ICE(d) IN THE TIME OF CORONA(virus)

What a strange and turbulent time we’re living in right now. People who have always hated their jobs are busy protesting at state capitals to open them back up so that they can get back to bitching about how they hate their job, only now with the added bonus of possibly transmitting a deadly virus. 

But really, I get the frustration. First and foremost, people are hurting. The Economy in general is tanking but on an individual level, we all have bills to pay and things that we need to survive that all cost money, money that we can’t make if our employer can’t operate. On top of that a lot of people are put into the position of helping their children navigate the new online learning environment which, as some have pointed out, has really shown parents that teachers may not be the problem. But it’s also added stress to families in a tough and unprecedented time. 

In short, everything about the time of Corona kind of sucks.

So, last week (maybe it was last month…what is time anymore?!) my brother was busy catching up on his Facebook, it had been several minutes since he last checked it, and discovered a video of people driving around “Icing” their neighbors. Now if you’re not familiar with “icing” it is the act of hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice malt liquor somewhere you know someone will find it and when they do, they have to get down on one knee and chug the whole thing. Now there are several other variations to the rules, but that’s the basics.

When we were in college we heard of people hiding them in the tank of toilets and then disconnecting the flush valve chain so that when you would take the tank cover off you would see the Ice and have to chug it. People are pretty creative with this little game.

Now these people in the video obviously weren’t partying at a house or even in large groups, because quite frankly that would be pretty damn stupid with everything that’s going on, but instead they were driving around, leaving Ice on doorsteps, ringing the bell and getting back in their cars to video it. Social Distance Icing…amazing. 

Ryan and I were bored. We had spent the day hanging out with two of the coolest kids around (my niece and nephew) and Ryan wanted to get out of the house. We weren’t drinking but honestly, we really have been missing our friends. Be it the ones we generally get together and play basketball with every Sunday, or the game night crowd or so many others that we just wanted to check in with so we figured, what the hell.

 We loaded up the twins (Ryan’s father of the year mug is in the mail), made a quick stop at the liquor store and we were off. 

Ryan’s definitely the more adventurous one when it comes to stuff like this, and I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive about the whole ordeal when we first started but we got to the first friend’s house and he took down the Ice like a champ and from a distance we were even able to chat with him for a little bit. At the next house our friends, a married couple, competed with the wife kicking her husband’s butt with nothing but smiles during the whole experience. We then stopped at a friend’s place who does daycare. She still had kids there but her husband was also home, so we set him up and as soon as we left the wife made us promise to come back to get her later! 

We hit several other friends until we finally ran out of Ice, and what we found was that something we all used to hate getting done to us was something that was now such a great excuse to share a few laughs over and even get to chat and check in with each other to make sure we were all doing alright. 

We have some friends who have some more severe medical conditions to consider during this time which we figured it would be best to avoid completely right now, but thanks to online platforms like Zoom and House Party, we are still able to check in with them and see how they’re doing. In fact, if you haven’t used those platforms to get together with friends, you’re missing out. We’ve gotten together with our college buddies on Zoom a couple of times here and last weekend, my buddy TJ and I decided to close down the party just like old times, via Zoom. The only difference was that when we were in college one of us would go use the bathroom and the other one would just kind of hang out at the booth until they got back but this time when I came back from using the facility TJ was filling his face with smoked pork butt in his kitchen. 

Covid-19, Coronavirus, has been a terrible thing for us as a country and for pretty much everyone on earth to have to go through, but I think it’s important that we remember that we’re in this together and although times are difficult we have to take advantage of all that is still good, even great that we still can. 

I miss my friends, I miss hanging out with them and having a few beers, or working on projects, or raising a ton of money for cancer research. It looks like it’ll be a while before we can do any of that again together, so in the meantime get yourself a case of Smirnoff Ice, go knock on a few of your friend’s doors and show them you’re still thinking of them. It’s not a hug, but in the time of corona, it’s what we’ve got.

Tales from Garner Academy

Hey folks! Wow, it’s been a while. A lot has happened since my last post way back in August of 2014. Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn, John Snow rose from the dead, and Manny, the boys, and I are now Montanans. And then you have COVID-19. Holy smokes, it’s a crazy world!

