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National Graham Cracker Day 2023
Well, 🌞Summer🔥 has taken its awful hold. It’s a perfect time for S’mores over a campfire, so it’s rather fitting that today is National Graham Cracker Day. It’s also National Hawaii Day and National Bikini Day.
Atom Bomb
The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb. ~Diana Vreeland
I think that’s overstating things a bit, but I’m not opposed to a good bikini. I’m even less opposed to it when it’s got a person wearing it who has a decent figure.
So, yesterday was Independence Day and as a proud American, I may not be licensed for advanced pyrotechnics, but I’ve got a God-given First Amendment right to kick off some serious fireworks and I’m just in the mood to put on a show.
Consider this your 🎆🧨🎇 Rant Warning 🎇🧨🎆
Back in the days of late stage Mutually Assured Destruction, there was an unfortunate trend that combined spandex or lycra with spare tires. Crop tops and vaccu-sealed stretch pants were the rage that summer.
Again, with a trim, athletic build, no problem. Heck, even with a fair to middlin’ build it was still a fairly forgiving look.
That wasn’t the primary group. Spandex and spare tires. Talk about a buzz-kill.
Ooh, Rob is body-shaming! Let’s cancel him.
Yeah, fuck you.
I don’t have a bikini bod. I was much closer to it back in the day. God willing, I’ll be a bit closer to it in the not too distant future.
I’m just saying, there are outfits that are flattering to certain body types. Sprayed on clothes are not great on endomorphs. End of story. End of discussion.
Rather than trying to be something you’re not, try working with what you have.
That might be working with clothes that are flattering to your physique or it might be working on your physique so you can have more flattering clothes to choose from.
The 2022 BEACH BUNNY SWIMWEAR RUNWAY SHOW – FULL SHOW 4K
You don’t need to be ashamed of being a fat slob, but you don’t need to be proud of it either. The body positivity movement is a cruel lie that’s actually causing fatalities among its most vocal proponents. There are known, well-documented health conditions associated with obesity.
I have permanently damaged my body through prolonged indifference. I’m not fat-shaming anybody. Be who you are, but be realistic about who you are.
Don’t preach to people that false is true. There are things that are empirically not good and there are hordes of people who will violently defend the existence of and celebrate wallowing in these bad things.
The idea that any marginalized group automatically qualifies for special treatment these days is getting out of hand. If you have a problem, either work on fixing it or just deal with the fact that you’re not willing to deal with it.
Frankly, I’m sick of the lunacy. I really can’t wait until the pendulum of sanity swings back into the camp of basic reasonability. It’s gone way too far to the Loony Left for my liking.
A pendulum can literally only go so far before it swings over or back under to the opposite apogee. The loons have been holding it fast in the crazy range for years now.
It looks like they’re losing their grip, but they’re not going to let go until they totally lose their grip or until we yank it out of their miserable hands.
Blue Hawaii
Don Ho – A Night in Hawaiʻi With Don Ho (1988)
Is Hawaii on my bucket list? Sure. It would be fun to go see America’s archipelago of paradise. It would be cool to go to a luau and chill on the spectacular beaches. I’m not a beach guy, but I think I can make an exception for Hawaii.
The SEXY origins of the Graham Cracker
Just fuckin’ wow.
There’s a lovely bit of propaganda to brighten your day. As usual, the truth falls somewhere in the middle.
Obviously, Sylvester Graham was an uptight, 19th Century theoretician. There was some kind of weird obsession equating food to morality when graham crackers and breakfast cereals were created.
That hasn’t gone out of vogue. Ask any Vegan about how morally superior they are to you. They’ll be happy to bend your ear about it for months.
By posing an extreme and laughably retro point of view against the vague claim of comprehensive education, this video tries to toe the progressive line while making it seem “reasonable” by comparison.
Fucker, please. The real question is not whether “comprehensive” education is better than abstinence-only. The question is when it is appropriate to address the topic and whether “comprehensive” means it should be a super-detailed how-to course of study. Again I say, Fucker, please.
You introduce age-appropriate awareness and safety at the time kids start going through puberty. Hey, your body is changing and you’re going to start having urges that might result in pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and/or lifelong psychological trauma.
Then you follow up, in an age-appropriate way throughout the remainder of their public school education. You do not turn it into a Joy of Sex, how-to intersectional pornfest.
I am in no way a prude, but there is such a thing as age-appropriateness. Sex and intimacy are an important part of the life of most human beings. It’s best that we teach kids how to deal with their feelings appropriately and cope with their changing bodies and psyches. We don’t need to push the progressive talking point of the week. We need to provide protection while educating.
You don’t just let kids mix chemicals in the lab willy-nilly. You put goggles and gloves on them. You give them chemicals that foam or fizz or change colors. You don’t give them chemicals that will explode or release toxic clouds of potentially lethal gas.
The same applies to sex education. You teach them that it exists and that it has repercussions. The nitty-gritty how-to’s are way beyond the scope of what school should be addressing. Providing workshops or graphically explicit materials on specific techniques is absolutely off limits.
Based on testing, public schools are doing a mediocre job at best. If you can’t competently teach reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, you aren’t competent to teach how to have a sexual relationship with your Junior High crush. Stay in your damn lane.
When kids graduate knowing how to function in modern society, then comprehensive sex education might be maturely handled by a licensed professional counselor.
