tj

it was t's 35th birthday last week and she wanted to go to tj on saturday in celebration. she didn't have a particular destination or activity in mind, she just wanted to visit. friday night, after getting back to my parents house, i realized my passport wasn't there tho i had already checked my apartment before leaving where i thought i would have left it. i texted t to let her know that there was a possibility i couldn't join them saturday. i drove back to lg and did end up finding my passport so i spent the night and rushed back to la palma by 8:30am saturday, when she said they would be coming to pick me up. e had overslept to about 8am, then texted t later to let her know that he had forgotten his passport back at his place. we ended up not leaving my parents' until almost 10am. btw, he didn't apologize for being late.

e's family is from tj so he knows the city well, which is great, because we had nothing planned. we went to a nice restaurant for lunch, and after, we went to a supermarket then costco, per t's request. following that, we went to avenida revolucion where all the touristy clubs are where we had a drink and a snack. then we went to pick up tacos, waited like 2 hours to get back over the border, and came home. clearly, i'm glossing over a lot of the details, but that was the gist of it. basically, we went to... america, and not even a good or particularly interesting section of it. t seemed happy with it tho. she wanted to visit the grocery store and costco. the lunch restaurant was nice but certainly nothing special. we were too full to eat actual dinner so we got the tacos to go and had churros in the car in the border line. i felt like i'd wasted my day.

and i was consistently annoyed throughout. we left way later than planned so we didn't get to go to rosarito beach but we stayed in tj. tho thankfully e made good time and, again, he knows tj well and has internet over there so we navigated easily and pretty efficiently. but, honestly, his company leaves something to be desired.

he's racist. but i guess both he and t think it's cute and endearing? at every opportunity he makes lame racist jokes. these aren't even good racist jokes. they're incredibly simplistic, stuff a 6 year old would say. i think every time we see each other he asks if i've dog meat. he tells t to open her eyes bigger. he calls her panda and chun li and thinks it's hilarious when street vendors say ni hao ma at us. i don't think he dislikes asians, and i doubt he thinks he's being offensive, but wtf man, grow up. get clever or be pc, but at the very least, have some depth.

ugh, while i'm glad i went in support of t, tho i do almost wish i hadn't been able to find my passport.

collection drives

collection drives done thus far. some have overlapped and some were more casually done than others but i've basically done one a year since 2009.

2009 - shoes - soles4souls
2010 - eye glasses - lion's club
2011 - school supplies - school on wheels
2012 - cell phones - hope phones
2013 - formal dresses and accessories - prom project
2014 - natural wine corks - recork
2015 - shoes - protect a sole
2016 - bras - bras for a cause

2018 - towels/blankets - santa ana valley kennel club 
2019 - USB drives! (haven't started, but start saving them up if you've got them!)

towels for doggos

WANTED: clean towels / blankets!
my coworker gwen is part of the Santa Ana Valley Kennel Club which collects and donates old towels / blankets to local shelters and Hemopet, an organization that does blood transfusions for dogs (surgeries, k9 units, etc)! they do greyhound rescue and adoption too! so your old towels and blankets will keep doggos and puppers warm and comfy. :) I'll be collecting thru the end of the year so please let me know if you have any to donate. thank ya!

taxes

Mexico and Hungary tried junk food taxes — and they seem to be working

i've been saying this forever!! except that i take it one step further in i think that the money from the junk food tax should be used to subsidize healthy food (leafy greens, for instance, or food stamps if they made junk food ineligible).

one other tax i'm SO in favor of is a luxury tax! and interestingly enough, the US used to have one:
"In November 1991, The United States Congress enacted a luxury tax and was signed by the former President George H.W. Bush. The goal of the tax was to generate additional revenues to reduce the federal budget deficit. This tax was levied on material goods such as watches, expensive furs, boats, yachts, private jet planes, jewelry and expensive cars. Congress enacted a 10 percent luxury surcharge tax on boats over $100,000, cars over $30,000, aircraft over $250,000, and furs and jewelry over $10,000. The federal government estimated that it would raise $9 billion in excess revenues over the following five-year period. However, only two years after its imposition, in August 1993, the Congress decided to eliminate the “luxury tax” since it did not achieve its main objective. However, the luxury automobile tax remained in effect until 2002.^[3] A luxury tax still applies in some states for products deemed unnecessary or nonessential, a category in which non-luxury products often fall into.^[4]" from wikipedia

obviously the numbers would need to be changed, i mean, $30k may have bought you a luxury car in 1991 but certainly not in 2018, ha! the thing about these taxes too, is that you can set the bar quite high, say a car qualify for a luxury tax only if it is over $80k, has two axles, and weighs less than 5000 lbs. so that'll exclude any big rigs and really heavy passenger cars (which would probably be for commercial use anyway)

am i high?

