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Are we to the point yet where we can mostly agree that the name game is fucking stupid? You know, the one where as soon as everyone gets used to referring to a group by $name it gets declared *ist and a new and wildly less accurate one is created? This isn't a thing I lose sleep over and it doesn't offend me when someone uses one of the retarded terms but the fact that it is still a thing that happens annoys me much in the same way people not using their turn signals does.

Let's go through a few here. Mine first. Native American. I was born here, so I'm a native American. So is little Chewy who was born in east L.A. even though his parents were illegals. So is Tyrone who was born in Detroit. So is Sally who was born in Vermont. Which is to say, it's a fucking idiotic term. I prefer Indian or wagon burner but I'll answer to anything that isn't trying to paint my race as delicate snowflakes; even Azuma's favorite racial slur, Chief Shitting Bull, is better.

African American next. For starters, not all black people are American. Not by a long shot. Also, the vast majority of them are no more African than they are Martian. If you just emigrated from Africa and got citizenship, this term would make sense. Most black folks though can't even tell you which quarter of that continent their ancestors came from. They have zero genuine ties to Africa.

Asian Americans? They're generally fucking proud of being from their nation of origin and would prefer that nomenclature-wise. Don't believe me? Call a Japanese person Chinese and see what happens. Lumping them all together is actually insulting if you know their ancestry. You're basically saying they all look alike. See African American for the American bit.

Middle Eastern? See above but switch Israeli and Egyptian for Japanese and Chinese.

Hispanic? Did you know you can call a person from Germany German, a person from Canada Canadian, but not a person from Mexico Mexican? That's some fucktarded shit.

People of Color? Strictly a term to exclude white people. Damn fine way to spot a racist asshole though.

Now how about some that have been declared reee-worthy simply so you can call someone a bigot...

Retard/retarded. See, this word has an actual meaning and is not an insult to anyone who it is an accurate description of. But it's been around a while, so it must be offensive and need changing.

Ditto disabled, handicapped, etc...

Tranny? Short for trans-whatever using the long standing habit of chopping a long word and adding "y" to shorten it. No more insulting than Tommy for a guy named Thomas. Jimmy for James never made sense to me on account of having the same number of letters but at least it follows a pattern that makes sense in general even if not in every specific case.

We don't even need to go into the pronoun game much. Anyone who can't decide on male or female can fuck right off and anyone getting offended about not being called the one they prefer should stop fucking looking like the other one.

If you're pissed off and want to discuss this, please try and present a rational argument. You being offended isn't going to cause any fucks to be given by me, no matter how hurt your butt is.

Ever wonder why progressives (Not liberals. Entirely different meanings.) seem to be getting wackier and farther out in crazyland as time goes by? Well, you're in luck. That's the topic of today's bedpan full of wisdom.

Progressives, unless they are an extremely small minority, are going to constantly make incremental progress towards whatever their goals are. A funny thing happens when over half of their goals have been accomplished though, they face a brutal decision. They now have an unavoidable choice to slowly watch their reasons for existing diminish as their goals do and allow themselves to become conservatives, or they must keep coming up with shiny, new things that piss them off. The problem there is that sooner or later you run out of things to be pissed off about that even make sense.

This is where the progressives historically split from the liberals, by the way. When everyone has liberty and equality under the law, as best as can be realistically managed, you have no choice but to move away from liberty and equality if you want to keep progressing rather than conserving what you already have.

See, liberals and conservatives are the same thing when the status quo is liberty and equality under the law. This doesn't work for people with a bad case of Pissed Off At Daddy Syndrome though. They have to disagree and think he's a bastard no matter what. When he's for liberty and equality, that leaves them no choice but to be the opposite if they want to remain pissed off children rather than growing the fuck up.

I'm off for another week of lake visiting tomorrow afternoon Central. Camping with female companionship this time. I expect there to be more sex but less fishing than the last trip. So, mixed bag.

Start picking your interim targets of blame now to avoid the rush. If all else fails, try the ~blame command on IRC.

The brilliant motherfuckers over at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany have gotten their science on and done up a paper stating in part that crazy bitches are better in the sack. Thanks a bunch there, folks. Think you could do up a study on whether guys like to look at boobs next?

When you hold a widely publicized ahead of time rally for your cause in DC and less than fifty people show up, your movement not only doesn't exist but is repugnant to the American people. You could get more than fifty people to show up to just do the Thriller dance and go home. Must really butthurt the poor progtards who've been trying like hell to gin up fear of white supremacists.

