Stop Killing Queer Youth at 12:55 PM

Mickey Weems, a columnist, had an interesting thing to say a few weeks ago. He was listing wins and fails of the last year in LGBT issues. It's Pride month if you didn't know. His last fail? "It Get Better". I had to read it twice. Yup. Fail.

I've been saying the whole project/movement is misguided, for awhile now. I don't agree with the idea that it is a total fail but agree with his argument. When kids are dying, something needs to be done. "It Gets Better" is a temporary bandage but not a solution. As Weems puts it, when the house is on fire you don't tell the kids inside that it will get better, just sit and wait.

"Your Child is a Killer" seems more effective to me. The problem isn't the queer kids. The problem is the students, parents, facility, and society that allows bullying to continue and treats a portion of the population as less than the rest. Queer youths are killing themselves because they feel helpless and ashamed. Those feelings do not come from within the kids, they are products of being targeted and isolated. These suicides are the bullies' fault. They are the parents' fault. They are the result of a community that tries to fix the effects of a problem but not the cause.

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Internet "Issues" at 7:50 AM

I made a website for a client not too long ago. It was real simple and nothing special. They just wanted a few pages on the site. Easy right? It was until I told the client the site was ready and live. "Go check it out and see if you want anything changed." I get a text a few minutes later. "No website?!?" I pull up the website, yup it's there. Call the client:

Me: "It's up. I'm looking at it"
Client: "My computer says it can't find it"
Me: "Let me pull it up on my phone. Yup still comes up. Is your Internet on?"
C: "Yes! Do you know what you're doing?" (Yes. Do you?)
M: "I have the site up on my desktop, phone, and laptop now. Can you get to google.com?"
They get pretty mad at this time
C: "YES! I type it into my homepage and it says it can't find it!"
M: "Wait, where are you typing the address? Does it say Bing or Google next to the field?"
C: "What's a field?"
M: "The little white bar you type into."
C: "Yeah that's where I type everything."
M: "No, go higher up"
C: "Where it says msn?...oh there it is. How is anyone supposed to know that!? Nobody is going to know that!!"
M: "Umm that's where you type the address..."
C: "That's stupid. I don't like that. Nobody knows that. Fix that."
M: "Learn to use the Internet" <click>

Yeah I hung up on them. Wonderful customer service I know. I spent probably ten minutes on the phone with them trying to trouble shoot. Not thinking they didn't know how to use their own computer or the Internet. The site isn't even 30 minutes old and they want it at the top of every search engine? Technology will only speed up. When all the old people who don't know how to use the tools we have now, die off and the rest of us won't have to slow down to explain everything so much and we will be more productive for it.

Here's the street address. How am I supposed to find that house? First find the street, then the houses go in numerical order. That's stupid, who knows that?! (Same idea)

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