Baseball Blunder

When I played baseball – wait, allow me to rephrase – when I participated in Little League (I generally stood in the outfield aloofly, looking for four leaf clovers and chewing on my mitt), my dad was supportive. He came to most of my games and even volunteered at some by serving as the umpire. I had thought this position could be a conflict of interest for him, but I distinctly recall one time when he called a third strike against me while I was at bat. I was his kid, he couldn’t just call me out! (I should have swung.)

One day close to the end of the season, my coach pulled me aside. “Does your dad drink beer?” he asked. I froze with concern. Did my coach think my dad was showing up to my games drunk? Did he think he was doing such a poor job at umpiring that he must be drunk to make such calls? In order to defend my dad and squash that rumor, I lied and said, “No. Sometimes non-alcoholic beer.” My coach thanked me and that was the end of that – or so I thought.

At the last game of the year, my coach arrived with a 24-pack of O’Douls non-alcoholic beer, which he gave to my father. It was a thank-you gift for having umped several games that season. Immediately, I remembered that previous conversation I had had with my coach. He wasn’t accusing my dad of anything, he was just trying to be nice. Nevertheless, my paranoia prevented him from getting real beer.

Sorry, Dad.

Ethnic Ethics

My next screenplay will include this exchange of dialogue:

A: "What ethnicity are you?"
B: "Eurasian."
A: "No, YOU'RE Asian!"

Konyay West

Have you heard about this guy Konyay West? He's a famous wrapper who wears glasses that make him look like he's in jail, but he's not, LOL!! What's not LOL is that his mom died of plastic sugary a while ago so you have to feel bad for him. She should of loved herself the way she is.

N E way, Konyay is in the news now because of something he did. Earlier this week, VH1 had their annual music video award show and people say he ruined the whole thing! I guess that means he wrote all of the host's penis jokes.

I heard he showed up to the show drinking alcohol which is just asking for trouble. Then later, Carrie Underwood won an award for best music video not by a man and thanked her country. But then, guess who interrupts Carrie's big moment?! Well if you need me to say... Konyay!!!! Konyay came up and STOLE the microphone from Carrie's hands. He wanted to say hello to Beyonce and remind everyone that Beyonce had one of the best music videos ever.

Konyay is right. Beyonce's video had hot women dancing, which is pretty much what music videos have always been, which is why it should be the best video. Award shows are important so we can't just let them pick anyone as a winner, no offense Carrie!!!!!

So Konyay tells it like it is and meantime, Beyonce makes surprised faces because she didn't win. She needs a award because no 1 even remembers her after leaving Destiny's Kid. Carrie just stands there and doesn't know what to do because she's just a teenager. I felt bad for her, it wasn't her fault people thought i'd be funny to give her a award like Cuba Goodin' Junior.

I think Konyay shouldn't of done that. Beyonce should of gone up herself to take the award. 4tunately, no one will forget who Carrie Underwood is now that this happened.

On his blog, Konyay says he is sorry 4 what he did. Konyay is a good blogger cuz he types in all capital letters like hes shouting cuz he means it. In late 2008, Konyay also blogged about "Fresh Kid" Ellen Degenerous. I'm glad he introduced me to her cuz she is sooo funny.

This isn't the first time Konyay made a controversy. After Hurricane Catrina (why didn't they name the Hurricane Sasha Fierce?!?!?!) Konyay told Austin Powers that the President doesn't care about black people. Um, NEWSFLASH, Konyay! The President is black so that's a pretty dumb thing to say. By the way, President Obama called Konyay a jackrabbit. hahahahaha Burn!

From now on, all awards should be given to Beyonce to avoid problems!!

Robbing Full House

Recently, I was listening to the "new" (apparently, it's been out since May and I'm that out of touch) Green Day song, "21 Guns," in the car. I liked it even, but when the song progressed to the guitar solo, I did a double take. That sequence of chords wasn't new to me; instead, it made me think of Full House.