I mean, this is weird. Life as we knew it has flipped upside down. When times are strange, I like to focus on the positive. So it only seems fitting to find the positives in this nutso situation. Hang on gang, we can do this!

Friday the 13^th (of March) marked the last “normal” day in the Garner household. The day started off like every other weekday, I dropped the boys (aka #1 & #2) off at school and Manny and I went to work like usual. There were rumors that things were going to shut down – and shut down soon. In my crazy brain I couldn’t comprehend the fact that schools and business were about to close their doors. Would this mean that I would now need to “teach” my kids with this new concept called distance learning? For anybody that knows me, knows that is laughable at best!

But here we are, one month in and we’ve officially opened Garner Academy. Turns out that it’s not that bad. That is, until your 3^rd grader’s math homework has you scrambling to figure out geometry. I mean, who can remember the difference between and acute and obtuse angle? (I'm the only one that can't remember? Ok, fine…) Thanks to Google I was able to help him muddle through that assignment.

Speaking of technology, we have this snazzy device called an Amazon Alexa. Turns out she’s great at fact checking homework answers. So great, in fact, that I’m quite certain that #1 was able to complete a lot of his work last week with her help while I was holed up in our home office trying to get my work done. Manny calls it cheating, I call it tutoring. Tomato, tomahto. #2 hasn’t quite caught on to the “Alexa helpdesk” concept, so there’s a silver lining. (Although, my guess is he isn’t too far behind his big brother in that department!)

Keeping it classy during my Zoom meetings

Another benefit of this shelter in place stuff is not having to get dressed in “actual” clothes. I knew there was a reason I have approximately 1,000 pairs of leggings and yoga pants (even though I don’t yoga). I haven’t wore pants with fasteners in weeks. My kids have been living in pj’s, and that’s ok. Less laundry is #winning at its best. I also don’t have to get myself ready to see anyone other than my immediate family. That is, unless I’ve got a video conference. But I’ve found a fun way around that too! (Side note: how awesome are my co-workers? They all joined in on my crazy fun with looks of their own!) 

Even my office mates can't escape the costumes

My home office also is Manny’s hunting gear storage facility. I’ve gained a bunch of new office mates. Turns out they’re not very talkative… but what they lack in conversation, they make up for in style. 

Just when being holed up at home was becoming stale, Manny found a way to jazz things up. Back in September Manny shot a rather large bull elk. The good news is we have enough elk meat to last us through the apocalypse. The bad other news? He brought the thing to the taxidermist. He was like a kid on Christmas when the guy called him to tell him it was ready. The dude even had to lend Manny his enclosed trailer to get the thing home because it wouldn’t fit in the bed of our truck. (You can probably see where this is going…) Needless to say, it took us all night to get the monster hung up on our wall. We’re officially accepting name suggestions. 

Introducing "the Beast"... and yes, that's me trying to hide from it!

Sure, our living room may look like a scene out of Tiger King, but Manny and the boys are pretty jazzed. Meanwhile, the dog and I are trying not to get alarmed every time we walk by it. We will be working on the Garner Bar & Grill while everything is closed, so once life returns to normal please come to Helena visit us! We may even set up a selfie station with the beast and provide commemorative photos for each visitor.

Do we all wish life could go back to normal? Heck. Yes. But sitting at home and moping about sitting at home isn’t going to get you very far. Plus, it’s giving all of us time to get caught up on finally cleaning out those closets, playing every board game we own, and watching Tiger King. (The details of which, could very easily generate enough content for its own post.)

Who knows, maybe this whole thing is Carole Baskin’s fault.

Stay healthy and sane, my friends!

Unhinged and Uncreative

It’s been some time since I’ve attempted this so bear with me. Despite the advice from one of my favorite authors here my first post will undoubtedly be a little “unhinged.”

My last post on this little creative space we’ve set up was over four years ago and a lot has happened since then including my lack of positivity which unfortunately can certainly be attributed to many things but mostly, if there was one turning point, it would have to be the election of the narcissist-in-chief. Call me a snowflake, “libtard” or whatever else derogatory term he’s made so commonplace now but I honestly thought we as a country were better than what that man represents and for the longest time I felt that silence was better than really putting out there how I felt about situations that were arising due to the current leader of the free country. 