When kids graduate thinking that socialism is a viable economic system, that hand-outs magically come from nowhere and that it’s okay to burn down businesses when you’re upset because they have insurance, then we should probably think twice about handing out comic books demonstrating exactly how to perform fellatio.
There’s more to sex than the positions and which anatomy interfaces with which.
The exact same act can be deeply unifying or dreadfully demeaning, depending on the state of your relationship with the other participant.
Progressive relativism doesn’t address these dimensions accurately.
Unless you recognize that different people process events in their own unique way, you can’t possibly come up with a “comprehensive” curriculum that will serve all students equally.
Because experience and perspective are individual, the education on something so personal cannot be handed off to the cookie-cutter mass manufacturing model of public school.
🎇🧨🎆 So, how do you like those fireworks? 🎆🧨🎇
DIY: How to Make Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses!!
Graham Crackers
We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them ‘graham crackers.’ ~Paul Mooney
Buuuuuuuuut that’s not racist because… comedian…
| In any case, The Sentinels has some characters who are Black people because: |
|
But seriously, since The Sentinels is set in imaginary NYC, it stands to reason that the demographics are going to match up. According to 2022 Census results, New York City’s current demographic distribution is approximately 39.8% White, 23.4% Black, 14.2% Asian, 7.1% multiracial and some statistically minimal outliers such as Native Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Strangely, these don’t add up to 100%. One has to wonder about the categories. Perhaps the remainder didn’t disclose racial identity.
What the 2022 Census results also point out is that 28.9% of the population of NYC is Hispanic. As the federal government currently defines “race”, Hispanic is not so much a distinct race as it is an “ethnicity”.
As such, there is a fair amount of overlap between the base demographics and the “ethnically Latin” portions of those overall groups.
So, are the White-Hispanic people just a subset of the 39.8% of White New Yorkers and the Black-Hispanic New Yorkers a subset of the 23.4% who are Black? Are they lumping them in with the 7.1% who are multiracial?
Who knows? It’s all a dodge. Bureaucrats love to categorize, but they don’t seem to do such a hot job of actually counting all the beans or making the bean counting actually mean anything.
I mean, what the hell is a White person? Joe Average on the street would tell you it’s anybody of primarily European ancestry. Certain people would tell you it’s the pasty-faced, standard issue, old school WASP whose family has been here since ships had sails. The feds will tell you that “White” means “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.”
Please also note that another term for “White” people is “Caucasian“, but the people of the Caucasus region (an isthmus between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea) are Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis. These people have seen centuries of admixture with Turkic invaders, which would logically be considered a combination of “White” and Asian.
Asia is a rather large place, if you didn’t know. Technically, it includes both the Caucasus and the Middle East, which are designated as “White” points of origin for federal classification.
So, as we know, race is bullshit. Obviously, certain people from certain places generally look a certain way. You can generally spot a Norwegian or Swede among Koreans. Certain communities have developed a distinctive appearance over the course of centuries.
America is a racial, regional and international crossroads. We’re not an ethno-state, nor were we intended to be. Neither want nor need to define ourselves according to categories.
If you believe in America and are willing to treat your fellow citizens with respect and dignity, it doesn’t matter in the least where your ancestors came from. It just doesn’t. Americans deal with the here and now.
In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, we were making tremendous progress toward a colorblind society. Hopefully, we’ll get to return in that direction.
But Rob, what does all of this have to do with The Sentinels and Empire City? Well, it’s a question of verisimilitude.
If Empire City is pretend NYC, the basic demographics ought to generally match.
In any group of 10 people, three ought to be “White” (again, that’s European and possibly Hispanic, North African, Middle Eastern), two or three ought to be “Black” (federally, that’s “A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.”), one or two people ought to be “Asian” (federally, that’s “A person having origins in any of the original people of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, in the Philippine Islands, Thailand and Vietnam.“) and there’d be a smattering of some outlier groups such as “American Indian or Alaskan Native” (federally, that’s “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.“) or “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander” (federally, that’s “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa or other Pacific Islands.“) characters.
Naturally, you have a higher distribution of Native Americans in the vicinity of reservations and other communities where their ancestors used to be the local majority.
Naturally, you have a higher distribution of Native Hawaiians in… yes, Hawaii! Well, Empire City isn’t in Hawaii. It’s in the footprint of New York 🍎 New York.
To that end, I’m emulating my own personal experience from visits to New York City and the city as depicted in television, movies, comics and novels. I’m also emulating my own personal experience with people of other demographics than mine.
I’m a standard issue Euro-mutt. My ancestors come from all over the western half of Europe, Ireland and the UK. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Black soldier, a Korean bodega owner, a Latino SWAT sergeant or a Hawaiian restaurateur. I don’t and I can’t. Except…
People are people. They have their own motivations. They want things. They dislike things. They have individual experiences that make them who they are. I can identify with that. I think anyone can, if they’re honest.
That’s what makes for compelling fiction and engaging characters. It’s not about representation. It’s not about checking boxes or blowing dog whistles. It’s about getting into your imaginary people’s heads and figuring out what their needs, wants and hangups do to impact the course of the story.
As for the actual experience and feel of New York City as a community, ask a New Yorker…
The DIFFERENCE between the 5 boroughs (are the STEREOTYPES true)?
That’s it for today. I hope you had a lovely Independence Day yesterday. I hope you’re having a splendid summer and I hope it goes by extremely fast. We’re one holiday closer to 🍂my favorite season🍂.
🎆 Hooray! 🎆