Why Is It ...

… that people don’t realize that a fuck must be earned; I cannot go down the street with a bucket of fucks handing them out willy nilly. If I feel you’ve earned a fuck, I’ll give a fuck.

… that I hate it when I say that I hate people and someone says, “But not me, right? LOL.” No bitch, it’s especially you.

… that I can look directly at a person, nod when they’re talking and throw in a “Yeah,” or an “I know,” and yet not hear a word they’re saying

… that I feel the need to tell people that I am not toxic; I am classier than that … I am toxique….

… that I often feel the need to tell people who are speaking to me that I Googled “Who gives a shit?” and my name wasn’t in the search results

… that I know five people that are clinically insane and two of them are me.

… that I feel like life is a helicopter and I don’t know how to fly a helicopter.

… that my signature move is to bottle up my feelings over time and then combust over some small issue and get accused of being a psycho.

… that I hate it when people to tell me to open up. I mean, I just met you like eight years ago, give me some time.

… that right after I say some things I remind myself that some things aren't better left unsaid.

Why Is It ...

… that when someone says they don’t like me, I instantly check my pay stub to see if it makes a difference.

… that my favorite childhood memory is when the bills didn’t have my name on them.

… that many people have told me that I have two faults: the first is that I don’t listen and the second is ... some other shiz they were rattling on about.

… that most people don’t realize that the worst thing about parallel parking is the witnesses.

… that when someone is rude to me in the grocery store and then they get behind me in line, I invite everyone behind them to go ahead of me; today I had the time.

… that I am not looking for a staycation but a maycation; I may come back, I may not.

… the people who think I’m too much need to go find less; I’m not running a clearance sale here.

… that while I get paid to be nice at work I don’t understand why my friends and family think they should get that shiz for free.

… that, while I am no chef, I can really stir the pot.

… that people often to say they're ‘happy as a clam’? A clam?? You mean those tiny things with no brain that chill on the bottom of the ocean all day in their own little private shells and have absolutely no concept of what’s going on in the … oh, nevermind, I get it now.

Why Is It ...

… that one of my biggest flaws, when I ask someone their name, is that I forget to listen to what they say.

… that if you find me offensive, then I’d suggest you stop finding me in the first place.

… that y’all need to remember if Drunk Me said or did something rude and mean, you gotta take it up with Drunk Me. Don’t come at Sober Me; we weren’t there and we don’t know what happened.

… that the conversations I have with myself while I’m folding laundry are especially deep.

… that no automated messaging system realizes that I will press 0, and continue to press 0, until I get a representative.

… that you cannot text me once a day like I’m a vitamin.

… that one minute you’re young and fun and the next minute you’re turning down the car stereo to see better.

… that when a friend says to me, “Oh that’s so mean, I can’t say that,” I say, “Give me the phone.”

… that they call me 007 at work because I have 0 motivation, 0 skills, and take 7 bathroom breaks a day.

… that Facebook doesn’t let you laugh at a Friend Request.

Last Day of the Year Bobservations

Although 2020 certainly wasn't the year I was expecting, it was the year I got, and looking back on this last day of 2020, I can say it has been a tremendous year for reflection and growth and understanding. I have some Bobservations …

After lockdown, and being out of work for a few months, I learned just how I much I love and adore, and sometimes, quite honestly, loathe Carlos. We have spent more time together in the last nine months, just the two of us, than probably in all our twenty years, and I still want for nothing, and no one, else. He makes me laugh and smile and love and get angry, and there isn’t a place I’d rather be.

And, sure, Tuxedo is my boy because we bonded, just the two of us, in the first couple of weeks after we rescued him, so he’s got a very special place in my heart. But I do so love MaxGoldberg on my lap, Ozzo at my feet, Consuelo chasing me through the house at feeding time, Tuxedo staring at me while I sleep. It’s love, it’s real, and it’s unconditional.

After four years of a fake Christian in the White House, and the ones who crawled out of the slime to do his bidding, I have come to realize that Good Christians don’t tell you they’re good, they just are good. Anyone who feels the need to announce their deep faith is actually pretty shallow.

I love this blog, and all of your blogs, too, because we all have this chance to speak up. Speak all the way up. After four years of domestic terrorism, when someone says something crazy, or outright lies … COVID is just like the flu … read them for filth. Don’t let the lies stand or the liars win. If someone says, or worse does, something racist, call it out. Make sure they know you know.

In 2020, I saw a gay man run for president and win a primary, and I saw him kiss his husband on the campaign trail. Even better, I voted for a gay man for president, and hope to do it again.

SIDENOTE: this also gives me another reason to post Hot Pete Pic.