But the thing with creativity, at least for me, is that I feed off of what’s around me and for the past four years there has certainly been a greater negativity surrounding our country. People are tearing each other apart on social media due to their political views and posting so many false news articles that we as a country have begun to treat anything printed, as an untrue story. 

But the fact of the matter is that most major print publications are actually doing a pretty decent job right now. We tend to look at opinion news such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC as legitimate sources for information but they’re running a 24 hour “news” cycle which is based almost solely on varied opinions, and if you don’t hear what you want on a topic on one station you can simply change to the one that aligns with your views and you can share stories and articles from this opinion based news source as concrete facts to all of your friends.

I think some of us forgot the basics of reporting, and I’m not talking about the news cycle, I’m talking about way back when you were in school and worked on reports and had to cite your sources. Generally, you had to support your paper with at least three legitimate sources, and most of us nowadays seem to think that any and all sources are apparently legitimate, even if that source is “RuinALibsDay.org.” Do yourself and everyone else a favor, if you read a story that you want to be true so that you can share that your opinion is right and true, take 5 seconds to Google it and see what you come up with first.

Under Trump we have become meaner, less empathetic, and further divided, and I have lost some of the faith that I’ve always carried in this great country of ours. The thing I keep trying to remind myself is that even though he is our President, less than half of the people who actually voted, voted for him. And looking at the larger picture, only about 60% of registered voters in the country voted at all, so that means that less than 30% of our population wanted (want) this man as our President. But to listen to his loyal followers, or himself, you would think he won by a unanimous decision. Now I’m not disappointed in the people who voted for him, or the ones who continue to back him despite rants like his most recent about how he voted by mail for a Florida election but that mail voting is a terrible practice…I’m disappointed in the parties and the turds they’ve put forth for us to vote for in the first place. I’m disappointed that out of all the possible candidates somehow we elected one who makes America hate again. I’m disappointed because I used to be able to look around and see all of the good in this country and lately it’s hard to see through the hate.

When Trump was first elected the kids on my bus were pretty excited. Many of their parents had obviously supported him leading up to the election and they were taking their cues from them. I’ve always been really open with the kids and am more than willing to discuss with them serious issues if they want to, in this case I expressed my concerns with them about how I felt like he may set a bad example for them and change the opinion of many people around the world as to who we are as a people. It took about two weeks of him being President before some of these very enthusiastic, one day voters, started to see him for who he really is, but it has taken many others much longer.

I hate that my return to blogging is a political post, but to me it’s more of an airing of grievances, an explanation as to why it’s taken me four years to get back behind the keyboard and start to think creatively again. I promise that future posts will be dedicated to seeing the positive in this world, which I’m getting better at each day here, but for now I just need you all to trust the process as they say. 

I am glad to be back writing again, and I know there are so many great days ahead for BD&LL as well as our country despite our current situation and the uncertainty that this pandemic has brought our way. 

I personally have been reading a ton, and in future posts will discuss some of the books and authors that have helped me to gain a better understanding about many of the issues that interest me and hopefully turn some of our readers onto some really great authors and books. 

Here's some Interesting Reads for you this week:

• Parents Are Not OK
• The Unique Sadness of Mourning the Musicians Who Helped Us Grieve
• Boredom is a Pit Stop

I’ve talked to some of our past contributors who are gearing up for the reprisal with Mike and I and hopefully we can get back to bringing you some laughs, food for thought, and just some positive things in a world that could really use more of that right now. Thanks for staying with us (and in this case me) during our hiatus and this unhinged first piece of mine, here’s to better days ahead!

Thanks for reading,

Jason

"Well, fuck...idk."

Well. This is certainly fucked up. 

I think we’re all about done with life lessons right now. We’re not cuz of nature. But personally, I’m sure we’re all pretty much done. I’m not good at false hope. I was trained in science after all. I don’t even have my usual sarcastic wit to hit you all with, it feels pretty flat lately. 

It’s all pretty visceral. Pretty real. Pretty shitty. So if I’m not good at hope. Here are some things I want.