It's funny because, just prior, if you had asked me to hum the Full House theme song , I couldn't have done it. Yet suddenly I was ready to accuse Green Day of ripping off a TGIF show, which I recognized was ridiculous. Surely I was just misremembering and had the TV series on the brain since I had just visited the Full House houses a few days earlier in San Francisco.

Look, here I am dancing in front of the house!

And here are my friends. Three blond sisters: JUST LIKE THE SHOW! I guess that makes Lindsay both Mary Kate & Ashley.


At any rate, after my car ride, I found "21 Guns" on YouTube and re-listened to the guitar solo before comparing it to the Full House intro. I was shocked to find my intuition was on the money: the two songs were nearly identical. I needed to alert everyone by blogging this immediately! I did a google search to see whether anyone else had recognized the similarity and found that I was not the first to catch on.

You can hear a good side by side comparison here or watch this video:



Sigh. Being a discoverer is hard work -- someone else is always going and discovering good stuff first. That's why I have such beef with Christopher Columbus. I could have done all that, he just had a several century head-start Plus, I never slaughtered Native Americans. One Native America, granted, but certainly not plural.

At least I'm not as pathetic as Green Day. Did they think no one would notice? For better or worse Full House is a classic; even my former sixth grade student watches the show on a regular basis. What's next, sampling some notes from the Family Matters theme?

Actually, what's next is ELO. While looking for the above clips to share, I also discovered this video that demonstrates how "21 Guns" chorus is remarkably similar to ELO's "Telephone Line."



The Electric Light Orchestra? Really? That's probably more bottom barrel than Full House, truthfully; if you're going to steal it, at least choose from music that has some credibility.

In the meantime, Green Day, you've got some 'splaining to do! Plagiarism is not cool, just ask Helen Keller. As future meth addict Stephanie Tanner would say:


"How Rude!"

Frisco Fashions

It’s been about ninety degrees just about every day in Los Angeles, so I only packed t-shirts for my trip to San Francisco. I failed to remember that it is significantly colder in the Bay Area and the lack of warmer layers proved immediately problematic. Before heading out to dinner the first night, Phoebe offered me a sweatshirt. To be specific, it was a purple sweatshirt stained with cum. In reality, the white stains were probably toothpaste, but that’s not what people were going to assume when they saw it. I’m pretty free-spirited when it comes to my outfits, but even I was hesitant to wear something purple and cum-stained. “When in San Francisco…” I figured, ultimately resolving to wear it with pride.

That said, my patience for that sweatshirt was limited. The next morning I ambled until I found a thrift store. I was willing to purchase anything warm and cheap. My first inclination was a ridiculous Cosby sweater, but those were $5.99 each, so I searched for something cheaper. And there it was: a jacket so ugly it was beautiful. This hooded jacked didn’t know whether it was a windbreaker or a fleece; it was located in the “husky boy” section, but I figure that’s a pretty accurate description of me. At $1.99, I couldn’t go wrong.

The jacket was the perfect accessory. Even if it weren’t cold, I would have worn it everywhere I could. Plus, it had this awful pouch, in which I stored everything I could find, short of a joey. I love this jacket so much that it’s going to be part of my LA wardrobe, too, once the temperature cools down after all the fires are extinguished.