And this time we did it; we got up, got out, and voted. More of us than at any other time in history. And in doing so, we have rid this country of him. Sure, he fussed, fought, lied, sued, whined, and bitched, but we are a few weeks away from getting sanity in charge again. I know Joe Biden wasn’t everyone’s choice, he is the choice we made, and we will, stand behind him as America goes back to being a leader, to rejoining the Paris Accord, to being about all of us, and not just the 1%. And it doesn't hurt that we have our first ever female person of color as Vice President in Kamala Harris!

And while I have more opinions than hairs on my head—and to be clear, I have a ridiculously full head of hair—I listen to others; sometimes just listening can lead to understanding; sometimes the understanding is that the other person is a complete lunatic but listening confirms that. And while I may not have come for the lunacy, I have learned sometimes to forgive it; when it’s not hate-filled crazy. Forgiveness isn’t a sign of weakness and does not mean forgetting. I can forgive but I cannot forget, and I will come for you if the madness steps out again.

It has been a year but, while we may have bent a little under the stress of a pandemic, the horrors of a racist, incompetent leader, the stupidity of those who follow mad men, we did not break. Being out of work did not cost us much; we have a home, a car, our bills paid, our health, our pets, our family—those we come from and those we chose—and a circle of friends who are there for us, as we are for them. I’m ready for 2021, and hopefully the lessening of COVID, a leader who understands the pandemic and the country and our place in the world,  and how to work that. A president who has built a cabinet that represents us all, not just the rich, the white, the male.

And so, speaking of male … here are the Bobservations Hot Men of 2020

Matt Smith, Luke Evans, Sh’Rae Marshall, Mena Massoud

Taylor Phillips, Dan Zsolt, Alberto Garcia Cabrero, Eoin Macken

Andrea Casalino, Chino Darin, Joshua Lee Cummings, Emmanuel Macron

Denis Suraev, David Taylor, Ryan Barrett, Dustin Milligan

Gil Soares, Nicholas Pinnock, Mauro Lopes, Ben Miles

Henrique Hansmann, Charles Leclerc, Lakeith Stanfield, Karlwiz Gutierrez

Christian Cooke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Tone Bell, Valter Passos Silva

Brian Loud, Eyal Berkover, Alexandros Kaltsidis, Michael Ferraro

Jay Gould, Jordan Calloway, Isaac Moreno, Will Higginson

Chris Folz, Justin Marcel McManus, Alexander Breck, Lovell Adams-Gray

Marc Buckner, Piotr Gruszewski, Tom Berklund, Gregg Avedon

Tom Zalac, Graysen Quinn, Giuseppe Giofrè, Gerardo Celasco

Eric Rutherford, Levi Bradley, Jules Horn

Lesson From A Black Man At A Klan Meeting

When you see something, even something hateful, or hate-filled, say something. You never know what response you’ll get.

Daryl Davis is a musician, a black musician, who has used his music and his travels, to meet members of the Ku Klux Klan so he can talk to them and ask them one simple question:

“How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”

It all started one night when Daryl was the only black man playing in a band. After their set, a man from the audience came up to compliment Daryl on his piano playing, and said he'd never heard a black man play like Jerry Lee Lewis before.

"Who do you think taught Jerry Lee Lewis to play that way?" Davis asked.

And the two men hit it off; the man bought Daryl Davis a drink and as they talked the man confessed that he'd never in his life had a drink with, or spoken with, a black man.

"Why is that?"

"I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan."

Daryl thought it was a joke until the man showed him his Klan card. Daryl didn’t get up and walk away, he continued to talk, and when the man left he gave Daryl Davis his phone number and asked him to call him the next time he played the Silver Dollar Lounge.

That was in 1983, and Daryl Davis has spent the last thirty years talking to Klan members, and watching as many of them have left the KKK after talking to him; in fact, that first man he met all those years ago, continues to come see Daryl Davis when he plays piano at the Silver Dollar Lounge, and sometimes he brings other Klan members with him.

And Daryl’s friends, black and white, think he’s crazy for talking to Klansmen; they think this is a group to be shunned and ignored and despised, but Daryl Davis had a different take on it, and he was just getting started or was he just keeping on with what he’d always done?

Daryl didn’t go to school here in America, he was educated abroad, where the schools he attended were filled with people of all races and ethnicities. At age ten, Daryl’s family moved back to America, to Boston, and he went to a school where there was one other black student other than himself.

Then, in 1968, on a statewide Boy Scout march to commemorate the ride of Paul Revere, Daryl Davis—the only black Boy Scout present—was chosen to carry the American flag. As he and his troop marched in the parade, people along the route began throwing bottles, cans and rocks at him.

Daryl simply thought they were anti-Boy Scout; he had no idea their anger arose because of the color of his skin. It wasn’t until he went home and told his parents what had happened that he learned about racism. And he was shocked; he could not understand how anyone would want to hurt him just because he had a different skin color:

"I literally thought [my parents] were lying to me."