1. Fuck your political party. And fuck you if you think that your political party identifies you or identifies with you. On the former, it should not, on the later, it doesn’t: the men, women, and everything beyond & between, don’t give a flying fuck about you. They are after power and we must treat them as such. Say their names. Clinton. Trump. Obama. Bush. Reagan. Carter. If that list is black & white, right & wrong, good & evil.. then the political game has been won. By them. You lost. 
2. Stop believing in conspiracy theories, pseudo science, unverifiable “evidence” and arguments. It’s true, facts don’t care about your feelings but where are you getting your facts? From a news agency that tells you the comfortable things you wanna hear that align with your already held beliefs? In fact, science hates facts - I still got some ironic humor eh? “Laws” and “facts” are tentatively held theories until they are proven otherwise. BUT THIS DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE JUST THEORIES. They are our best translation of the truth - nature - and if you wanna knock a theory, you gotta show it. Newton was right until Einstein and then mostly still right - 318 years later. You got the goods for that playing field? Then STFU.
3. I love you. I seriously do. It’s true, I don’t like most people. But loving and liking are two completely different things to anyone who's lived through their teens and twenties. I wanna give the youth some credit, but some of you were out licking door knobs on spring break in Miami during this shit show, so I am not sorry and you’re wrong about so many things. I’m especially talking to you, 22 year old me.
4. I have every belief that we’re gonna get through this. But this one is gonna hurt. And my Hope - yes, hope - is that business won’t be as usual. You wanna live in a democracy? Then be a god damn citizen. Jury duty sucks. Voting sucks. Taking time to figure out the issues, read things, find credible information, all sucks. We’re spoiled, our parents were spoiled, their parents were probably spoiled. We all got the U.S. in the life lottery. Good for us. None of us have had to do much for it. In fact, we don’t like the idea of community or civic responsibility. Voting is the easiest damn thing there is compared to serving in the armed forces, being a refugee, a prisoner of war or politics, but most of us can’t be bothered with it. You wanna get out of jury duty cuz it sucks? Then don’t live here. You don’t wanna pay taxes? Then don’t live here. You don’t like how tax dollars are spent? Do your research AND GO FUCKING VOTE. Democracy is only as good as it’s populace. And we suck.
5. This is scary. If it’s not scary, you don’t have the current figures. You haven’t listened to doctors. And I’m struggling. But I also know that we can’t live in fear. That fear is the biggest thing to fear. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family members. All from a responsible social-distance. Find those things that connect you. The things that matter. Don’t be afraid to be real with them, don’t be afraid to share your feelings. Don’t be afraid. Time is a construct and even then, we never have any of it anyway.
6. I love you.

Goodnight. 

~Mikey

Abandon Ship!?

BD&LL?

This shit still work? Has anyone paid the fucking light bill? The custodian? Yelled at the neighbor kids about smoking blunts because it upsets the dogs? This place smells like an abandoned locker room and poorly aged bullshit. What happened to our grandiose blog about life lessons and irresponsible day drinking? Does Mason still work here? Did we hire a caretaker to water the succulents while we decided to fuck off to nowhere to be lazy because writing is too damn hard? I could of sworn we had a cat. Clearly we’ve had squatters, but I don’t think they published anything unfortunately. At least there would have been some outward appearance of activity here. So it goes, Mr. Vonnegut often reminds us. So it fucking goes, as I think of it. Just seems better when you have to use so many cuss words.

We really only had 3 stools and a couch that was never good for anyone’s health to sit on. Squatters took the couch, thank the almighty, but I’ll do my best to dust off the stools and set them aright. I’ll clear out the beer cans and the cigarette butts and the moldy trash can liners and blow the dust off the few books we could afford to line the shelves with. But I’m far from meticulous and I’m working in a chaotic space so don’t expect the following to adhere to thematic presentation with thesis arguments and page numbers and figures and bibliographies. I’m just passing through because I had to use the john and it seems the place could use a little dust up and in doing so, I’ll write some stuff on the walls while I meander around. I doubt the central air works but I’ll open the windows and let the spiders in. Besides, the squatters didn’t find this old whiskey bottle and “if you plan to cheat the devil, you owe him an offering.”