The last piece of clothing I acquired was a t-shirt. Originally, it was a gift for Kim’s birthday from her dad. His gifts tend to fit into the “it’s the thought that counts” category. In addition to a gift certificate to a hunting and fishing store (she participates in neither activity), she received a set of liberrian-themed t-shirts. You see, Kim is studying to be a liberrian, so she obviously needs several sassy shirts announcing this fact. The one she hated the most was an ill-fitting men’s medium in a shade of yellow that flatters no one. The shirt reads in the ugliest font: “It’s hard to be humble when you’re a librarian.”
If I saw this shirt at a thrift store, I would chuckled and buy it, so when Kim offered it to me, of course I accepted. Moreover, I promised to wear it all day on the day of her party. All of Kim’s worst fears about the shirt were confirmed when I wore it to a street festival. The two absolute most nerdy people in a sea of thousands approached me to talk about my shirt. A socially awkward guy with glasses and a long, frizzy mullet asked me if I was a librarian. “Studying to be one,” I lied. “Do you know Joselyn?” he asked. I made a confused face. “She’s my friend, she’s a librarian, too.” Because, you know, all liberrians know each other. I must have made another critical face because he finally picked up on how strange he was being and apologized hastily and walked away in an even more awkward fashion. The next fan of the shirt was an old woman with a fanny pack who read the shirt and giggled before declaring, “That’s right! Librarians rock!” Thanks, lady!

I’ll see y’all on the runway.

Sock It to Me

It’s an age-old college tradition: put a sock on your doorknob to alert your roommate that you have a guest over and would like some privacy.

I was reading in my dorm room when my next-door neighbor Colin came over.
“Can I wait in here for a while?” Colin asked.
“Sure, why?” I replied.
“Ted put a sock on the door.”
I oohed like a preteen. “Who is he in there with?”
“I don’t know.”
We speculated to no avail. For the next half hour, we chatted, waiting for Colin’s room to open up until Ted finally dropped by my place.

“What have you been up to?” I asked, fishing for some gossip.
“Class,” he said.
“Really?” I asked, hoping to break his cover.
“Yeah,” he said, so nonchalantly that it was convincing.
“You weren’t in the room?” Colin tried.
“No why?” Ted asked.

We led Ted to the door and showed him the sock. He admitted that it looked like his, though he denied putting it there. Cautiously, they opened the door and found the room empty of people – amorous or otherwise. Colin was sexiled for no apparent reason. But why?

Later that evening, a bunch of us were eating dinner.
“Did you get the sock I left for you?” Desiree asked.
“You put the sock there?!” a confused Ted asked.
“You left it in my room,” she replied.
As it turned out, Desiree had never heard of the sock-on-the-doorknob symbol, she just thought it was a convenient place to leave it for him. Unwittingly, she had managed to keep people out of their own room. She called it a mistake, I call it a sockcess.

9/11 Is No Day to Be Insensitive

It’s September 11th. You know what that means: Sorority Row premieres!



Just kidding. Well, I am going to see it. But I know what anniversary this day marks. In spite of my 9/11 pick-up lines, I’m not as insensitive about the tragedies as it may seem.

Insensitive is my physics teacher. While all of my other classes at my high school cancelled their lesson plans on that day to watch history unfold live on television and discuss our feelings about the events, my physics teacher decided we would learn equations involving gravity by calculating how long it would take for someone who jumped from the 100th floor of the Twin Tours to hit the ground.

That’s not a joke or an exaggeration. Suddenly I don’t seem like such a rotten teacher, huh?

It’s worth noting that I actually commemorate 9/11 every day. It is the subject of my favorite piece of art, which hangs in my dinning room.

For some context, I often decorate my house with strange things I find in thrift stores. Most people who purchase similar items just use the frames and get rid of whatever picture is inside, but I like displaying them in the condition I find them, “found art” of sorts. This 9/11-related art was quite the find, really. Check it out:


This picture appears to originally be some sort of dumb email or MySpace forward. It’s rich with grammatical errors like misspelling “everyone” and incorrectly pluralizing “life.” Nevertheless, someone was so touched by this graphic that ey not only printed it out, but ey also framed it. Some people… I swear!

So, yeah, I mostly like it because it makes me laugh. Maybe that is a bit insensitive. But at least as long as it hangs adjacent to where I eat every day, I can claim I will never forget.

Breaking up Isn't Hard to Do

Breaking up isn’t that hard to do, apparently. At least that’s the impression that I’ve developed after being stuck twice in a matter of days on transportation with a couple breaking up. If that sounds like an awkward situation to be in, you don’t know the half of it.

