Call it a conspiracy theory if you dare, but my sources are telling me that the Kremlin is behind Kanye West and that Vladimir Putin himself wrote “Gold Digger.”

Is it controversial in the conservative movement to say that Alex Jones is a kook who should never ever be taken seriously?

Watched the first episode of Cobra Kai and it was a lot of fun. It’s kinda nice being the age all the nostalgia is aimed at.
And I was wondering if they’d bring up that Daniel won with an illegal kick to face. I lost a karate match as a kid doing just that.

Maybe if we scream at ideas loud enough they’ll go away.

I find overpopulation concerns to be rather primitive. It seems to come from a scarcity mindset which modern man was supposed to have worked to overcome.
Because of declining birthrates, it’s likely humans will top out around 10 or 11 billion and then start going down in number. Now, that’s scary. If you ain’t growing, ya dying.
I know it’s a cliche, but there is no more valuable resource than people. People are actually what all value stems from.

Good rule of thumb: If tons of people are worried about something, then you don’t need to be. It’s covered.

Plenty of bacon left over from breakfast to use for a sandwich, but I can’t find an avocado to go with it. Makes me think of what my 4yo son said the other day: “No one’s life is harder than mine.”

It’s okay for Christians to support Trump as better than the alternatives considering that the last president was literally suing Christians, but still have some standards and condemn the guy for being horrible.

Finished Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West. It’s quite a kick in the pants, explaining what a gift we’ve been handed with this society and how it will take careful maintenance to keep it from regressing (maintenance that neither the left nor right seem interested in right now).
Very interesting that much of what’s called “progressive” these days are actually very regressive ideas. I really liked the quote near the end from Coolidge essentially saying there is no going forward from freedom and individual liberty, only backwards.
Also, Jonah used the word “yawp” a lot. I was unfamiliar with that term. I may use it myself in the future, but I am undecided.

There was no way I was voting for Trump in 2016, but I might vote for him in 2020. He’s been just as awful as I thought he’d be — I just underestimated how much I’d get used to that.

“KILL MOST HUMANS! KILL MOST HUMANS!” -robot moderate

I haven’t seen Infinity War yet, but I’ve pieced together that something of some sort happens at the ending.

Who do the hate-filled sociopaths think are dangerous extremists now?

No one cares about climate change anymore; they need to come up with some new environmental disaster to make the news like that grass is going to start biting people.

When I was a kid, they were always talking about the ozone layer, but I haven’t heard anyone mention it in like a decade. I looked it up, and apparently a while back we blew it up with a nuclear missile and it hasn’t bothered us since.

Hipsters celebrate Cinco de Aioli.

I support reasonable gun restrictions like a gun must be affected by gravity and can’t exist in two places at the same time.

What do you do when you have a president with no credibility constantly under attack by a press with no credibility? I’m reading more books.

I feel like my kids waste so much time sitting there quietly playing video games. They need to practice making entertaining commentary while they play so they can make a career out of it.

I don’t get how celebrating Karl Marx is morally better than being a loud and proud racist, but I’m also not one of the people who decided they need to enforce who should be shunned from polite society so whatevs.

I used to think “the government can’t decide your children must die” was a universal principle the left and right could agree on, but if government-run health care is going to introduce exceptions to that rule, let’s be clear on that before we jump in.
No “if you like your kids, you can keep your kids” sort of lies. Let’s be extremely clear what these tough cases are going to look like when your surrender rights.

Instead of tearing down capitalism, you could just stab poor people to death. It would be a bit more compassionate.

Looked up reviews for Cobra Kai and couple different ones were like, “I hope in future episodes they properly address Johnny’s toxic masculinity and other problematic behavior.” Man, does it sound tiresome to be woke. I do not envy you people. Or me for being subjected to you.

“I don’t know who DJ Khaled is, I don’t care who he is, and I don’t want to be involved in any of these conversations about him.”
mutes mentions of DJ Khaled on Twitter
is completely blindsided by who becomes president in 2020

After the first 5 episodes of Cobra Kai, my favorite moment was Johnny’s response to a girl telling him about being bullied online. Honestly, I wonder if his response was better than sympathy.
I’m not going to repeat what he said because it was vulgar and inappropriately used gendered language.

I always cringe when I see white people profane sacred religious symbols such as the sombrero and the taco.

I’m going to invite everyone to my funeral because I want to see the look on all their faces when I suddenly walk into the church like %#@&ing Tom Sawyer.