i got high last night for the first time ever. i didn't enjoy it, lol.

i had one gummy and nothing happened for like an hour, and then i realized that, hey, i totally feel the bottoms of my feet. lol, not a part of your body your normally think about. but they were really warm for a bit then i realized my whole body was pretty warm, and very small! like i had compacted from my head to feet. it felt pretty okay for a while, i mean, who doesn't like to be warm? but then the room started to tilt, and my head felt lower than my feet which is always an uncomfortable feeling. i probably should have sat up but the whole room was on an incline and i felt like i might throw up if i moved too much. felt like being drunk but with the room spinning at a much slower rate.

at about this time j joined me in bed and we talked for a good long while about what i don't totally remember and it was then that i was like, no, i don't like being high. the body stuff is sort of uncomfortable, so not enjoyable, but the brain stuff was really not my thing. j's mom had sent him some photos of his youngest brother's bday party at school so we were talking about that. i felt  sad, but also happy for him, but also kind of pissed cause i knew i wouldn't remember all this stuff the next day. i felt that this was an important conversation so i very consciously stored it in my memory, but i'm sure i missed some stuff anyway.

also, sounds were really weird too. everything was weird. everything had shrunk down a little bit and lights were too bright, and nothing existed outside our small room. cars driving past sounded a bit like waves crashing at a beach, people talking outside sounded like they were in a very old tv show, and all sounds came from 360 degrees and echoed a little. like being in a bathroom. a round one and warm one, lol.

anyway, i never thought i'd be into it, and turns out, i'm not. it's similar to being drunk but i somehow felt less in control of it. maybe cause it was my first time so i didn't even know what was going to happen. had to ask joe if i was high or not, lol. i'll probably try again later to make sure, but I probably won't be having any more of the gummies, ha.

equality vs equity

Amazon announces $15 minimum wage for all US employees

I think profitable companies should pay more than a minimum wage; they should pay a living wage. that being said, it costs a hell of a lot more money to live in san fransisco than it does to live in sandpoint, idaho.

j said the other day that he believes in equity, not equality. and i think that's spot on.

without getting into how each state's minimum wage is determined, or if it's a fair determination or not, i think it would be better if amazon pays not just a minimum $15 across the board, but a few dollars (or percent) above minimum wage to employees in that state. is that still somewhat unfair? sure. but again, it costs more to live in san fransico than it does to live in grass valley, california, so at least it's more fair.

cuprite2

while i think the cuprite system would work, i definitely have reservations about it. i think if i were to address take-away coffee shops, it might work best to open my own damn drink shop and implement the following rules:

- no disposable cups, plates, coffee stirrers, etc. minimal disposable anything else
- we have real cups, plates, silverware, etc. for you to use in store
- want it to go? bring your own cups and containers for food
- want it to go but forgot your containers? pay a $2 "deposit" and take something from the "donation" bin
- you bring back something from the donation bin, or you make a flat out donation of stuff, you get $1 back per item up to $5 or $10
- possibly have a public sink for people to wash out their stuff

why don't they get their full deposit back? this will encourage them to bring their own cup. we don't really care if we get that cup back. we want them to bring their own.

cuprite

doing what we do, we meet a lot of people with a lot of different ideas on how to attack plastic pollution. last week we talked to two recent college grads who have an idea on reusable coffee cups and a community rental program: CupRite.

i don't totally understand how it's supposed to work. but based just the video, i have a few suggestions. (honestly, i'm writing this post because I haven't really stopped thinking about it since saturday when we met the girls)

- each store buys a certain number of cups. a 4-digit (or whatever) code is engraved on the inside bottom of each cup (that way cups only empty cups can be returned). that code corresponds to the store so you can track, per store, number returned, and lost and damaged cups. also behavioral things like what distance do people go, how many days does it take to return. 

- lock the drop off box (people will steal cups out of unlocked boxes; who will pay to get new ones?). the box can be unlocked with the same 4-digit code engraved inside the cup (so the lock will have to have multiple unlock codes [not sure if that's possible]).

- this probably works best in a closed environment (college or larger work campus with drop boxes inside each building), that way you might not even need lock boxes or codes. tho, again, you can track behavioral things with the codes.