The first incident occurred on an airplane. After I took a window seat, an attractive young yuppy woman asked if the seats next to me were taken. I said no, so she and her equally attractive young yuppy boyfriend sat beside me. They were both engrossed in their fancy phones long after they were told to turn them off until a flight attendant intervened. The boyfriend rudely dismissed her, but she stood her ground and he complied when he was good and ready, but not before making an irritated groan.

Shortly after taking off, the discussion began.

“So are we going to talk about this morning?” she asked.
“Not unless you want to apologize,” he said.
“I’m not apologizing, you’re too sensitive.”
“You don’t respect me!”
“I do respect you!”
“It’s not respectful to call me pathetic.”
“Look, it’s not just me, all my friends call you pathetic, too.”
“I don’t care what your friends think!”
“Fine. I won’t call you pathetic anymore.”
“It’s not just calling me pathetic, I don’t want you to think I’m pathetic.”

And so on. They went back and forth for about half an hour; the conversation was peppered with “Are we breaking up?” Sure sounded like it to me. I wanted to not listen to the argument, but I was trapped beside it. Toward the beginning of their disagreement, they kept looking over at me annoyed that I was eavesdropping, as if it were my fault that they chose this location with me strapped adjacently. Feeling uncomfortable, I finally closed my eyes and pretended to sleep just to avoid eye contact.

My favorite part is when she abruptly halted the argument to say, “I’m done, I’m going to read!” just before taking out and slowly looking through about fifty wordless cards bound together of a model wearing the same dress in slightly different poses. I’m not sure what you’d call that, but it’s probably not “reading.”

Once we landed and it was time to disembark, the boyfriend stood up in the aisle and started playing with his phone again. As soon as planes land, passengers have one objective: getting off the plane as quickly as possible. Boyfriend, meanwhile, blocked the aisle while he typed a message. His girlfriend encouraged him to move along and he screamed at her to shut up and added that “these fuckers can wait.”

I hope they end up staying together; no one else should date them.

A few days later, I was on a train with my friend Joan. Behind us sat an ugly, trashy meth-addicted couple. Their conversation started out decently enough. She had made thirty dollars before and succeeded at only spending ten on booze the night before, mainly because she knew he would “hit” her if she did. He was still upset that she had spent ten, but he said it was okay, because he remembered he had store credit at some store where they could score some cigarettes. She practically swooned – what a provider.

After they made out in an obscene fashion, he pulled a 180 and yelled at her for talking to some guy at the phone at 5 am. That phone call wasn’t anything, she swore. He accused her of cheating and she couldn’t deny it, but did claim that she loves him still. Tears were shed and he told her that it was over. He still loved her, but from now on he was going to have to “love [her] from a distance.”

Fortunately, we arrived at our stop and I didn’t have to suffer any more of this.

Dear couples: get a room! And break up in privacy.

Some Things Should Stay Taboo

Playing Taboo with the word "hickey"

Anna: If I suck on your neck, you get a...

Me: Hard on!

You Wouldn't Believe What Happens at an 8th Grade Dance

I’ve been reorganizing some old documents, and I came across a copy of an AMAZING autobiographical narrative essay that I received from a 9th grade honors student during my student teacher days.

The student’s essay is ridiculously informal. She writes in a tone that you’d expect to find if she were writing a note to her friend, littered with exclamation points. It’s amateur, but not awful. The thing that makes this essay so memorable and problematic is one specific sentence.

Rather than just handing you the sentence (it’s worth it, I promise it), I’m burying it here. I think it makes it all the more shocking when you read it in context:

My 8th grade dance is definitely one of the moments I will remember in my whole life. It was just a great day! The boys and the girls were getting dates, everyone was buying a dress for that special day, oh it was just great! Finally, the Friday came, all the girls were all whining, “Uh, we only have 3 hours to get ready and I have to go and get my nails done, and my hair and…” well you know the rest…

As soon as we finished with our delicious dinner, one of my friends said, “hey lets dance”. They had some really crappy music (I hate rap!). I stayed quiet because I didn’t want to ruin a great night and accepted it. I was so happy to see the dance floor full of teenagers getting wild. Some of the teachers said, I had never seen any 8th grade dance as fun as this one. Even the teachers went wild!