Several days ago, while I was out at my local Sonic picking up a gigantic Oreo Cheesecake Master Shake, my home was invaded by SJW stealth units who sabotaged my computer such that the drive hosting my encrypted /home partition started spitting errors into the syslog that look for all the world like the controller is going out on the drive.

After much panicked backing up of important shat interspersed with downtime to let the drive cool when I started getting errors, I checked my records and found out it was only eight months old. Still under warranty then, even with today's cocktastic two-year manufacturer warranties. Then I thought, you know, the first sata cable I tried when I installed this drive was bad... I should swap cables. And since I'm swapping cables, I might as well switch to an unused sata port on the motherboard. Much less of a pain in the ass than jumping through RMA hoops. That let me finish up all my backing up and twelve hours in still no errors. If it stays copacetic until tomorrow, I'm going to call it good and go back to my regularly scheduled hurting of butts.

Anyway, that's where I've been and why that climate data I promised hasn't been gathered up and posted here yet. Tomorrow will be somewhat busy around Casa de Buzzard with all the standard shat plus some real estate doings but I should be able to get to it by Wednesday at the latest.

Right, so I was in a mood tonight and considering how idiotic it is for white folks to think I should venerate the cultures and traditions of my ancestors from hundreds of years ago when they don't even venerate the cultures and traditions of their still living ancestors. Being the smartass I am, I went outside and did a rain dance (Okay, so it bore a strong resemblance to the Thriller dance. Fuck you. I'm an indian and if I say it's a rain dance, it's a rain dance.) while I was having a smoke.

I finish my smoke and come back in, quite amused with myself and do a #weather on IRC to get the forecast and fuck me if it didn't work.

So, I'm sitting here greatly amused with myself and then I remember I was going to take my boat out for half a day of jug fishing tomorrow.

Fucking stupid ancestral magic powers.

So, TR and I were out smoking and drinking coffee this morning and he tells me about this British bird who was walking around where she used to live, looking at all the old landmarks, and comes across this US MAIL mailbox painted up like an American flag. She instagrams or tweets or some shit a picture with a caption of "What the hell is this?". She gets some joking responses back like "freedom rings, baby!" and responds tongue-in-cheek "I'm all for immigration but they need to assimilate". I get a chuckle out of this because I like to see people not taking themselves seriously all the time.

That got me to thinking. There are a whole lot of folks in the US who are of the opinion that immigrants should be able to wag their entire culture over here, making no efforts at assimilation whatsoever. It made me wonder if they would say the same thing if a couple million Texans moved over to Sweden, kept right on being Texans at everyone, and demanded legal changes to better fit their Texan sensibilities. I'm dead certain they wouldn't. This tells me what they say is a lie and their beef is very specifically with the US's dominant culture/laws/etc... but that they are too cowardly to say so openly.

I'm out of town for a couple weeks and taking no tech with me except my phone and a USB drive with a bunch of SG-1 and my ssh keys on it. I may have time occasionally to rhetorically bitch-slap someone but not to hold up a serious conversation or to unfuck the servers if you folks break them while I'm gone. Which is basically to say that if you guys set the place on fire and want it put out, I hope you drank plenty of water beforehand.

I'm in a pretty good mood this morning and you lot could very well make use of this, so I'm going to share with you the Old Indian Fire-Starting Trick as taught to me by my forefathers.

Setup: First you need a prepared fire ready to be set aflame. It can be your traditional fire of the tinder, kindling, wood type or it can even be charcoal doused in lighter fluid if you're in a bind. Next you need to announce that you'll be performing the "Old Indian Fire-starting Trick" to get it going.

Execution: Carefully inspect the prepared fire, making sure it is safely laid. Make visible note of any failed attempts to get it going. Wet a finger in your mouth and hold it up to test the wind. Affirm with a nod that conditions for the trick are suitable. Now pull a lighter* out of your pocket and use it to light the fire.

When called on your bullshit, recite the following, counting each off on a finger as you do: I tricked you, I started a fire, and I learned it from an old indian. Old indian. Fire-starting. Trick.

This trick is good for most any audience or occasion. Feel free to add any audience-appropriate cheese before you pull out the lighter. You're welcome.

* I advise a Bic for those of you not experienced in lighter selection. An overfilled Zippo will land you with a mild but annoying chemical burn on your leg and a Cricket will run out of fluid before it runs out of flint, leaving you looking at a lighter with fluid in it that can do nothing useful ever again.