A lot of times we talked about current events so just to sort of “go through the motions” of what it is we used to do, here’s some of my thoughts on the condition of our current condition:

-Racism, still alive and well, has started having more spawn points, and the fiends are getting stronger and braver. Of course this is difficult for many of us to see and hear about, especially the collateral damage of racist beliefs and actions. On the other hand, we gain real insight when we stop pretending and admit there’s a problem. Once we can go there, then we can dress the wound and find some remedy and begin to heal. We need to talk to each other, see each other, and listen actively. I don’t know if that’ll be enough, but it’ll be a helluva improvement from our current trajectory.

-We seem really angry about shit lately. Instant gratification, instant information, instant indulgence is eroding our ability to digest, process, dream, heal, and meditate. Our anger is as instant as our love, as our hate, as our apathy, as our attention span. We give in to divisive persuasion too easily as our news has become entertainment while our consumption drive becomes unattainable. We can’t keep up with the Jones’, we can’t even keep current on our mortgage. And while we’re all fired up about what fucking bathroom someone should use, the world burns around us.

-If you let fountain Coke get warm and sit around awhile, it sort of tastes like mold. 1/10, would not recommend.

-Racism and anger and fear, these are all demons and while we must fight off our demons, we can still learn things from them, question them, and “don’t give in to their logic” as my good friend Dr. A.M. Lazer once told me. Face them down and many times I find them to be much smaller than first perceived, much less powerful, and even their once mighty bark cannot mask their feeble frame.

-There’s too much suicide. Good, solid people who contributed much to the fabric of our culture are leaving us and it seems endemic. If you love someone, don’t believe their bullshit, but also show them your love, your admiration, your pride in them. We’re too hard on ourselves and don’t show enough appreciation for those around us.

-We’re all too offended by shit these days. Especially those of us who are offended about those being offended by something. It’s okay to not have a position on something; to question it, to think about it, mull it over, and to constantly reevaluate. Just because some news anchor or dude on a podcast or the talk radio figures have an absolute position on something doesn’t mean you have to as well. It’s important to have a moral compass but it’s also important that the compass is calibrated from time to time.

-The lesson I’m learning most lately is this: being open and honest with others is terrifying and you are definitely opening yourself up to embarassment and pain and possible betrayal but there is also the chance that you’ll connect on a more meaningful level, and experience incredible connectivity to those around you. We hide from each other too much. I think it would be better if we drop pretentious facades more quickly, more often, more easily. It’s a good practice in humanism. This doesn’t mean you can trust everyone equally or in equal measure. That’s your call.

The whisky is running out and the lights are definitely not working. If I find myself in the neighborhood again, I’ll bring some of those new car scent air fresheners shaped like a poorly drawn pine tree and I’ll probably being packing. This neighborhood is sketchy as fuck when the sun goes down.

Mikey
6.8.2018
From the abandoned offices of BD&LL

Who the Hell is Phil Vassar?

I recently purchased a laptop to make it easier for me to get my thoughts down in this blog whenever I feel like writing a little something, but with so much going on still with elections, protests, and everything else that divides us, I’ve had a tough time finding motivation to actually write anything. I’ve definitely had more thoughts on these subjects recently, but as I’ve written on so many controversial topics lately, I just was looking for something positive to write about.

I tend to ‘feel big’ when it comes to issues that we’ve been dealing with lately and it’s pretty easy to get depressed when you see so much negativity slung back and forth amongst your friends and neighbors. I’ve always tried to make a conscious effort to research things I don’t know much about rather than just relying on Facebook, Twitter or any other source of information that can be manipulated by straight opinion over fact and I’m currently reading a few books to help me to better understand a few of these things which I will discuss in a future post, but for this post I wanted to get back to the Banana Daiquiris of this blog. 

After dealing with so many serious issues for a while here, I felt it was time to let loose a bit and talk about a recent positive experience I had with my cousin Scott.

A week ago my cousin Scott had come from Fort Worth, Texas to come and see his mom and his dad (who is currently battling cancer). They were always the closest (geographically) relatives we had and consequently they were more like brothers and sister to us than anything. 

When I first started going to college in Moorhead, Scott was subbing and living in Fargo and eventually took a job with the railroad. In the short time that he was there, we spent a ton of time together and got even closer. We could certainly still find ways to get into plenty of trouble together and one of my funniest memories is of him being the drunkest guy at my 21st birthday and telling my mom how beautiful she was and then kissing her! The night continued down those lines for a while until Scott disappeared only to show up jumping on my bed at 6am telling me to wake up because he just got out of the drunk tank and my neighbor, his girlfriend, was not too impressed with him.