- you can also make this into an app where people have to enter the location code where they drop off the cup (which can also give them an unlock code to the box, so the engraved number is just a store ID). eventually you'll know who is fake returning cups and charge those people. (you get cc info when they sign up. if they return all their cups, they never get charged. or you can do a deposit system. you can even allow them on lost cup within a time period or number of uses. you can also incorporate this into loyalty program of certain $% off their 11th cup or whatever)

sexy ghosts

a couple months ago while I was putting away clean laundry, I pulled his underwear drawer too far out and the whole thing upended itself on the floor. while I was putting things back I noticed a pair of red plaid underwear I hadn't seen him wear before. turns out they weren't boxers, or even men's clothing. it was a very short sexy schoolgirl skirt. ot mine, obviously.

at that moment, and even still, I'm not quite sure how I feel about them. or how I'm supposed to feel about them even. I struggle to come up with an analogy. I think like if he had found a pegging set of "mine." that's not a good comparison. not that an analogy even matters. I know he likes short skirts. and I had assumed he had previously played that out with others. still it's different to see the actual sex prop he's used with someone else, you know?

I guess what I'm struggling a bit with is why does he still have it? or why does he have it at all? shouldn't it be in her pocession? that he has it suggests that it means something special to him. and I would assume not the skirt itself, but who wore that skirt or a specific memory tied to the skirt (and therefore the girl). so what then? I probably wouldn't be unreasonable to ask him to get rid of it. yet, I don't feel comfortable with that. I mean, it means something to him and i want to be respectful of that. we each have past relationships and I think it's good to acknowledge and even celebrate that some. each person we've chosen to be with before has shaped us and made us into whom the other one now loves. it's crazy to pretend you're the first or best or most. you have them now and you should be satisfied with that.

still, it does make me a little uncomfortable and certainly self conscious. especially since I know he knows he still has it. I still put away his clean laundry every few weeks and I've seen it get moved from the side (where I left it) to the bottom.

I assume he'll see this post in a few weeks and we'll have a discussion about it then but for now I'm hoping to independently come to some conclusion about it. I've just been mentally writing this post since the night I found it so thought I'd finally get it out "on paper."

fleas!!!

wow, i haven't updated in a long time! most important update is that, well, yeah. we moved in together and are now fully moved in and have settled into our new lives and apartment. that's not to say it was easy tho!

i knew we had fleas. i wasn't sure from where but i knew the apartment had them. it wasn't a big deal tho since i was only coming up with a bite or two every couple days. until one day when j woke up and there were hundreds suddenly all over the fucking apartment! thankfully my parents had just left town so we moved into their house for a week. the exterminator came and pretty much got rid of the problem except that we both kind of have ptsd.

one nice thing that came out of this was getting to know one of our downstairs neighbors, a. they were also infested. but they're on the ground floor with a small yard and two dogs whereas we're upstairs with no yard or carpet or even rugs (exlucing two small bath mats)!

weeks later and my legs are so ugly still and we're still constantly checking ourselves for fleas. :( oh, lastly, in talking to a I found out that our landlord is looking to sell the place! oof, we have no idea when but apparently he's been trying for a little while already. annoying because no one told us and while neither of us forever loves this place moving is FUCKING TERRIBLE.

anyway, the rest of it has also been difficult. the first month or was really hard. not gonna lie, I cried a couple times with him in the other room. July has been better. we finally got an AC unit, we've adapted to sleeping by together in a full sized bed together, settled into the apartment and each other. will August be even better? lol, no, probably not but whatever since we're going to Mexico City for a week!

moving [descriptive]

we did it! we moved in together! and what a fucking process it was, sheesh. i don't ever want to move again. you look around and think "i don't have that much stuff" and multiple people tell you the same thing. then you start packing it and realize you need way more boxes than you originally thought. then you have to walk it to the car, drive it across town, and carry it up a flight of stairs, and have to repeat that a few times until you get to the heavy or bulky stuff like mattresses and chairs and bikes and desks and think "i have too much fucking stuff!" then realize you have to help your boyfriend move HIS stuff and for a split second you consider texting him and say that you've changed your mind and that you no longer want to move in together but since my stuff is already here and some of yours also so I'll pay you for your stuff even though i don't want it unless you wanna come get it yourself cause there's no way in bloody hell I'm moving your stuff for you because that was the problem to begin with! of course you do no such thing, and you just help him cause he helped you and you're not a selfish bitch. but you still wonder every 20 minutes or so if he would even notice if you "lost" a box of his until you realize that you'd have to trash it in your work dumpster since both your and his trash cans are full of discarded stuff, which requires you to drive to work which is across town and pick up the box and raise it over your shoulders to tip into the dumpster and you think again about that original scenario but again you don't because you're no bitch. 

