My non-American friends are probably thinking, “But, it’s Monday, ergo, no longer the weekend!” Whereupon, I would reply, “Au contraire, mon frere, it is still the weekend. You see, in this bit of the crick, it is Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is the day that we remember all the brave soldiers who gave their lives in the various wars we’ve waged throughout our very short history. We also have Veterans Day, but that’s for all vets, whereas Memorial Day is for those who died in service to their country.

Americans typically celebrate the day by decorating things with red, white and blue, grilling dead animals, and drinking the most American of beverages–beer. We may not have invented it, but goddamn, do we drink a lot of it, particularly on holidays like this one.

I have inadvertently been celebrating the holiday for weeks by binge watching Ken Burns’ documentaries. First I watched The Civil War (again), and I’m happy to report that my massive crushes on both U.S. Grant, but most especially, William Tecumpseh Sherman, remain intact. I have a bad habit of crushing on dead people and Cump is right up at the top of the list. I even named my main character in The Dwarf after him.

Since I’ve seen The Civil War before, I stopped watching when the war was won. I didn’t watch the part where (SPOILERS) Lincoln is assassinated since I find that part incredibly sad. Fuck you, John Wilkes Booth. Seriously, fuck you in all your holes repeatedly.

Then, I immediately set to watching The War (again) about World War II. I can see how some don’t like Ken Burns’ documentaries, eschewing them as overly sentimental schlock that skims over a lot of the action in favor of personal stories, but that’s exactly why I like them. I think The Civil War is a better documentary overall, but I like the way he connects both wars with the home front. Seeing as I wasn’t alive for either war, I don’t know what it was like to live through them, either as a civilian or a soldier, so I find the home front touches interesting. I wish he would do a documentary on the Revolutionary War. I’d like to see that.

Besides the extreme number of unnecessary deaths due to poor planning, military inaction (Fuck you, McClellan), and just plain bum luck, one thing I noticed about both documentaries having watched them back to back like that, is the amount of racism in both wars.

Of course, you’d expect racism in the Civil War since it was fought, in part, over the freedom of slaves, but I am appalled at the racism in World War II as well. And not just against black people, who were still segregated (a concept that boggles my mind), but against pretty much anyone who wasn’t white. Americans of Japanese descent were forced into camps. They interviewed a Latino soldier from my old neighborhood in East LA, and he was harassed because of his race as well.

When I think about race, I am incredibly embarrassed to be white. White people suck. They’ve been arrogant, egotistical supremacists since the dawn of time and they still suck now. See the Republican primary for a current example of egotistical white people supremacist suckage.

Racism makes no sense to me at all. Though, it’s probably because I am white that I can’t fathom it. If I had more pigment in my skin, it would probably factor more prominently in my life and I might think about it more, but it seems completely asinine to me to view any human differently based solely on skin color, eye shape or what have you. Discrimination is as dumb and arbitrary as hating your left foot for facing the opposite way as your right foot; they’re both part of the same thing. We are all the same damn species. We all share the same basic genetic building blocks.

Who the hell cares what color people are? And what idiot(s) arbitrarily decided that white people were better than any other color? How did they get away with that for so damn long? According to Hitler, my Nordic heritage makes me an ideal human, but I’m prone to skin cancer because of the lack of pigment in my skin. I’ve already had it twice. That doesn’t seem superior to me. To recap, white people suck and history is embarrassing.

It’s ironic that I feel the way I do about racism since I’m not really a fan of people in general. They’re constantly in my way, they take too long in line, and they do dumb things like hire clowns and start wars. As I’ve always said, there are enough of reasons to dislike people on an individual basis without resorting to broad brush stroke generalizations. Rant end.

Let’s see, what else? I’ve been balls deep in hardcore adulting of late. It’s not one of my favorite pastimes, but it’s a necessary by-product of modern living. Last we met, I showed you this stack of paperwork that was causing me no end of grief:

Well, my friends, I am happy to report that, as of this morning, it looks like this:

Yay! I have slain the 3 inch mountain of paperwork. I even voted. Aren’t I smart?

Also, I’d like to introduce you to my enormous new hot pink bed:

My bed is huge and pink as of yesterday. Well, it was always huge, but now it’s exceptionally pink. You see that brown thing in the foreground? That’s my dog. I made the mistake of letting her live on my bed when she was little. Now, she’s big and loves getting filthy. I have no intention of bathing the dog as often as I bathe myself. The dog and her exceptionally furry brother, the cat (not pictured), both have claws. All of this animal business has led to the destruction of every single bed-like product I’ve put on the enormous bed.

This bedding destruction wasn’t such a huge deal when I had a queen size bed since there are tons of fun, inexpensive things for queen size beds. But, when Male moved away to go to law school, he left me his extraordinarily expensive and supremely comfortable California king. California kings are longer and narrower than regular king size beds. When you’re 6’5″ like Male was, enormous beds are necessary.

According to all bedding manufacturers worldwide, if you own a California king size bed, or even a king size for that matter, you are automatically boring and not allowed any fun. Your color choices are burgundy, sage green, sky blue, navy, beige, ivory, eggshell or white. The rest of my apartment looks like this:

Do you see how sage green or eggshell wouldn’t really fit with that? Since I got the Cal king, bedding has been the bane of my existence. Trying to find something colorful and huge has been an annoying and expensive task.

I used to have a colorful and expensive quilt that I adored. It lasted less than a year. I had another colorful, slightly less expensive quilt which also lasted less than a year. I’ve had the Cal king for three years. You get the idea.

This time, I decided I was just going to get a machine washable, cheap-ass bedspread in a solid color. I lucked into this one for only $30. If it lasts six months, so be it. But, now that my bed is a solid color, it needs accents. I have to find fun pillows to make it less hot pink. It’s always something with this bed albatross Male left me.

If it wasn’t like sleeping on the most comfortable cloud ever, I’d say fuck it and just buy a Queen size bed again. I’ve also become so used to the giganticity of it that I’d miss it, especially since I share my bed with 100 pounds of bed-hogging animals.

So, that’s me. Hot pink and all adulty. What’s up with you?

Oh, and Happy Memorial Day, and to all veterans, thank you for your incredibly brave service in our fallibly stupid human wars.