unable to make a difference. We dream of moving to a civilization where lives matter more than guns.

Wine snobs would not be doing wine tasting on a train because the movement would upset the sediment in the bottles, and temperature regulation would be terrible. Also changing elevations could alter the flavor, and why do a wine tasting while risking motion sickness?

If you read about American biases towards black people, then you know there’s probably no chance that racist bias didn’t effect how “loud” fellow passengers and the train management staff found the group. Stick a group of WASP ladies in the same seats with the same volume, and you’d probably get less of a reaction, or…