at night, even though you're exhausted and unsatisfied from dinner of your 3rd straight day of the pizza from days ago, you can't sleep because you're stressing about the stuff you still haven't moved yet and now you're RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

and so it goes. physically tiring days and mentally tiring nights, until you're FINALLY done moving in! but your, OUR, apartment is a fucking mess and you feel a bit resentful of each other for all the stuff they made you move or throw away and wonder why you ever thought this was a good idea, moving in together.

then you immediately leave to China for a week and a half and are actually a little relieved you can finally decompress and don't have to deal with the settling in. until he tells you he bought a shelf and a clothes rack and you get a little worried he's bought something ugly but it'll be too late to say no to when you're finally home again, but also very guilty you left him to clean and settle in so of course he's entitled to buy things you hate and you wonder how long you have to fake being accommodating and grateful before you can be your petty self and belatedly veto that table or chair or whatever.

shacking up

when I found out my landlord was selling our apartment, I thought "I guess the universe really wants me to move in with j." lol, it's funny cause we had been talking about it anyway, but not really seriously, more of a "if somewhere nice opens up..." he'd been wanting to move out of his place anyway. and I really love my place, even with k as a roommate. then I got the news of the intended sale.

it's funny cause many many months ago i'd actually told him that us moving in together wouldn't be me suddenly wanting to. there would have to be another impetus. my apartment becoming unlivable, him finding us somewhere really awesome, I dunno what, but it wouldn't be me. lol, the universe intervenes in some pretty weird ways sometimes.

battle of the tp

living with people is interesting. it gives you good insight into, well, how people live! I share a bathroom with k, who is a student and a house cleaner. before I moved in I was warned that she may not be the cleanest. people don't like to go home to do more of what they do for work, you know? and yet I never would have thought it could be this bad.

- she regularly leaves stuff all over our bathroom floor, for days, maybe weeks: shoes, clothes, razors, hair products, scissors, etc. our counter has her stuff all over it, including her leaking toothpaste tubes. 

- she orders a lot of food thru uber eats and will once every couple months clean out her room. she'll have big trash bags full of takeout boxes, and leave a dozen plates and forks in our sink. trash bags will sit in the hallway, silverware in the sink, for a few days until she takes care of it. you can imagine what her shelf of the fridge looks like.

- she'll have people over and not clean up after them for weeks. half-filled cups, pillows on the ground, open wine bottles strewn around our living room.

there's more, but the "best" stories are about toilet paper, of course, lol.

I sleep at the apartment about 4 nights a week. she's there pretty much fulltime. last summer, we ran out of tp. I got back after the weekend, saw we had no tp (and was annoyed). thankfully I have tissue in my room (which I pettily did not share in the bathroom). before work I left a note on the counter saying i'd buy tp after work. I didn't go home that night. the next day I got back to the apartment and saw that she had left some fast food paper napkins on the counter. ...I refilled the tp.

she NEVER puts the tp back on the roller thing. I now tell people I think she has a phobia about it. i'm not going to ask because i'm almost positive it's just that she's too lazy and my story is just so much more entertaining. before I left for spain, a friend suggested I put the tp roller half in half out so that it would fall out when someone used tp. I did. I came back a week and a half later and the empty tp roller was on the ground with a half roll of tp on the counter. 

last saturday night I came home to an empty roll. I was annoyed since I was in spain for about 10 days before. also, we ran out on a weekend. I usually leave for work Friday morning and get back to the apartment Monday night so I wasn't even "supposed" to be there. anyway. I actually have like 2 dozen rolls in my closet but I can't fit more than 4 rolls under the sink (she has too much stuff in there). I was in the process of refilling it when I changed my mind. I mean, I wasn't supposed to be there, at least the last 4 rolls were "my" paper, and wtf was she planning to do in the meantime before I "got back" on Monday night? so I used Kleenex Saturday night, peed at work Sunday, and left without a note that night. I got back Monday late night and saw that she had taken paper towels from our kitchen (which she didn't buy; A buys those) to use as tp. ...this fucking girl is SO LAZY and WEIRD.