When we see a screen scroll down and music starts playing again, but it wasn’t jut music, our favorite 8th grade teachers had made a movie about us all the three years we were at [school name]! All the teachers started cheering and applauding like if there was no tomorrow. Then once I saw pictures of me and my friends a tear came running down my cheek! I started to cry because most of the people in that picture were moving and I wouldn’t see them in [town name] or find them in the street like always! In one of those pictures there is one with me and a very close friend I know since the beginning (known as: my twin, stoop1d, or Mrs. Michael Jackson), comes up to me and hugs me really tight and cries with me. We couldn’t stop so we went to the restroom to cry there. We were crying like if someone really important to our family had died. Our tears were practically having a race down our cheeks. Once we calmed down and were able to go in there without any evidence, we walked in and felt like if everyone in that room was either raped or hit really hard!

Did you catch that last sentence? Really? I don’t want to discourage figurative language, but let’s be reasonable here. I don’t exactly like the mental image of a room full of eighth grade rape victims. Moreover, to put rape and being hit really hard at the same emotional level… I don’t even know. It sounds like someone’s never been raped before – which is a good thing!

The essay in its entirety is super long, so I abbreviated it above, but if you’d like to see it in full, as well as some of my comments on this first draft, click on the documents below.

I Still Despise the Duggars

I know I shouldn’t find this news surprising, but I am appalled nonetheless: the Duggars are pregnant again!

If you don’t know who the Duggars are or why I despise them so intensely, please check out my previous post.

I got the news via Celeste’s Facebook status update this morning.

It’s a cruel sentiment, yet deserved. I also appreciated her follow-up:

Oddly, it’s a contentious topic. A debate broke out amongst Celeste’s friends as to whether the Duggars are bad people. I’ve been in a similar situation: in January, I had a mild argument with an old friend in response to my previous Duggar post. She thought my condemnation was harsh. I conceded that the family members weren’t evil, but I am opposed to everything they stand for, so I am enraged that they have a platform that glorifies their lifestyle. When you put yourself in the public spotlight, you are inviting judgment; I am judging harshly.

It’s vain. It’s excessive. It’s irresponsible. It’s all about attention. (By which, I don’t mean the children receiving attention – that clearly can’t happen.) Have we even heard about the Duggars since they popped out the least one? No. That’s why within months they set to work on brewing up another fetus so they could get back on the Today show, as seen here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Meredith alludes to my point by joking, “Let me guess, you’re getting a puppy?” The Duggars are famous for breeding and only breeding. They are hardly the intellectuals of our time – not that you expected any more from someone named Jim-Bob. Many people condemn strippers for earning a living off their vaginas, but how is Mama Duggar any different?

These folks are creepy. Do you see how they all uniformly stare directly into the camera and smile for the entire segment? That’s not natural, that’s unsettling.

And the implications that the next generation is on a similar path are downright frightening. Their eldest son has one in the oven and is already eager to make countless more. Have fun with that, new wifey.

Allow me to illustrate how irresponsible the Duggars are. I did some math. You know, the respectable kind of multiplying that occurs on a calculator and not in a womb. The Duggars have 19 kids and are teaching each of their children to reproduce in a similar fashion. If their 19 kids have 19 kids, and their resulting 361 grandkids each have 19 kids, and so forth, it only takes four more generations of this pace of breeding before we have approximately 2.5 million Duggars. And if it only takes the Duggars 20 years to have 19 kids, that means we could reach this number in just 80 more years. As a point of reference, 2.5 million is the approximate population of the state Arkansas. The Duggars will single-handedly double the population of their state. Not only will they take up too much space, they will have a powerful vote bloc and can use their uneducated viewpoints to ban contraceptives and teach only intelligent design in schools – and that’s just the start.