Endings are hard. The ending to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is one of the most perfect endings I know of.

watches Childish Gambino’s This Is America video
“Wow. This looks like a brilliant commentary on today’s culture.”
desperate whisper to those nearest
“I don’t know what any of this means!”

And is it just me, or does Childish Gambino look like that one actor from Community?

I’ll admit something that makes me feel bad: I’m excited for Solo and started checking out Atlanta just because I really like Donald Glover as an actor, but I don’t get his music at all. Not my bag.

Here’s the homicide rate in the U.S. through the years. I feel like not enough time is spent analyzing the peaks and valleys in this, probably because it’s hard to link to a simple partisan answer like guns.

You know, for a nation awash in guns — and I mean absolute flooded with them as I live in a neighborhood in Texas so there has to be a thousand guns around me right now — we’re pretty peaceful. All while not being some single-race mono-culture. It’s kind of a miracle.

Time to finally read this Ta-Nehisi Coates to find out why everyone raves about him!
reads first paragraph
scrolls to see how long the article is
Does he tweet?

I’m trying to apply the philosophy that if lots of people like some cultural thing and I just don’t get it, then the problem is me.
This philosophy does not apply to The Last Jedi.

Ended up watching the “This Is America” video a second time because it really is quite haunting and fascinating. Still no clue what it’s about, though.

Why can’t we just execute criminals using the quick, painless method of the past: Firing them out of a cannon into a brick wall.

My minimum effort author page is done. I can think of a few things to improve, but then that would be above minimum effort. frankjfleming.com

Capitalism is like magic in eradicating poverty, but the problem is a lot of people don’t think helping the poor is worth the rich getting richer.

I’m only going to invite people I know liked me to my funeral because I don’t want to get bad reviews.
“Low-quality person. Two stars.”

Never been interested in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze because the name makes it sound like it would have lots of ice levels and those are always the worst levels. It’s like having a game named Donkey Kong Country: Escort Mission or Donkey Kong Country: Flying Bat Enemies.

Cobra Kai was excellent. Very binge-able, but short — only ten, half hour episodes. If you grew up watching the original Karate Kid, I cant recommend it enough.
And there was something very cathartic about the “Kick that pansy bitch in the face” line in the final episode.

The left is infected with many bad ideas, and many try to defend them by shutting down opposing ideas they don’t know how to refute.
I feel I should mention that it’s not like the right is an intellectual hotbed right now, but it’s got some pockets. The left has been successfully enforcing a lot of conformity on its side which is intellectual death.

The left has a lot of trouble accepting that in the culture wars they’re now the empire, not the rebels.
“You conservatives act like you’re so oppressed and have no where to go, but you have Alderaan.”
starts to move the Death Star into range

We can’t let people like Sam Harris be normalized. The SPLC says he’s just as dangerous as wearing a sombrero while eating a taco.

Know what would be really subversive right now? A rap song that was optimistic about this country. Everyone is so negative right now, every criticism just feels like another drop in the bucket and fairly pointless.
An excellent question is what are the good things worth fighting for to motivate us to take on the bad.
We live with freedoms and technology and opportunity far beyond any civilization that ever existed, yet all we do is find new gnats to choke on. It’s getting silly.

Seriously considering paying $20 to buy Black Panther on digital today so I can catch up and see Avengers: Infinity War… though I’m not sure when I’d be able to get to theaters to do that. Man, I’d pay like $50 or more to watch a newly released movie at home.

TRUMP: “I’m pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. It’s a bad deal. 99 cents for the first nuke sounded great, but I didn’t realize how many nukes I committed to buying at full price.”

I don’t think there’s any point to the cultural appropriation issue except to identify people you can safely ignore on issues of race.

talking to my daughter
“There’s one show with more episodes than any other. Daddy watched it when he was a little kid, and it’s still on the air.”
“Are you talking again about that show with all the yellow guys?”

Rereading The Chamber of Secrets to the kids, the Dobby subplot is rather pointless. It seems like it only exists to artificially add some tension to the early part of the book and then is forgotten about for most of the rest of it.

I lost a karate match as a kid crane kicking someone in the face because contact to the face is illegal.
It’s a badass way to lose, though.

Torture is an odd thing where people tend to be against it in theory but not in practice.
“Should we ever torture anyone?”
“Absolutely not! Under no circumstances should we ever do something that barbaric!”
“Should we torture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?”
“Oh yeah, sure. Go nuts.”