and while I'm definitely annoyed, my major emotion is amusement. seriously. what 30 year old can't remember to buy tp for days? who has to depend on their roommate who only lives there part-time? who can't be bothered, not once, to put the tp back on the roller? lol, omg, she's so strange! she complains all the time about how she's single. well, no wonder! what guy would stay with you after he's seen your room? I mean. sure, I live like this too since we share a bathroom. but my room is clean. I wash my dishes and throw out my trash within a reasonable amount of time. I have no food containers with mold in them. I clean up after guests and drain my glasses. sure, I can stand to live in unsanitary conditions but that obviously isn't my personal normal state. that being said, I do wonder what j thinks. what he thinks of me that I can live like this. I mean, it must say something about me that her laziness doesn't bother me so much that I feel like I have do something about it. when I first moved in, yeah, I cleaned our bathroom, emptied the trashcan, windexed the mirrors, ajaxed the sink, but now... I don't do any of that. I'll throw our bathmats and hand towel into the wash, and use draino every few months since she often doesn't use the hair catch, but I pretty much just let it be. what's the point? she doesn't keep our bathroom even baseline clean. I don't know. you do you; i'll do me. turns out i'm pretty serious about that. to a point that even surprises (and slightly disgusts) me.

spain

they say you never really know someone until you live with them. or travel with them. which, if the trip is long enough, can be akin to living with them.

anyway, j and i went to spain for his spring break. fully 6 months ago we looked for cheap flights, with no specific destination in mind, and barcelona came up for his free week. which happened to also be our one year (the day we flew out) and my birthday (our first full day in spain). i was very nervous booking the flight. we were only 6 months in, making plans for 6 months later. crazy! but i figured that even if we split up, i'd go to spain anyway. i also forecasted that if we broke up, it wouldn't be an angry someone fucked up thing. it would be a sad we just couldn't make it work thing. so we'd still be friends. and anyway, i'm used to traveling alone. (tho it would've been a hell of a lot harder since i don't speak any useful spanish, save el baño and uno cervesa por favor tho i don't even like beer, lol)

so what do i know now? i learned that we stress about different things, which is good. i stress about timing, he about food and crowds. and we don't rile each other up, which is important. overall, we're both chill, which is really good. we compliment each other. i planned our itinerary, but he was the one who pushed to book hotels and get tickets. i got maps, locations, opening times, and he got a phone card and currency. we both brought plenty of snacks and to-be-thrown-away travel clothes.

in some ways i knew we would be fine. we haven't fought our whole time together. and i've tried hard to apply what i've learned, not only from my previous relationships, but from those of my friends and parents, even.

what else did i learn from this trip? to not depend too much on others. i don't mean that in the way it sounds. but once we were in spain i took a step back from everything. he did all the ordering, talking to strangers, figuring stuff out, etc. yes, he speaks spanish but i could've done more. halfway thru our trip i happened to see him google something like "why is my relationship so ___." i didn't catch the last word but i immediately started freaking out (to myself). you don't google good things, you know? but he knows me well enough to recognize that i was freaking and called me out on it and told me what he was thinking about. (turns out i had read the search wrong) but he was stressed. from school, work, his accident a week prior that he was still injured from. we talked a bit and he said he felt much better. not knowing how to actually help I tried to be more helpful on the trip. i screenshot maps when i had wifi and just tried to pull a bit more weight. i dunno if it did anything, maybe i was relieving some of his stress? he said after our talk he finally got into the vacation mind frame. so maybe i did nothing. either way, I shouldn't have burdened him with all the work.

next time we should go somewhere neither of us knows the language. where we're on a more level playing ground. that being said, I've definitely taken a back seat in this relationship. more than I have with anyone in any relationship, I think. i'm not necessarily aggressive, but I do have ideas on what I want. this time I feel like i'm very content to let him lead us. he seems so capable in his own life, I guess I feel more secure? whatever. all I know is that i'm happy. and that we're still together. and that after a full 9 days together we saw each other again Monday night, and it didn't feel like too much.

like my shit!