A few years later, one of his teachers brought the head of the American Nazi Party to speak to Daryl’s class, and the man said to this group of tenth-graders:

"We're going to ship you back to Africa. And all you Jews out there are going back to Israel ... If they don't leave voluntarily they will be exterminated in the coming race war."

And that began Daryl’s lifelong fascination with racism, with white supremacy, black supremacy, anti-Semitism.

But let’s move on from there, from Daryl as a child, to Daryl in the 980s, when he played a gig at that same bar where he’d met the Klansmen. One night, after the show, Daryl took out the man’s card, looked up his address, and went unannounced to his house.

"Do you know Roger Kelly, the Grand Dragon?" Davis asked. He’d wanted to meet the Klan leader, and the man reluctantly gave him the number, and a warning:

“Do not go to Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you."

But he did go; he met Kelly and the two men spoke. Davis asked that question, about hating someone you don’t know and Kelly talked. Afterward the two men shook hands and Kelly asked Daryl to stay in touch; Daryl Davis was shocked:

"I was thinking, what? I didn't come here to make friends with the Klan! I came here to find out, how can you hate me when you don't know me?"

Nevertheless, he started inviting the Klan leader to gigs and then to his house, where Daryl would introduce Kelly, who always arrived those first few times with a bodyguard, to his black friends, his white friends, his Jewish friends.

"After awhile he began coming down here by himself, no [bodyguard]. He trusted me that much. After a couple years, he became Imperial Wizard. The national leader [and] he began inviting me to his house."

It was in that time that Daryl Davis started attending Klan meetings; and he made it clear that he was utterly opposed to any of the Klan’s ideas, but he stayed and talked and shook hands with members; he even posed for pictures with some of the men. He explains it like this ...

“The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself. So if you have an adversary with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform. Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be. And believe me, I've heard things so extreme at these rallies they'll cut you to the bone.

Give them a platform.

You challenge them. But you don't challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently. And when you do things that way chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform.”

It was while giving Roger Kelly a platform to talk about the Klan that Kelly began to see that he was wrong; his ideas and thoughts about racism began to fall apart and soon Roger Kelly quit the Ku Klux Klan.

"He no longer believes today what he said, and when he quit the Klan he gave me his robe and hood, which is the robe of the Imperial Wizard."

And twelve other Klansmen did the same thing after meeting Daryl Davis and talking to him and with him. In fact, Daryl Davis befriended three Klan leaders in Maryland—Roger Kelly, Robert White, and Chester Doles—and soon enough White and Doles also left the group; these weren’t just men on the periphery of the Klan, these were leaders, lifelong members who’d grown up in hate, but who learned that they were wrong.

And after those three men left the Klan in Maryland there was suddenly no KKK at all in the state; sure, some have tried to get it started again—and in light of the recent elections I sure it might happen again—but, for now, there is no Klan in Maryland. 

“Groups from neighboring states might come in and hold a rally ... but it's never taken off."

But Daryl Davis isn’t just working to show the KKK the error of their ways, the price of hatred, he’s faced issues from the black community as well:

"Some black people who have not heard me interviewed or read my book jump to conclusions and prejudge me ... I've been called Uncle Tom. I've been called an Oreo."

But he remains undeterred.

“I had one guy from an NAACP branch chew me up one side and down the other, saying, you know, we've worked hard to get ten steps forward. Here you are sitting down with the enemy having dinner, you're putting us twenty steps back."

And that’s when Daryl opens his closet and brings out the robes and hoods he’s been given over the years from Klansmen who’ve left the group. He uses those as proof that talking to members of the Klan can change the Klan, can, maybe, one day, end the Klan. And he asks the naysayers:

“How many robes and hoods have you collected?"

And they shut up.

Conversation; talking and listening to one another is the spark for change. I mean, think about it, a black man sits down with the Klan and talks to them, and listens to them, and change happens. And he’s doing it on a grand scale, around the country, while the rest of us can do it in our own neighborhoods.

I was thinking about that elderly women in the JC Penney store at a mall, in Kentucky, I think it was; she was annoyed at the Hispanic woman ahead of her in line because that Hispanic woman’s sister added some items to her sister’s cart, thereby not having to wait in line.

The elderly women went on a tear about “you people” and welfare and cutting in lines and “go back where you belong.” And I watched the video—I won’t post it here because I don’t need to see it more than once in my lifetime—and was stunned when she nodded to people in line who agreed with her, and yet I heard no one tell her to stop.

Think of Daryl Davis, and who he speaks to, and who he sits down with, and what he’s done; think of that the next time someone says something racist or misogynistic or hate-filled ... and say something.

I mean, if someone had asked that elderly woman why she hated that Hispanic woman when she didn’t even know her, I wonder what her answer might have been.

It might have been hate-filled, to be sure, I’m no Pollyanna in that regard, but it might have caused her to think ... and to change her behavior, and her hatred.

Say.Something. If Daryl Davis can do it with the Klan think what you could do.

The Atlantic