"Pakistani"

 One time I made a post on live journal complaining about a Persian sounding customer. Maybe he was from Kazakhstan, not sure he kinda sounded like Borat, but I made the mistake of describing him as Pakistani. Practically everyone on live journal chewed me out, and they made a new community policy/rule just for me. 

All because I failed my geography.

"A lot of time online "

 I notice that a lot of guys that dye their hair and start dressing like a girl, or wearing makeup under an animal sports mascot suit generally explain their behavior by saying, "After spending a lot of time on the internet..."

More people need to go outside.

Giving up

 I wonder what percentage of gay people are gay simply because they have difficulty finding someone of the opposite sex that likes them, and have just given up.  People with poor self image who think that they will never find someone of the opposite sex to love them. 

I'm sure someone will argue against that being the case with all gay people, but what about a percentage of them? Certainly it has to be the kind of reasoning that leads some to be gay. They just don't believe they're attractive enough.

I've met a few overweight gay guys. I wouldn't be surprised if they're like that because they tried to pick up women once, and they had a really difficult time with it and gave up.

Badly titled Sweet Pickles books

 If you look in the back of any sweet Pickles book, you'll see a picture of Doubtful Dog with his arms crossed, saying "I doubt it," like some kind of mean skeptic. But if you read No Kicks For Dog (terrible title, by the way, it implies cruelty), it's about self doubt.

Also, "Hippo Jogs For Health" is the worst children's book title you can come up with, for a book that is actually not that boring. A better title would be Hippo's Health Craze. It's about not over exerting yourself. It's actually kind of funny.

Note: The page from Jackal Wants Everything about soybeans and friendship doesn't make sense until you read the Hippo book.  Hippo has a whole library of health tracts he gives everyone.

But make me pretty

 One of the most frustrating things about being a fine artist is "But make me pretty." Also known as, "Then why don't you make your own damn picture."

It's the reason why some artists charge lots of money for commissions. They're not really sure they want to do them.

 It's when someone asks you for a portrait, BUT. Like, they want to be younger. They want a nose job.

You start the portrait, and you can tell it's going bad when they immediately ask you to make them more beautiful but complain when they see your changes.

It doesn't stop. Ever. You show them sketch after sketch after sketch, and they say no and finally send you a sketch they drew.

And then, after you humor them by doing it their way, and commit the picture to expensive paper and materials, they suddenly chime in with, more and more facial changes, then resignedly imply that your portraits are no good by changing it to a copy of some anime character, which, although easy, seems to defeat the whole purpose of the original request. "Oh well, you're not as good as I thought. Just make it a picture of snoopy, lol."

If you can stomach a customer like this, you are a fine artist, and deserve to raise your rates.

Although I've seen some artists that draw stick figures and overcharge, I think some good ones have been burned by "But make me pretty."

Root cause

 As much as I want to blame this or that thing in society for the Texas shootings, in all honesty, the gunman was likely just a ball of mental problems and child abuse.

People want to blame guns or video games, but it's got to be more or less an issue of the guy not getting psychological treatment, and having parents that do terrible things to him, and teach him to solve every problem with physical or verbal abuse.

If someone at the school did similar things to him, he'd project his parents onto them. And if he felt he couldn't win against them, he'd grab whatever is handy to put himself into the abusive parent role. 

What they don't think about is how they have become just like their enemy, and how they will face police and swat teams and things that will be unsympathetic, and they might just face abuse in a different form from them, or from people in the prison they may end up occupying.

And that's probably why they end up killing themselves or trying to die in a gunfight. If they could think that far ahead, they wouldn't have started shooting.

Childhoods End

 I think my parents are disappointed that I don't have a girlfriend and kids by now. I think my dad thinks I'm gay and hates me for it. They don't realize that I am so attracted to women that I can't get the nerve to ask one out, and now I'm over forty.

I see how people look at me when I go out to eat with my best friend. They think we're a gay couple. Wrong, I just can't find a woman, and I've got social anxiety disorder. If people want to misinterpret what's going on, they can go ahead and get AIDS. At least it won't be me getting it.

I used to think this was me failing as a human being, but today I've become thankful that I don't have kids. 

I never had to deal with the excruciating inconvenience of remote learning due to covid.

I never had to send a kid to school that might potentially get shot up by some punk teen with a gun. Or gives trenchcoat mafia drills in school in addition to the fire and tornado, just to keep safe.

I never had to send a kid to a school that teaches emotion as fact. 

I never had to send a kid to school that teaches kids it's okay for a kid to have two mommies or two daddies, or that they can pick what gender they want. They now have classes about that.

I don't have to worry about them teaching my kid that being gay is somehow normal, rather than something immoral and unnatural. I view being gay the same as people who have compulsive shoplifting problems, but the schools would actually encourage the abnormality. And try to convert my kids. Glad I'm not dealing with that.

I don't have to worry about my kid growing up too soon, learning about sexuality, especially gay sex, or what gay is, from some stranger at school before they even have questions about it.

 I don't have to fight to keep them on the right moral path when everyone is teaching them wrong.

I don't have to worry about telling my son or daughter not to smoke pot when it's now legal and all over the place.  I still think it shouldn't be legal.  They're not even taxing it like cigarettes. I think it should be taxed out of the public at the very least. But no, it's something kids can easily find out about, just like how there's no way to stop them from accidentally finding adult material on the web.

I don't think I'm in the endtimes or am going to experience it, but I definitely will experience a scenario similar to Childhoods End: Where the country's morality erodes so far away that they will welcome an undisguised Satan with open arms, and allow their children to be made into soulless drones beneath his control.