Everybody’s Got an Opinion. Yet, Nobody Knows a Fucking Thing
Everybody has an opinion about politics, immigration, the economy, and people they've never bothered to get to know. But somewhere along the way, we started confusing opinions with actual knowledge. From a frustrating conversation with my father to someone questioning my engagement to Dawna, I've had about enough of people who would rather judge, label, and repeat whatever bullshit they've been fed than think for themselves.
When Fiction Gets Too Fucking Real
I started revising a story in Undertow because I'd written something that was a little too close to reality and not nearly fictional enough. So I decided to explore what could have happened instead of what actually did. That led me down a rabbit hole researching what happens to transgender women in New Mexico's criminal justice system. And holy fucking hell. What started as an exercise in creative writing turned into something deeply personal, frightening, and infuriating. Sometimes fiction forces you to confront realities you'd rather not think about.
Just Fucking Saying
A Facebook meme claims no child ever feels born in the wrong body unless some creepy adult puts the idea in their head. Well, that's fucking news to me, because I knew something was wrong when I was three or four years old, long before the internet or anyone had explained what transgender meant. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be asking some hard fucking questions about diagnosing children and administering life-altering treatments. Parents need to parent, doctors need to practice medicine, and politicians need to get the fuck out of the examination room.
The Fucking Public
Albuquerque has collected more than $11 million through automated speed enforcement, and now there's talk of letting cities keep an even bigger share. Meanwhile, the cameras keep multiplying. Government calls it public safety. I see an expanding surveillance system, an addiction to revenue, and another assault on individual liberty. Here's a fucking reminder: I am the public. You work for me. Not the other way around.
I Just Wanted to Know What the Fucking Camera Was
I just wanted to know what the fucking camera was. Instead, I found myself wandering through ordinances, policies, contracts, departments, and a municipal bureaucracy so complicated that understanding my own city government became a fucking research project. Government belongs to us. It shouldn't require a map through the labyrinth to figure out what the hell it's doing.
Twenty Fucking Feet
There was a trash can twenty fucking feet away. Instead, she left her cup, spilled drink, wrappers, and the remains of a jelly donut in the street for somebody else to clean up. It’s a tiny thing, until you realize how perfectly it represents the difference between liberty and entitlement.
The Procedural Fucking Dance
I spent hours watching people move through a courthouse where the enormous power of the state had somehow become routine. Dates were scheduled. Names were called. People were told when to come back. Everyone played their part. But somewhere underneath all that fucking procedure, I kept wondering what happened to justice.
The Fucking Cage
A car gets you from one place to another. A motorcycle puts you inside every fucking mile between them. The temperature, the wind, the smells, the landscape. You don't pass through the world. You enter it. Unfortunately, sometimes love and logistics mean climbing into the fucking cage anyway.
Apparently My Fucking Motorcycle Owes Albuquerque Money
Albuquerque says speeding is dangerous enough to justify automated enforcement, but apparently not dangerous enough to actually stop the fucking vehicle. Instead, a camera takes a picture, you keep driving, and weeks later the registered owner gets a bill. Ignore it long enough and eventually a debt collector comes looking for the money. Sorry, but I don’t fucking buy the safety argument.
Who the Fuck Authorized This?
Cameras are going up everywhere, and nobody seems to be asking the most important fucking question: who authorized government to routinely watch free citizens suspected of absolutely nothing? Liberty isn't being watched more responsibly. Liberty is being left the fuck alone.
The Free Fucking Bacon Problem
Maybe the free fucking bacon isn't really about bacon. Maybe it's about entitlement, responsibility, and what happens when people become so accustomed to somebody else solving every inconvenience that carrying the weight of liberty starts feeling like too much fucking work.
Put Your Back Into the Fucking Plow
Having a hard life doesn't give you a claim on somebody else's success. I've been broke. I've failed. I've trusted people I shouldn't have trusted. But nobody was coming to save me, so I got back up and kept fucking moving.
What the Fuck Happened?
A brutal three-hundred-mile motorcycle ride across southeastern New Mexico somehow turned into Texas liquor laws, government-mandated technology, individual liberty, and my general irritation with being protected from myself. I’m not entirely sure how the fuck we got here either.
Florence Is Going to Be Fucking Fine
Arizona has decided lane splitting is reckless driving. I have a simpler question: who’s the fucking victim? A motorcycle doing something a Toyota can’t doesn’t make it reckless, and Florence being uncomfortable doesn’t make it a crime.
Liberty Is Dead
Liberty didn’t die in some spectacular coup. We surrendered it incrementally, one reasonable exception, one permit, one court decision, one camera, one sensor, and one fucking compromise at a time. Eventually, you look down and realize there’s almost nothing left in your hands.
The New Fucking Tea
Someone shot up Santa Fe’s shiny new automated enforcement cameras, and apparently an old friend’s first thought was to ask whether it was me. It wasn’t. But his question got me thinking about cameras, government power, consent of the governed, and what happens when “public property” stops feeling like it belongs to the fucking public.
Fifty-One Fucking Percent
The government can stop me, detain me, accuse me of wrongdoing, drag me into court, and seek money from me; and apparently “more likely than not” is enough. Maybe that’s legally sufficient. I’m increasingly unconvinced that legally sufficient and just are the same fucking thing.
Stand the Fuck By
I’m sitting at home instead of going to work because today I have to defend myself against an allegation made by the government. We’ve become so accustomed to traffic stops that we rarely stop to consider what they actually are: temporary government detention.
Justice Left the Building
I spent the last week watching people navigate a judicial system I once naively believed existed to protect justice and individual liberty. What I found instead was calendars, forms, unanswered calls, endless waiting, and a bureaucracy that seemed to have forgotten the enormous responsibility entrusted to it.
Justice for Whom?
Santa Fe can find the money, technology, and political will for speed cameras and noise sensors, yet when a driver made a U-turn across my path and nearly killed me, the system somehow couldn’t manage basic accountability. So I keep coming back to one question: Who the fuck is the victim?