And think – if just a few other families try to follow a similar trend, figuring that fame and fortune is sure to follow (everyone else with lots of kids is getting a television show!) then you have tens of millions of extra people. People that this earth can’t sustain. We already have an overpopulation epidemic, folks! There’s plenty of science and research to show that we are essentially killing ourselves by breeding so quickly, but isn’t it convenient to hide behind “God’s will” and assume that he wants us to have all these children and will take care of us and the consequences?

In the meantime, shut up, Duggars. I don’t want to hear about you again unless you hit menopause or that big bus you all travel on flips over. If you can’t keep your legs closed, at least do so with your lips. Just put a cork in it. No really, put a real cork in Mama Duggar’s vagina. Plug it up entirely.

Clearly, I still despise the Duggars.

I Found God

I found God today.

He was hiding under the couch.

Fired Up

Before moving to California, I was warned about the earthquakes. I was warned about the traffic. I was even warned about the illegal Mexicans. (No, really… some people are racist.) But no one stopped to warn me that every year half of California burns to the ground.

Even though fires are an annual tradition, I forgot it was the season. I wouldn’t say I was lulled into a sense of security, more so I was distracted by California’s other devastation: crippling debt and unemployment.

Originally hailing from New England, when I think of mountain views, I imagine picturesque colorful rock formations topped with green trees or snow. From my window in California now, however, I see the mountains ablaze. The glowing orange is sort of beautiful, though the resulting thin layer of soot on all of the cars isn’t very attractive. On top of that, the air reeks. I tell myself it’s just the scent of a campfire because then it seems pleasant rather than threatening. I also try to pretend the copious smoke is just concentrated clouds, even though the sky is empty aside from the air surrounding the mountains.

These factors aside, I’m not too worried about my own safety yet. The good thing about having so many freeways around is that I’m practically enclosed by them. The fires would have to jump the freeway before reaching my home.

Several years ago, the fires were so close to me that homes were evacuated just up to a few blocks from my dorm. We were encouraged to leave the area if we had somewhere else to go, advice that about half the students heeded. The rest of us lived like we were in some apocalyptic state. It was dark outside 24/7 and we wore bandanas around our noses and mouths even indoors to help filter the air. A few kids even had legitimate gasmasks. Nevertheless, my nose was literally running with ash. Also, each time I coughed, black specks would come out of my mouth. I considered taking up smoking just to breath healthier air.

As if the air quality weren’t already bad enough, last weekend my house was fumigated. When I finally permitted to return, I was told that my eyes might sting and water for a while upon re-entry and that that was “normal.” That doesn’t sound normal to me, but I was glad to at least have the warning, since I did periodically cry for no reason. Otherwise, I might have thought I was just having an emotional response to the insects that lost their lives.

During the fumigation, I stayed at Allison, Melinda, and Stacy’s house. I don’t want to overstate the extent of our friendships, but I really prefer their company and hospitality to that of toxic chemicals. Still, I really wanted to see my house while it was tented. Since fumigation tents look like big, fun circus tents to me, I’m always tempted to run inside and play. I realize in reality I probably won’t find too many clowns and acrobats in there, but it’s alluring nevertheless.



On the drive over to my tented house, I saw smoke billowing overhead. My first thought was, oh no, the fumigation has gone wrong and the chemicals are escaping into the atmosphere. Fortunately, we found the house to not only be tented sufficiently, but beautifully. Doesn’t it look amusing? Does anyone else want to jump around inside that in spite of your better judgment, or have the pesticides just gone to my head?

As for the smoke, we quickly spotted its source: a brush fire just down the street from me. I thought I had a sufficient buffer between my home and fire, but I did not take into account the fact that my own street was susceptible to fires of its own. California is so flammable, I’m surprised they don’t outlaw matches altogether.