From Fargo, Scott followed the BNSF career to Wichita, Kansas where he continued to move up the ladder for the company, and even found a girl willing to marry him! His brother, my cousin Mike (who I have no doubt would literally kill someone for me) joined Scott in Kansas and found himself an awesome girl as well not too far from where Scott had found his wife Michelle…with Amanda, Michelle’s sister! Both girls are awesome people and holidays are now so much easier for all of them!

Scott eventually got another promotion and is now residing in beautiful Fort Worth, Texas (I actually have no clue how pretty it is as I keep telling him I’m coming to see him but just never do because I’m apparently really busy…). Somewhere along the line my cousin, who grew up 20 miles away from me, has developed a southern drawl and a love for country music (apparently).

When Scott made the trip up to check in with his dad (who seems to be gaining strength every day), he made a special point to come over and see us in Red Lake Falls. With my school bus driving I was only able to make it out to lunch with him but I had suggested that he come back later and we could go see the band that our buddy Jesse had playing at his bar, but Scott had wanted to see a guy who happened to be playing at the Casino in Mahnomen, MN for quite some time and asked if I would be interested in coming with him. The guy’s name was Phil Vassar and I had never heard of him.

After a quick Google search I found out that this Phil Vassar was a country musician and I am not a country music fan by any means (Zach Brown is the only band I like at all). I told my cousin that I wasn’t very interested in a country show, but he guaranteed that I would know some of his music for sure and that I would like it. I hadn’t done anything sporadic for a while, so a random country music concert at a casino with one of my favorite cousins sounded like something that had to be interesting and hopefully memorable.

After my route, I drove the 20 miles to my aunt and uncles place and had a nice visit with them and stole a slice of pizza, then Scott and I were off to my second country music concert ever (the first was to hang out with a girl…the sacrifices we make).

I figured that we were in for a good show when the first people I saw after getting a couple of drinks was one of the craziest guys I knew in college…but that was a long time ago and he happened to be with his pregnant wife. So I guess the jury was still out…what was I in store for?

My go to move when I’m forced to listen to country music at all is to listen to all the words and drink copious amounts of alcohol (I think that’s what all country music is about, right? That and T-Swifts latest breakup.), so I was starting to get a little buzz going when Phil first showed up on stage. I had never seen the guy before in my life, so I wasn’t sure who exactly the lead singer was before he started rocking (or countrying?) out on his piano, and although I wasn’t familiar with the song, he was pretty darn good and not at all the country I was expecting.

As the night went on Scott kept saying, “oh, you’ll know this one.” But I never did. He did play some other popular songs, as well as some Christmas songs which I was familiar with, but even though I didn’t know the music, it wasn’t bad and the guy really put on a good show. If I have a complaint it would be that he never brought his biggest fan (see video below) onto the stage. This guy literally danced the entire show except when security told him he had to sit, at which point we tried to start a, “let him dance!” chant which really fizzled out before it got going. But time heals all wounds, and before long he was back up dancing and doing his thing.

The one person Phil did bring on stage was a birthday girl, probably around his age, who did her best to put the moves on him while he sang her a song. Scott and I ran into her and her husband after the show in the casino and he did not seem too impressed when we asked he if she got a room key from Mr. Vassar.

If I wasn’t having a good time hanging out with my cousin, watching the dancing man, and all the random people dressed up as elves and other Christmas characters, I would have changed that when Phil played his final song of the night…Purple Rain. If there was ever a guy who knew his audience, it was Phil Vassar. The crowd went crazy, I tried to video tape it but eventually the music just took over and I had to be the crazy Prince fan that I am.

After the show Scott and I decided to keep the night going a little bit by stopping in the Casino bar for another couple of beers and to listen to the band that they had playing in there. At this point I’m not sure how good the band was, but they looked like they hadn’t changed their wardrobe or hairstyle since the 70’s and totally rocked it (literally this time). They played a ton of Fleetwood Mac and other 70’s and 80’s rock tunes and said they had just opened for someone like ZZ Top or someone not too long ago. I’ll be honest, the details at this point are starting to get a little fuzzy…I hope there really was a band.

