Yes. It was 17 years ago that I started the Sonicfrog blog.
Seventeen Freaking Years!!!!
In the last six years I haven’t done much here. Social media / Facebook is to blame. It’s just so easy to post there. The downside is – Good luck finding something important you posted four years ago. There is so much I wrote during the insane Trump years I’d like to return to to see if it’s still relevant.
Again. Good luck with that.
I’m planning on doing more here in the future. I need to get into the code and get media links to function better, and other tweaks. Meanwhile, here’s a random bit of history I’m posting just because:
On this day in 1923:
The Rosewood Massacre began when racial violence erupted in Rosewood, Florida after a white woman accused a black man of assaulting her.[1] When it was discovered that a black convict, Jesse Hunter, had escaped from a prison work gang, a posse of at least 200 white men from the neighboring white town of Sumner invaded Rosewood and made a house-to-house search for anyone who might be harboring the fugitive. By January 4, houses in Rosewood were being set afire, and four black and two white men had died.
On a lighter note:
In the Rose Bowl football game, the USC Trojans beat the Penn State Nittany Lions, 14 to 3. The game was the first to be played in the new Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California and was attended by 53,000 people.
Most straight people have no idea of the emotional pain one suffers when they can not live life as the person they are because society has told us all our lives our needs and desire to love and be loved by someone is wrong / a sin / evil / abomination etc. My struggles with it kept me under a cloud of severe depression in my youth through my 20’s, and that included serious thoughts of suicide on various occasions.
I don’t automatically consider everyone who is uncomfortable with the concept of homosexuality a homophobe. That said, real homophobia is still accepted and promoted in too many circles, and violent behavior motives by that hatred is all too often justified in its name. Years ago someone I loved was taken from this world because someone didn’t like that he was gay. He was bashed to death. A friend recently had to deal with physical violence from not just one, but two members of his family because he started living his life honestly, and the family members freaked because he was “being a girl”. He was verbally assaulted by others in his circle of friends and family. Even though the acceptance of homosexuality has increased in society by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years, my friends experience shows that we as a society still have a long LONG way to go to stamp out the vile rot inherent in homophobia.
PS: I’ve helped three people come to accept the fact that they are gay. One is just a couple of months into his journey. I also helped a band mate find peace with his gay son.
Helping people deal with gay is my superpower apparently.
I’m gonna try not to go into any detail, but my heart hurts.
I have a long time friend who is suddenly having very serious health issues. We’ve been friends for 30 plus years and have a lot of good history. We’ve talked some about what is going on, but not enough apparently. I was planning to go down to Southern California to visit. He was good with the idea. But, in a brief text session, I managed to be clumsy with a comment, not recognizing a shift in tone and saying something in the exchange that in retrospect I should not have. In times gone by this would have just faded away as dumb comments do.
Those days are gone.
He has no interest in ever talking to me again. I think he deleted my number. One of the best friends I ever had has dissolved our friendship.
I know part of this is a result of the tremendous stress he’s going through. I pretend I can wrap my head around it. But, honestly, that would not be truth. I know I can’t. That also makes me understand I probably can’t change this turn of events. All I can do is hope this is not the way things end between us.
Note: This was posted on Facebook, but I decided to delete it. I want to share it, but I really don’t feel putting it on that forum is constructive at the moment. Since few read this blog, and it functions more as a diary, I felt this was the right place for this.
I had been meaning to start blogging again anyway.
It’s so overwhelms him. So he does nothing. He chooses to couch sit. Making sure it’s warm and well fed. A diet of lint, crumbs, and spare change while he goes surfing. The waves are 500 channels high on the satellite system he bought with the charge card that now way overdrawn and it doesn’t occur to him that the bill is somewhere in the pile over there waiting patiently to be paid
Not that he has the money to pay them thank you very much. That’s just out of the question.
And just to add to the torment and boredom he thinks of any number of girls from his past. Especially the ones he tried to convince that he’s not like the othersWhich of course is absurd. Evidence and time prove otherwise.
Time is the enemy.
It robs us of our youth. Steals our dreams and exposes us to the truth of who we are. Wears us all down like a rock on a mountain.
Yeah. He agrees to himself. We are all rocks just waiting to crash down to Earth.
It’s a strange elusive thing to conceptualize and grasp its importance and effect on our lives.
I’ve never been or felt the part of a Patriot. I went to church as a kid but never bought in. I’m a gay man, but I’ve never felt connected to the “gay culture” as it were. A few generations removed, my family has some ties to mob culture, but I have no connection to that either. I’m white….
I don’t feel I am connected to that, but how can I avoid it?
In western society, and America, all things have been geared toward the white end of the spectrum. God and Jesus are white, and it spreads from there. Thing is, you don’t notice it because it’s just there, and it’s the way it’s always been. Unless you’ve ventured beyond the surface, it’s like the water surrounding the fish. The fish doesn’t know of anything else. It’s just there. But where would they be without it?
That’s not the direction I should go with this post. Too extreme metaphorically. How about this.I know a lot of people, most are white, a few brown, who are the typical modern Conservative, insist the current crisis of racial relations, the inequality that many live with on a daily basis, is a mirage, something conjured up and passions stoked by the left-wing mainstream media. The say something like “Look, WE had a civil war and ended slavery. We died so you could be free. WE passed Civil Rights legislation in the 60s to fix segregation. Racial inequality is a lie made up by liberals to keep you enslaved.”
