If you don't like someone's appearance, you do know you don't have to say anything, right? You don't need to constantly criticize them and tell them how they should change the things you don't like about how they look. You can...not say anything, and move on. It's really that easy. Try it today!

In the voter's pamphlet. I recommend reading it aloud... over-dramatically like Lara Trump maybe. Or a self-righteous Proud Boy. Follow your muse.

Have you guessed what the problem is? You didn’t have to! It was right in the headline! And that’s the problem: everything gets spoiled nowadays. Today, a friend of mine asked me if I had seen the Kentucky Derby. I had not. Spoiler! I didn’t even know the Kentucky Derby was today. I don’t like horse racing. It’s stupid. But, despite this, did I already know who won? Well, I would have if I had read any of the headlines. It was Dapper Dan by a nose! Who cares? Not me, but YOU should. If you like horse racing, and hadn’t watched the race yet, that is. Stop spoiling things, headlines! Put it in the body of the article, like I just did. Not the headline. I went to the supermarket to buy some bread for a sandwich. Spoiler Alert: tuna salad. It’s not a spoiler if you say “Spoiler Alert” first. I don’t know why, but that’s the rule. Anyway, what did I find at Freddie’s? You guessed it already, it was more spoilers! All the bread was clearly labeled by type and brand, with prices marked and everything. What if I wanted to be surprised? Not in today’s world. Not with bread packages you can see right through! Stop selling me “spoiled” bread! Later, I took the bus home. The 57 to Beaverton. Right there in bold letters on the front! Gee, I wonder where this one’s going to end up… sigh.

Is America the Home of the Brave? Despite the words of the national anthem, you would have to be insane, stupid, or both to believe that. I have never seen such chickenshit people as Americans. They are afraid of everything: black, brown, yellow, and red people; Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Hindus; uppity women; Arabs and Latinos; migrants and unions; Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians, and Mexicans; gays and trans-genders; liberals, progressives, and socialists; teachers and librarians; books; and experts and intellectuals all scare the living shit out of them. For fuck sakes, half the country has a morbid fear of clowns. The US has the largest and most powerful armed forces in the history of the world. It has enough nuclear weapons to incinerate the globe 683 times. And the people live in abject terror of stone-age people who settle disputes by poking each other with long pointy sticks or throwing rocks. What a bunch of pussies American are. Before you come after me on this one, please be prepared to tell me in which branch of service, unit, and theater of wartime operations you served and for how long. Because if you are one those patriotic arm-chair warriors who just had to stay home so you could get laid, get drunk, and get stoned, while getting an MBA in finance, shut the fuck up! If you had bone spurs, like our former Pussy in Chief, or flat feet that ache when you have to walk more than 100 yards, unless it’s on a golf course, or are prone to nasal congestion when forced to sleep on the ground, just shut the fuck up! You have nothing to say that I would be the least bit interested in hearing.

From our earliest days as a colony and then as a country, the United States: • suffered rampant mistrust among the regions and colonies, and then among the states, • was founded on the pillars of racial, ethnic, gender, and class discrimination and exploitation, • conferred status, privilege, and power only on old, wealthy, white, property-holding men, • valued capital and property over people and labor, • mistrusted and protected itself from true, direct, popular democracy, • devalued mass public education and utilized the resultant ignorance as a social and economic instrument, • favored violence over diplomacy as an everyday political, economic, and social tool, • espoused a narrow, rigid, cruel form of Christianity, and • prized individualism and greed over community and shared responsibility. And the US is still exactly like that. What ye sow in the spring, ye shall reap in the fall.

Hi fucking idiots, I am a slightly fat woman with big boobs. I am not pregnant. If you don't get that women can have bellies without being pregnant, you're a fucking idiot. IF YOU EXPRESS THAT OUT LOUD, YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT WHO SHOULD GET A LIFELONG UTI. This was a new one: a woman on the street looked at me and said, "I want to say congratulations, but I want to be careful in case you're not pregnant." When I told you I wasn't, you said, "Yeah, that's happened to me too." Really? It has? Did you not consider the option that the person who did that to you could have kept their motherfucking mouth SHUT and kept walking? Other people's bodies are 1000000000% NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY TO A WOMAN YOU THINK IS PREGNANT. IT COSTS NOTHING TO SHUT UP AND KEEP WALKING.

I Anonymous, would like to commend the incredible work the Portland news reporters have been doing covering the Portland State University protest. These men and woman are remaining professional, unbiased, and positive. The Fox 12, KOIN 6, KATU, and KGW reporters are top notch, and we as viewers really appreciate it truly. THANK YOU!

but..... I work hard and earn a decent salary. Much more than my partner. He is very hardworking but his chosen field and position in that field has him struggling often. I will never say this to him (because what kind of asshole would do that) but I often cant do things id like to with my partner because he either cant afford it or I am tired of paying for him. Do I have the right to feel like I work hard enough to be treated. I would love to be spoiled. I would obviously never specifically look for this trait in a man but I would at least like to be matched so we can do things together. My brain has rewired itself so much in this relationship that when he takes me out to eat, I can no longer enjoy it fully without that nagging part of my brain that says-can he afford this, is this meal going to make him unable to pay his bills later. Chances are yes because he doesn't have the best financial literacy but it has me overthinking a quality in a man i never have before. Because I really don't care about it until I do?