At one point while Scott and I were enjoying what I hope was a band and not a hallucination, a pretty girl came up to chat with us. She apparently either took her mom to the show, or her mom took her, either way she was probably in her early 20’s and still trying to fit into a bar scene…but she was with her mom.

She came up to our table (still with her mom) and was kind of flirting a bit with us and asked us how old we were, at which point I told her 30 for some reason (apparently I thought shaving 3 years off my age would convince her and her mom that it would be cool to have her come 60 miles back with me to good old Red Lake Falls?!). But as she continued to talk with us she lit up a cigarette (you can still smoke in the reservation casinos - which is disgusting) and proceeded to fake smoke (take a quick drag but don’t inhale, then immediately blow the smoke out). When she began to “smoke,” her mom immediately started in on her about how bad it was for her and then went on to kind of rag on her for not doing it right anyway, which really was quite funny! Pretty soon my oldness started creeping in as well, and I was sounding much closer in age to her mom than her (which was probably the case). I began my whole, “smoking is bad and one day you’ll regret it. We all have to go through that rebellion stage but someday soon you’ll realize how dumb it is,” old man thing. 

I’m actually pretty surprised she didn’t take me right there on the casino bar floor.

I wish this story would end with me making some sweet moves on this girl and the night getting really interesting; maybe we meet up with Phil and just continue to tear it up into the next day, gamble all of the shows receipts on black jack, lose it all then just continue to party. Join Phil’s tour, become a full roadie, learn an instrument, join the band and eventually take over for Phil himself…but I had to drive bus the next day again, so we hung out at the casino for a while to sober up, played some black jack (I did win a bit), then headed back to my aunt and uncle’s place, grabbed my car and headed home.

The nights aren’t quite as wild as they once were, but they can still be random and fun. I tend to not go out as much as I used to, and that’s certainly alright with me as I am undoubtedly getting a bit older every day, but whenever my cousin Scott comes to town I am still more than willing to throw caution and common sense to the wind and do whatever comes our way…even if that means attending a country music concert. This night showed me that I’m still young enough to rock and roll, but also old enough to lecture pretty girls at the bar about the poor choices they are making…all but ensuring that one of those poor choices won’t be me.

Truth be Told

This is not a credible news source. I do not generally start off my posts with statements like this, but after all of the fake news sources and stories being spread throughout Facebook during the past election and continuing still, I’m not sure what people believe anymore.

Throughout the election I kept seeing posts from people which obviously came from right or left minded groups but were easy to spread because they were written to agree with what the person sharing them wanted to believe, even if they weren’t true. I, like many Americans, made the false assumption that this was a minority of people, that the majority of our country had had to do a book report or two in their educational career and knew the importance of citing legitimate sources. I believed that after being told that these stories were not in fact 100% true, and in some cases not true at all, that people would look into it a little more and then feel silly, but would be more careful with what they posted and shared moving forward. But to be honest, I felt that they were so obviously false that I didn’t even need to say anything…as it turns out, I was wrong.

Here is a clip from the John Oliver show which you really should watch. It’s about a 30 minute segment so make sure you have some time to watch it all (you can maybe skip the last 5 minutes where they just run a montage of people saying “fuck 2016”) but the rest is really good, and depending on your hope for America, kind of sad:

If you don’t want to watch, here is some of the quality information taken from the show:

62% of America says they get their news from Social Media

44% of Americans get their news from Facebook specifically

Of the sites most shared on Facebook which sway towards the Right or Left, 38% of the Republican sites and 19% of the Democrat sites were found to contain some falsities or be a completely false reporting of facts and events. (A key here would be that any % is bad, Democrats aren’t better just because they have a smaller percentage, 19% is still way too much!)

The problem with these sites (Here’s a link to check out some of the ones people have identified) is that a lot of people are taking them as facts; I’m not the only one who made the mistake that people truly would be able to decipher the difference.

In Oliver’s show he talks about how President-Elect Trump even cited false data from stories during his campaign and when called out he responded, “What do I know about it, all I know is what’s on the internet.”

But he also fueled these fake news organizations with the things he was saying on stage at his rally’s and during the Presidential debates, one stat that was grossly falsified was when Trump claimed that 81% of whites were killed by blacks in gun deaths, when the accurate number was actually 15%. A claim that Bill O’Reilly called Trump out on.

