I will back whoever is the best candidate in the primaries (if it's Bernie, so be it). I will then back the most practical choice to remove Trump from office in the general election (even if it ends up not being my 1st choice in the primaries). It's likely this person will share many, if not most of my political and personal moral values, but not all of them, making them a good, but imperfect choice. I recognize that I am but 1 of millions of registered voters which means it's not possible for everyone to have their dream candidate in office. Paraphrasing something I heard somewhere: The primaries are the time to vote ideologically, the general election is the time to vote pragmatically.

All of this being said I still think the electoral college is an outdated piece of crap and believe that ranked choice elections would go far to solve a lot of the issues we have with campaign ethics.

Yes, those MAGA/March for life kids were acting like shitheads and were probably waaaaay out of line. Yes, the Native elder and his group were probably not totally blameless in escalating the situation. Yes, it's probably wrong for an internet mob to jump to conclusions based on incomplete information. All of those things can be true at the same time. I hope everyone's learned something. Of course...they probably haven't because people are the worst.

I remember being 10 or 11 and was playing ice hockey at a local rink. I was never on a team or in a league or anything, I think it was just group of other kids that happened to ask me to play because I was there and they needed another person. I was not a very good skater at all, but I somehow managed to score a goal against these other kids that were obviously good skaters and definitely knew how play hockey better than me (who was not very athletic). It was a very proud moment for me, but in the process of scoring the goal I had fallen on my back onto the ice. For anyone else this wouldn't have been a big deal. They'd have just gotten back up off their ass and high-fived their teammates. Not being a good skater I couldn't get back up on my own. I kept reaching out to the other kids to give me hand getting up, but they just kept high fiving me. Luckily to ease the embarrassment in my moment of victory my mother called out to me that it was time to go so I scooted over to the side boards, pulled myself up and shuffled off the ice. The lesson here is that just because someone succeeds doesn't mean they have their shit totally together.

Favorite Albums of 2018 in no Particular Order

• SaintSeneca - Pillar of Na

• Kurt Vile - Bottle it in

• Foxwarren - Foxwarren

• MGMT - Little Dark Age

• Dodos - Certainty Waves

• Gorillaz - The Now Now

• Killiam Shakespeare - A Town Called Elsewhere

• Ought - Room Inside the World

• Soft Kill - Savior

• Still Corners - Slow Air

• Wild Nothing - Indigo

• Wye Oak - The Louder I Call, the Faster it Runs

• Interpol - Marauder

• Broncho - Bad Behavior

• Twin Peaks - Sweet 17 Singles

• Nothing - Dance on the Blacktop

Movies Seen for the First Time in 2018 (Out of 4 Stars)

1. John Wick: Chapter 2 (***)
2. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (****)
3. Black Panther (****)
4. Hail Caesar (***)
5. Annihilation (****)
6. The Shape of Water (****)
7. Murder on the Orient Express (***)
8. Lucky (***)
9. Grand Budapest Hotel (***)
10. Coco (***)
11. The Florida Project (***)
12. Ghostbusters (2016) (***)
13. Avengers: Infinity War (***½)
14. Miss Congeniality (***)
15. Deadpool 2 (***½)
16. Inherent Vice (****)
17.Phantom Thread (****)
18. Solo: A Star Wars Story (**½)
19. Pacific Rim: Uprising (***)
20. Last Flag Flying (***)
21. Thief (****)
22. Logan Lucky (**)
23. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (***½)
24. The Commuter (***)
25. The Station Agent (****)
26. Ant Man and the Wasp (***½)
27. All the Money in the World (****)
28. The Incredibles 2 (****)
29. Final Portrait (****)
30. Mission Impossible: Fallout (****)
31.First Reformed (****)
32. Valerian (****)
33. Smokey and the Bandit (***)
34. A Simple Favor (***½)
35. Tully (****)
36. Colette (****)
37. Moana (**)
38. Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot (****)
39. Beautiful Boy (***½)
40. Black Klansman (****)
41. Silence (***)
42. Sorry to Bother You (**)
43. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (***)
44. Crimes of Grindlewald (**½)
45. The Green Book (****)
46. Being There (****)
47. The Intouchables (****)
48. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (***)
49. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (****)
50. Peppermint (**)
51. Welcome to Marwen (***)
52. Death of Superman (***)

2018 Photo Highlights

Progressives pointing out how racist the president or some other GOP politician is to right-wingers is like vegans pointing out the cruelty of animal slaughter practices to the meat-loving populace. They know perfectly well, they just don't care.

"I want classic pop culture characters to be around forever" and "If you want diverse characters just make new ones and stop messing with the superficial details of existing ones" are not compatible statements...and I'm pretty sure the people making them together know this, at least on some level. There's a finite amount of headspace available for pop-culture stuff in (for this argument lets say American) society. Either be willing to let go of the old, which won't happen as long as companies are making money off of it and we keep accommodating those companies desires to indefinitely extend copyright privileges to characters they had no hand in creating (because all those people are long dead)... Or accept that as society matures the logical result is going to be that changes are made to be more inclusive of an evolving demographic. Personally I'm all for letting anything over 50 years old fall out of copyright. No exceptions. Sherlock Holmes is (for the most part) public domain, and he's doing just fine. If Micky Mouse loses popularity because Disney no longer has control over the character, the world will go on. But to the original point, no.. we can't have both. Many-decades-old Pop-fiction dominated by the demographic representations of those who created it...AND a reasonable/fair amount of representation of people other than Caucasian males. Of course, some strides have been made in the last few decades... what I'm referring to is the lamentations from certain crowds about the fact that it's happening and how they KNOW DAMN WELL the "just create new stuff" rational isn't realistic. They say it hoping we'll just ignore the obvious problems with it. Intellectual dishonesty, is what that's called.

Supreme Court Farce 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-senate-judiciary.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Even if they believed her it wouldn't matter, because they don't care. I don't know that there's a realistic way to explain to a pack of dogs why rape and even attempted rape is a matter to be taken seriously. I'd say it's just "that generation" but I'm in my 30's and I grew up with these same dogs. They're everywhere.

The right name

"If you don't call the things by the correct name you can't have an opinion on the things" is just another way of sidestepping and yet another excuse to avoid the issue. Another convenient and morally absolving way of dismissing opinions. Another way of squirming out of any responsibility for the carnage they cause. I don't care if we call them semi-autonomic, assault rifles, "military-style", Shooty-Bang-Sticks, or Ferdinand. There's some very basic facts about guns that the lay person understands perfectly well enough to have a valid opinion on if certain kinds (or any at all) aught to be widely available. Most people know very little about the inter-workings of, or the specific proper names for nuclear weapons... and yet, they know perfectly well enough what they're designed to do. Our lawmakers are not technocrats nor would it be possible for them to be on every subject matter they represent their constituents on.