Risque Whiskey or Risky Whisky

So I recently wanted to get some more writing experience, help my efforts trying to network in that industry. Their was an open position for a website called The Whiskey Wash. They have not answered back after multiple attempts at contact which is fine open positions got to have a lot of people applying for it one would figure maybe I just don’t cut it. I hate to have it happen, but one can move on.

Except something caught my attention. I’m a fan of whiskey and on the web site itself their were two spellings of the word. One with the “E”and one without which I thought were strange. Normally that would dictate that someone would have majorly screwed up. It is rare though for something like a specialty site to do that so I did some research.

For anyone who reads this blog they will find I spell it w-h-i-s-k-e-y. This is the spelling found on many American and all Irish and since my whiskey experiences stem from the Jack Daniels and Jameson brands over my two and a half decades on this planet, and that would be why it seemed strange to me. W-h-i-s-k-y is the spelling used by Canada, Japan, and Scotland. If there are any other countries then I am sorry I just do not know which one you use, no insult meant.

Some people actually get legitimately angry about it like the inclusion of a single “E” can throw all their good memories they ever had with it in to the river. Going so far to insult those who use the spelling in reference to the wrong original country. Now with writing some people will only look at it and go..

“Huh, they got multiple spellings here, they can’t know about what they are writing about.”

Nope, there is a reason although it is slightly strange to see two different spellings on the same website over and again.

Black Lives Do Not Matter

I wanted to do a game post again, but that will be the next one. If you were expecting some half baked goof ball then my suggestion would be to wait a a few days, and I will do my best to have it up for you. It seems there has been something else sitting forefront on my thoughts, and doing so in a way that will not allow much else to be done until it has been expressed. I know some of my other posts may have had some badly thought out puns or a quip, but I think here I will not use such things. First, let me go over something that some people are angry about and let me give you my opinion.

Black lives do not matter.

Black lives do not matter because one group of people cannot have their lives try to matter more then anyone else’s. To have people chanting it, making it a hashtag, blowing up social media with it makes me a little depressed for the sake of our culture. Personally I can’t care less about what skin tone someone has on whatever particular day, because it is not something that really is important. Their culture is important, their background, context, political views, loves, hates, targets of affection and disdain are all important while skin tone simply is not. Unless you are trying to dress up to the best of your own aesthetic creating ability and aesthetic calculation aside color does not make something matter any more or less in my eyes, and for the eyes of many others.

Now, before someone goes down some fairly used set of responses pertaining to their own tragedy let me tell you something about myself, just so you understand who I am. I have tragedy befall me as so many others have had, and some would say even more so. I have had to cry myself asleep in junior high while someone close to me was raped and murdered. I have had to stop friends from murdering their entire family, bled buckets for people who thought that no one would defend them, cried for all the times the pain was too much, when one parent went to jail and once while the other was on the floor turning blue due to the effects of a stroke. I have seen people I have had so much hope for fall to the bottom, and I even tried to take my own life once to a painkiller cocktail that no one would take on accident and couldn’t sink under the rim of a large martini glass. I have seen so much idiocy in this world that it makes my skin crawl and my head ache. Every day because of all the fights I got in just to keep my sanity had some pain in it. Some days waking up is so much a challenge that I wish for some long reprieve.

There was no group for them or hashtag for us nor was their a group saying how they were a group whose lives mattered while seemingly forgetting the rest because creating such a thing would be disrespectful. The latina girl who knew I did my best as her friend, the black friend who was ostracized because he just liked acting like a hip hop styled gangster, the marine who came from the kid that tried bullying me in my youth, the christian who just wanted to feel respected by his parents. Their lives were not encapsulated in some news bit story or made light by a sixteen letter slogan. Hearing what kind of lives matter is such a foreign concept to me because it is so simple. It is like looking up and seeing the answer boldly written on the wall in marker. so simple that the questioning of it makes me wonder if we are becoming some side step on Mr. Darwin’s theory. We all have had to deal with horrible things, and some more then others. If you want me to think that those raped and murdered are not worth it, that those dying of hunger are not worth it, or even those who worked so hard to make the world better and died horribly are not worth it, but your little group of people does then please be prepared to either punch me or shut the hell up because you could not be any further from the point if you tried.

Black lives do not matter nor do white, nor yellow or red, blue or green or any shade on our spectrum.

We all matter because we all are the same when we start as a blank slate. We create the definitions of our world, and we grow within them. So how about we drop what we can say about who matters and who doesn’t, and start showing it through who you are. Make the world a canvas for all of the actions colored by who we are completely, and not what we just so happen to be on that day. A world colored so vivaciously that fantasy could become reality. That would be the world we all would be happy of.

Some black people are not the only ones that seem to have an ax to grind. Just because you think that getting people to act differently towards black people will make them act way towards everyone. It doesn’t work well that way, and that is why it such a celebration when it happens when homosexual marriage was legalized and women could vote. Because you have taken something and tried to push it through a process where spin doctors, headlines, and damage control is concerned instead of just doing it. If I said that the minimum age of presidency should be lowered by a half decade in the time frame of three years or that after four years of service as a representative or senator combined then you no longer able to work either one in the time frame of four years, or if every police department should not be so militarized then in a matter of months it would happen numbers can beat the painfully slow processes of law. Do not make something that needs to be an action i.e(wishing for police to be more transparent in reports and action) in to a reaction(#blacklivesmatter and #alllivesmatter by degree) otherwise the meaning behind it rings hollow.

We all matter, and we should act like it.

So there is what I think, some points to fight popular counter arguments, multiple points as to why this is a bad idea and my thoughts how I got there in case anyone was confused. I’m going to hope we can all treat each other better, and I know I will at least try to, thank you for reading and I am going to go have a talk with a whiskey bottle about how some actions are just so utterly disappointing.