The New Dating Requirement: Consuming All of Your Partner’s #Content

wow. luckily for us I guess, j isn't big on social media. he has a fb and an insta; he never posts to fb and rarely to insta. I don't think he ever updates his stories. I have fb, twitter, insta, snapchat, and this blog and differently to each. he and I always (I think?) like each other's stuff on insta. and he reads my blog occasionally too but I don't think we have the expectation that the other HAS TO like our stuff. sometimes you miss things. tho I will say that insta always puts his new posts first on my feed, and also lists his likes separately than the group ones per photo. I guess Instagram knows we're together even tho we're not Instagram official? creepy. speaking to insta's stories tho; I almost never watch them. anyone's. I hate how they stole the feature from snapchat. I do post on my snapchat stories but frequently do not look to see who watched them. who cares? ugh. it's probably because I do the social media for work that I feel like having personal social media accounts can feel a bit of a chore these days. and now we're expected to monitor our significant other's stuff and take note of how often they interact with our stuff? it's too much!! and what if you honestly don't like their post? like, it's a bad photo of mediocre food or a super sexy photo of him with someone else? I don't like that and I'm not going to "like" it either your stupid little ego be damned.

ps I did notice that he likes my work instagrams sometimes and that always makes me smile, lol.

aziz

I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life

this article brings up the questions of what is sexual assault and what is consent?

personally, i don't think this was assault: he didn't physically force her to do anything, he stopped when she "no, i really don't think i'm ready to do this." he didn't restrain her from leaving, he didn't even verbally try to convince her of much. that being said, i would've felt uncomfortable with him too. he's a lot more aggressive that i prefer, but i wouldn't have remained naked with him for hour, gone down on him twice, and stuck around for tv. obviously he should have paid better attention to her non-verbal cues, but then, staying naked and giving blowjobs are much clearer non-verbal cues.

i much more agree with this assessment of what happened: Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.

i don't want to diminish what Grace feels but i think she needs to take some responsibility for her actions. i don't think that only a clearly enunciated "no" means no, but what does "let's relax for a sec" even mean? to me it says, let's stop for a bit and reassess. in other words, let's maybe continue doing what we're doing.

people aren't mind readers. you can't give super mixed signals, be unclear in your verbage, then accuse someone of a crime. that's fucked up. she had a bad sexual encounter but it's as much her fault as his. he should have been more attentive; she should have been more clear. she should have said what she wanted or didn't want. instead she passively expressed her disinterest by no longer touching him or kissing him, and moving away from him on the couch. you can't give up your agency and be offended when people don't notice what you're not saying.

i understand that sometimes it can be hard to say no. that sometimes you freeze up and "let" things happen to you. but she should understand that her passivity played a role in this situation too. things likely wouldn't have escalated or have gone on that long had she just said no. for her to lay the entire blame on him seems really unfair.

looks don't matter

The problem with calling Harvey Weinstein ugly
Body-shaming men is deeply unprogressive — even if they’re accused of sex crimes.

this! yes! does being ugly give the excuse to sexually assault someone? no, of course not. and if it doesn't matter what the victim looked/dressed like, how would the aggressor's looks matter?

"Why should we care about someone like Weinstein (or Rose) being body-shamed? ... It also distracts from the problem with what he did, which has nothing to do with his looks. What made these acts abusive is the lack of consent, not the appearance of the predators. And that perpetuates rape culture. As long as we keep acting as if sexual abuse is wrong because the abuser is physically unattractive or sexually deviant, abusers deemed attractive and “normal” will be more likely to get away with it."

also, "One unfortunate effect of this is that we consider conventionally unattractive people less credible victims of sexual assault or harassment." and that's equally fucked up.

sexual assault and harassment aren't always about the sex itself, or even about attraction. it often has nothing to do with one's physical appearance. of either party. that's why people who could "get some anyway" are sometimes rapists.

why are you __?

I Spent A Week Asking Coupled-Up People Why They're In Relationships

as someone who did not except to find myself in a relationship so soon after my last one, i think this is actually an awesome question that needs to be asked more often!

personally, i'm in one, and this one specifically, because we like each other and i'm happy being with him. when i first started dating i was just looking for fun. i wanted to meet new people, do/see/eat new things,etc. when i started seeing j, i figured he would be fun for a while (maybe a couple months) before i lost interest and moved on. as i do. but a handful of dates in i realized i actually liked him and didn't want to waste my time getting to know people i would probably like less. (i didn't ask him to stop seeing others; i didn't care what he was doing.) i was going to give it a few dedicated months and move on. and here we are 10 months later... lol.

censorship

The Real Reason We Need to Stop Trying to Protect Everyone’s Feelings

I have always thought that we should not (and DO not) have complete freedom of speech. there should be truth in advertising and in newsprint and much much more. people should not be allowed to write terrible hateful things in public. people should not be allowed to use public forums to say incendiary or untrue things.

it's true that "your feelings are your problem, not mine — and vice versa." (to a point anyway.) we don't need to listen to every opinion and make room for every hurt feeling. there isn't the time, energy, or need for such. but people should be held accountable for their actions and words.

fyi, this quotation? wow:
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”