The sad thing about all of this is not that it led to the election of Trump (It may have been one of the factors, but there were definitely more), but that we are willing to defend these sites as cold hard facts even after they are proven to be false. It has caused us to have a mistrust for the media (which isn’t entirely unwarranted) but most of the false claims aren’t coming from trusted sources such as The New York Times, Washington Post, or some of the other big papers out there. They’re coming from sources as listed on the link above and because of that we no longer trust papers that actually give a damn about the truth. Can they choose who to back and report more on positive stuff that they agree with? Absolutely. But they hold themselves to a higher standard whereas, even if that is the case, you can rest assured that the story will be truthful.

One of the underlying problems here is Facebook and social media in general. It has obviously evolved into a news source rather than just a gathering spot for individuals to share craft ideas, recipes, and give each other crap about fantasy football or deer hunting. My friend Chris had posted an article on Facebook, about Facebook (where I get my news)…my head may blow up…where they talk about it being time for Facebook to start to try and do something about this large stream of false news being propagated throughout their medium (HERE’s the link). When I first read the article another RLF native had commented that it would be a slippery slope, which I completely agreed with…but then I opened my eyes more to what was happening on the web site.

Each day I would log on and see so many of these false stories being shared and re-shared and commented on as fact and I was worried for where our country might lead if this is how we get our “news.” I thought maybe I should start to attempt to do something about it, so I started to comment on a few about how the story was false and then I would link to an actual news source for back up, or if someone just presented data, I asked for their source so that I could check it out.

The first one where I provided an actual news source didn’t have any follow up responses as of when I last checked here, but the second one where I asked for their source was what really got me.

The post claimed that Trump had won the popular as well as the electoral vote (which isn’t true – Clinton was up over 700,000 in the popular vote as of this posting) and was very detailed, going through the numbers in each state to show that Trump was the overall winner. The post also said, now we can stop the debate, here are the facts!

So I commented on the post, “Not that it makes any difference because Trump won the Electoral College and is in fact our President-Elect, but I was just wondering where you found this information as there has been a lot of false news reports out there and I am just looking for Trust Worthy sources.”

Obviously I was being a bit condescending as I knew the information to be false, but I just wanted people to start to think about checking their sources a little more.

The response: The person deleted my comment.

I would have been fine with them deleting the post, I would have been fine with them deleting my comment and then saying in their post, “according to …..” to show where they found the information, but by deleting the very question as to the source of the material the person was willfully spreading lies, in which case they were no better than the fake “news” outlet in which they were spreading falsities. So is the power of Facebook. People who read his post who do not question it will share it as fact and will debate it with fury, but the truth is we’re no better than the people who are trying to profit off of advertising revenue generated by these false sites, the only difference is they’re running a business and we’re running from the truth.

Next time you have to help your child with a book report and have to find at least three credible sources to support your claims, please do me a favor and cite some of the sites you are posting about on Facebook. Let’s see how it turns out when the site doesn’t hold out in academia but is spouted as truth to your friends and family on social media.

Think it doesn’t matter? Kids come on my bus telling me that Hillary wanted to take everyone’s guns away…show me a credible article where she states that. Now remember that the next Presidential election will be held in 2020, so the kids I see on my bus, 14 and up, they’ll be part of the voting process…let us just hope they have the gull to actually know that they are voting based on facts rather than what “100% Fed Up” or “Occupy Democrats” is reporting as facts. Let them learn from our mistakes, and let us start to question our sources once again.

We get to choose the media we read and believe, the results of the this past election may have been swayed by false news sites, but in reality we have no one but ourselves to blame. We demand better from our youth, it’s time that we start to demand better from ourselves. I know the slogan for terrorism is; “If you see something, say something.” So if you really want to protest, let’s protest these false sites by calling them out. But don’t just yell at your friends and tell them they’re wrong; point them in the right direction. Check their source and then find out if it’s accurate or if you find it not to be, point them in the direction of where they can find accurate information. It will be hard as people are pretty sensitive to being told they’re wrong (especially after finding a “news source” that specifically tells them they’re right) but be persistent…the fate of our democracy lies in our hands.