The last line is a direct quote from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Mark Levine, etc. And, inevitably, in the same breath, they all extol the virtues of the Founding Fathers, ignoring the very fact that many were themselves slave-owners, and that the Constitution they created to form this government had to include provisions that guaranteed the continuation of slavery, else it never would have been ratified by states (and white people) that relied on the institution.
How nice it is to have that cultural history of the white WE. Of the white savior, from God and Jesus on down. I can’t say I’ve indulged in that frothy brew, but the cup is always there for me for the taking. Because of where I was born, of the color of my skin, of the availability of that cultural identity, that luxury is always available to me. I would only need to embrace it. Maybe, twenty years ago, when I too was Conservative-ish, I did, at least a little. If I identify with a culture, it’s that of an artist. It’s certainly a smaller subset, but it’s the waters that I swim in with ease. It gives me comfort swimming in this pond. It gives me confidence to be able to walk up to another who also swims in this body of water and relate.To close this rambling thread, I want to point out the reason I went down this path. I’ve had a realization stuck in my head for quite a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to express it in a concise manner.
I think I have it now.
The same people who exclaim that racial inequality is not real, that the pursuit of black / brown cultural is a made-up construct foisted upon us by the liberal media / government in order to separate us and divide us, will invariably pivot right back to extolling the greatness of this country and the virtues of the Founding Fathers, not even recognizing that they are leaning on the white cultural view of the world. The fact that many of those Founding Fathers owned people, or that the Constitution was crafted with part of its purpose to keep those who embraced the institution of slavery happy, else it would never have been adopted, isn’t even an afterthought. It’s glossed over and ignored.
They are relying on their own cultural identity of white greatness and superiority. It is as vital to their identity as air is to breath. This is something the descendants of slaves and oppressed peoples simply don’t have.
10Betty Sanchez-Mallory, Mike Gentry and 8 others9 Comments2 SharesLikeCommentShare
The case is here. I’m posting this so that I can rub it in my Conservative friends faces when this falls flat on its silly face. 🙂
Just Kidding… Sort of.
Here’s the case Texas is making:Texas argued that electors from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should not be allowed to cast their votes in part because those states unconstitutionally changed their voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic to allow for increased mail-in ballots. Biden won all four states.And here’s the problem… ALL the lower courts, AND the Supreme Court have allowed those changes to continue in other cases. State legislatures have broad authority to conduct elections as they see fit. Some changes to procedures were not carried out by the legislators themselves, but by various officials either the legislators themselves appointed, or by the officials within the executive branch. One might argue those exec branch decisions were illegal. BUT here’s the problem with that line of argument… Election rules have been made in this fashion in various states for more than a century. Since all the states have pretty much the same machinery in place to run elections, that would also include Texas. AND it’s pretty easy to point out that although Congress has the sole duty to declare war, they have abrogated that responsibility and willfully allowed the Executive Branch to do so. Plus, most of the examples of fraud have already been laughed out of court.All that said… This is disgusting. But not surprising for Trump supporters.
PS: Does Texas even have standing here? Most cases brought between states involve policy that directly affects the state suing, economic policy or environmental. I can’t remember a case that was brought because one state didn’t like the procedure another state followed that didn’t have direct impact on the state suing.
PPS: Here’s Jonathan Alder of the Volokh Conspiracy I came across after writing this post. Being a real lawyer as opposed to myself who only plays one of the internetz, he lays out all the problems with this action, and concludes the Supremes, even with the Trump picks, are unlikely to even take the case.
I love dumb memes. Here’s one I came across tonight. The idea that Hunter Biden has no energy industry experience has long been a talking point for the right when attacking him and his service on the Burisma board of directors. I’ve challenged people to pick at random 20 BOD’s of companies to see how many have “industry experience” relating to the product or service the company sells / provides.Since Exxon Mobil is mentioned, here are the personnel serving on their Board Of Directors:
Susan K. Avery – No energy industry experience.
Angela F. Bralyy – No energy industry experience.
Ursula M. Burns – Same.
Kenneth C. Frazier – Same.
Steven A. Kandarian – Same.
Douglas R. Oberhelman – Same.
Samuel J. Palmisano – Same.
William C. Weldon – Same.
Darren W. Woods – He’s the only guy on the board who has past energy industry experience.
Sweden… The Great Example Of How To Handle Covid 19… Or are they?
People have recently started to notice that Sweden has been able to
avert “disaster” without resorting to “lockdown” measures. A couple of
things to note about Sweden vs the US and other countries. First,
Sweden’s healthcare system is top notch, and nationalized. They were
quicker to gear up faster than other countries, especially the US, once
Covid was identified as a problem. Due to its centralized healthcare
system, they were able to develop a much more broad testing capacity
and were able to find enough people who were carriers early on and
isolate them before they were able to spread Covid to too many people.
They are doing well. But their neighbors Finland and Norway, countries
that took stricter measures, have a much lower death rate per capita of
Covid than Sweden.
As of April 26, Sweden’s Covid death count is 215 per million.
Finland is 33.5 Norway is 35.6
Note: Sweden has a higher death rate right now than the US. We are at
160.69 deaths per million. California looks to be about 40 per.
The bigger picture? We are only barely even a month into Covid being a
truly worldwide pandemic. The stats at this point are more like the
snap-shot memories of a three year old human than that of an adult. We
need more time to really know how Covid infections trend in societies
and nations. The availability of widespread testing for both infection
and antibodies is key to filling in the blanks. A LOT of things will
happen in the next nine months.
Uncategorized | Sonicfrog January 1, 2023 | 
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