JROTC or Junior ROTC: a DOD program proposed for Portland schools. There are many reasons why not to embed this military recruitment program in our schools. Yet as our memory of past military misadventures fades, taking JROTC aboard may seem like no big deal. Nonetheless, I am distressed that JROTC teaches history(!) as part of its curriculum.

Will the students learn that many wars were wars of choice and subject to mission creep (e.g., bombing Cambodia)? Will they learn how often military leadership told whoppers, like Gen. Westmoreland’s seeing “the light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam? Will they know that marches through Portland in that era chanted: “Hey, hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” As my high schoolmates did, will they hear these lyrics, from the “Vietnam Song”: “One, two, three, four What are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam; Will instructors mention the “No Blood for Oil” slogan of the Gulf War I and II protests? Will students learn that Portland protests numbered 20,000 or more in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war? Will the classes discuss PTSD or traumatic brain injury (from roadside IED’s or the flash grenades used for house raids)?

I once worked at the VA, in mental health. One lecture example: a psychiatrist, who had some of his education paid for by the military, had been sent to Afghanistan. He regretted taking the money. Eisenhower warned against “…the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Do we want PPS to be part of this complex? The JROTC proposal is scheduled for the Portland school board meeting May 7th (6pm, 501 N Dixon St. Portland, PublicComment@pps.net). JROTC curriculum: https://www.usarmyjrotc.com/jrotc-curriculum-overview/

Do you remember those patriotic bumper stickers that say, “Support Our Troops”? Of course you do. Well, I hated those stickers and that message with every sphincter in my body. What I can’t abide is vacuous messaging and ritualistic posturing. And those stickers were guilty of both – in spades. You see, the stickers did not signify solidarity with America’s fighting men and women. If it did, veterans wouldn’t be made to wait for years for medical care at Veterans’ Administration hospitals. They wouldn’t be one the biggest subgroups of America’s burgeoning homeless population, roaming the streets in tattered clothes, badly needing a bath, and searching for food in dumpsters. They wouldn’t have the highest suicide rate of any demographic group in the country. Instead, they would have excellent health care, educational opportunities, adequate housing, and good jobs. No, what those stickers solicit is support for the chickenshit politicians who start criminal wars to prop up the wealth-generating and sequestering machines of the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else, especially veterans. Putting the stickers on bumpers is just a mindless ritual, conveying no more legitimate concern than saying “Thank you for your service.” It’s an all too easy way to show insincere appreciation for the sacrifice of veterans, without actually having to think about all the wars our country has fought with no positive return on its vast, catastrophic human investment. It’s a way to pretend to assume a portion of responsibility, albeit tiny and symbolic, for the plight of veterans, without actually having to do anything to help them. Support Our Troops is a mantra, repeated by bleating sheep, slavishly devoted to the shepherd who leads them to the slaughter, to the meat-processing plants of the American war-making machine.

Clarity is a simple word used to describe a simple concept. The dictionary defines it as: “the quality of being coherent and intelligible.” The purpose of communication is to impart information, or perhaps to persuade someone to do or not to do something through the application of a well-reasoned argument. It would seem that both ends would be served by clarity. And since humans rely on communication as the basis of their social pattern of existence, clarity should be as common as air. So why is it such a rare commodity? I think it might be the persuade part of the definition that dominates and undermines the communication part. We humans want what we want and will generally say what we must to get it. Thus, clarity becomes an obstacle to manipulation, an impediment to self-service. All too often, clarity dies in the throat, is swallowed into the stomach, and processed to dung in the gut. When this happens, you have shit coming out of both ends.

Evolution is quirky. On the face of it, the genetically fittest survive long enough to reproduce faster and better, so their genes come to dominate the species gene pool. That works, that is, until the process produces an organ, the human brain, that is able to reverse-engineer genetic progress. Then things go to shit in a flash. Why? Because that organ evolves non-biologically faster than its host ever could through gene mutation and natural selection. Progress is no longer environmentally directed. It becomes socially defined. The result? Humans who vote against their legitimate self-interests. Humans who embrace conspiracies while eschewing logic and reason, evidence and facts, history, science, and mathematics. You end up with MAGA Republicans and the Orange Pustule on a dead rat’s ass they revere as their Chosen-One Leader. You arrive at your final destination: a post-fact, no-reality-testing world. Social selection over biological selection. Game over.

This morning I saw a picture of Trump sitting at the defendant’s table at his criminal trial in New York. I thought to myself, this bloated chump of ours is all veneer. I ask myself, how can someone so fat be so thin at the same time? Our forever-blond boy is the shimmer that obscures the rot; he is the gloss that masks the dearth of substance. He is MAGA: a Mirage Announcing Grand Artifice. He is a Kodak snapshot of America: a crinkled, faded, poorly focused dream of good; a razor-sharp image of goodness betrayed. Sometimes I catch myself wondering how you apply a veneer to thin air. That must be a pretty neat trick. I ask myself, what if veneer is all there is? Is he all veneer? Are we?

I worked for you for five years. You gave me raises and promotions. The whole team took pictures with my toddler daughter at our all staff meeting. Carrying her around like a little football. Later, a group of teenage girls disguised as middle aged women you hired came forward and told you they want me gone so they can hire their friends. I told you two weeks ago that my husband has cancer and I’m pregnant with my second baby. So you fired me. You couldn’t look me in the face when you did it. You are the smallest man in the world.