It was scary. Jessica called 911 to report the fire and she was put on hold for seven whole minutes before they took her call. Way to go, Los Angeles police. Next time I’m being stabbed, I’ll know to just roll over and die rather than calling for help. Fortunately, the fire department did arrive before any houses were burned.

Why do I live here, anyway? I’m not saying it’s hell, but it’s sure looking like it more and more each day. Maybe I should have just gone out with a bang in my “circus tent” rather than waiting for the fires to get me.

Necrophilihat

A couple of weekends ago, my friends threw a party to commemorate three occasions:
1) A Housewarming
2) Allison’s Birthday
3) Ben Affleck’s Birthday

Affleck didn’t show. Prick.

The invitation cleverly concluded: “Allison likes presents and costumes and beer. Keep that in mind.” To accommodate I brought booze, put on tiny yellow shorts, and set about making a present for Allison. I wanted to celebrate Allison’s humor so I tried to think of the funniest thing she’s ever done or said. The first thing that came to mind was the quip she made about necrophilia.

Then I had to figure out how to incorporate Allison’s quote into a full-fledged gift. I decided to make her a hat, which seemed simple until I realized I had no clue how to just “make a hat.” Fortunately, I found a cute crafty lady at eHow who taught me how to erect a hat out of construction paper and a paper plate:


How to Make a Paper Stovepipe Hat -- powered by eHow.com

Once the hat was complete, I had to decorate it with Allison’s quote. Since text alone is boring, I opted to add an illustration. Of course, using a graphic to accompany necrophilia is automatically asking for trouble, so I decided to fully embrace the mischief and depict Allison engaging in necrophilia with, to enhance the party’s theme even further, a dead Ben Affleck. Here is the result:


Best birthday present ever? Yeah, probably. Be sure to let me know if this is not what you want for your birthday, because I think otherwise this has become my go-to gift. I’ll even use the dead celebrity of your choice!

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

I just finished the book What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today’s Leading Minds Rethink Everything. The book features 150 brief essays by notable figures sharing when and why they altered their perspective on something. Though I love the concept, I’m not crazy enough about it to recommend it. Most of the chapters dealt with science and technology, so while they explained how they had come to reconsider some aspect of the human genome, I was often confused.

One thing I won’t change my mind about is how important it is for people to change their minds. Not willy-nilly, of course, but we should all do it when it’s warranted; there’s no prize for being stubborn. I like changing my mind because it means that I have learned something new and used this information to challenge the beliefs I previously held. There’s nothing more frustrating to me than people who are so set in their views that they won’t accept opportunities to learn, grow, and adjust accordingly.

This topic always makes me consider the downfall of John Kerry after he was labeled a flip-flopper. It was frustrating to watch as someone was criticized for changing his opinion. Don’t get me wrong, Kerry kinda sucked and I’m not prepared or willing to defend him on the whole, but I will defend a flip-flopper, so long as he can cite reasons for the change.

As a high school teacher, I once used what was essentially the book’s title as a journal prompt to see if I could get a better picture of my students’ thought processes. The assignment wasn’t too successful as I received many short paragraphs about deciding to go out for the football team rather than soccer because more of his friends were doing it.

Consequently, I changed my mind about my profession. I wanted something deeper, but that was par for the course: I always wanted something deeper from my students. In retrospect, they were too young; they couldn’t very well change their minds about significant issues before forming initial opinions on the matters. It’s funny to look back at how I felt at their age.

I used to consider myself a Republican.
I used to believe in God.
I used to be opposed to gay marriage.
I used to support affirmative action.
I used to understand love.

Over time, life experience and new knowledge led me to alter these views. My mind has changed and I feel I’m a better person for it. That said, I can’t promise my mind won’t change again, perhaps reverting back to some of my preteen perspectives. As long as it’s based in wisdom rather than nostalgia, I think that’s beautiful.

What have you changed your mind about?