Creamsicles and Copperfield.

Hi! Holy Crocs-in-the-mud, it sure has been a while, eh?

For me, writing is one of those deals that, when things are rolling, when I've got lots of ideas, can be very, very, very, very fun. Yet for every muse that whispers fragrant gifts of inspiration, a lazy Lucifer lurks. He taunts me with Netflix series, reality shows and naps, and it is under this douchebag demon's spell I have been moldering these past thirty-eight days. This must stop.

So let's review—how much do you remember about what's gone down in the last month-and-a-half? Actually, don't worry about it, because I looked it up, and let's just say that fortunately it's closer to the Bellagio buffet than Roy's Chuckwagon. So, just to refresh your memory:

On June 6, two inmates at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York David Copperfielded their way out of the maximum security facility and stayed on the lam for over three weeks. One of them ended up with a tap-tap to the temple while the other was shot twice in the torso, survived and was recently remanded to Supermax to spend 23 hours a day in a box for the remainder of his life.

Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo's casting call/cocktail parties continued every Thursday evening in the governor's mansion. Whomever is going to play Cuomo in the ABC Monday Night Movie of the Week is still too close to call, but so far, Alan Thicke leads after killing it in his press conference monologue. Hasselhoff, desperate and trying to show his chops by summoning tears, blew it in Cuomo's stern eyes. You could tell the gov's frowny grin that The Hof had blown it.

Remember the Rachel Dolezal affair? Spokane's NAACP leader was outed (by her own parents!) as being whiter than my brother's calves. I'm not going to judge this woman. I don't doubt what she says is true—that the situation is complex. But inevitably my mind strayed. Every time they showed those split-screen before/after photos, delicious Creamsicles hijacked my consciousness.

On the political front since June 3, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and Donald Trump have lobbed their greazy top hats onto the rug of presidential candidacy, joining an already crowded field. I'll save the jokes for later posts—so many possibilities—but I did hear that Christie is still undecided. He actually showed up thinking he was in the line for maple bars.

Seriously, let's face it, good or bad, we can't have a president who wears his pants like Homer J. Simpson.

But shit got real on June 26. In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed same-sex marriage legally enforceable in all fifty states and Florida. Amazing, isn't it? Especially for this fiftysomethinger who grew up in an era when the other F-word was tossed around with the frequency and ease of a Nerf football.

Oh, yeah, and chalk up another "W" for the good guys during June. In another 6-3 vote, the black-robed priests of the Temples of Syrinx upheld the Affordable Care Act, ensuring health insurance for ten million newly-insured Americans.

For all the messed up stuff that happens in this nation—the shootings, the religious and political polarization, it feels like together, we still seek a more enlightened society, which is heartening.

Next stop: fracking. Hopefully, we're able to become fully enlightened prior to becoming fully submerged.

Racism is alive and well in liberal Seattle

Racism.

It's such an ugly word, with so much baggage. Some use it for political gain; some dispute its very existence. Most of all, we ignore it.

Last week at a Washington State Supreme Court meeting, the "r word" poked its head out of the sand yet again, as justices Richard Sanders and James Johnson shocked some participants when they stated that African Americans are overrepresented in the state's prison population because they commit a disproportionate number of crimes. They also disputed the view that racial discrimination plays a key role in the disparity.

Before I get all emotional about how my state's most powerful jurists feel about crime and punishment, I'd like to break things down, using some logic:

If what they're saying is fact, that would imply that African Americans are committing more crimes because either they're inherently more evil  than other ethnicities, or because they've learned that crime is more lucrative than attempting to find "legitimate" work.

If you believe the former, go ahead and log out of this blog and turn on FOX News, because Glenn Beck's coming on in a few minutes. If you lean toward the latter view, you may be right, but doesn't this shine a harsh light on our society and its disenfranchisement of a huge chunk of America?

Now let's assume that the justices' stance is merely ignorant conjecture, and in reality, the criminal justice system is unfairly stacked against African Americans. This would acknowledge that "institutional racism" is alive and kicking, and these judges don't want to cop to it.

I'm not a sociologist. I'm just a middle-aged guy who lives in the upper left corner of the country, trying to make sense of my surroundings. My city, Seattle, prides itself on its liberal politics, its open mindedness. We love to think that we're some of the most inclusive, tolerant people in the nation.

But really, things are no different than they were fifty years ago. Black people still live predominately in the lower elevation areas of south to south-central Seattle. The white folks live everywhere else, plus any areas with views of water.

We hear people like Rush Limbaugh spouting off about racism having been rendered moot sine the election of our first African American president. And, granted, we no longer see cereal boxes like this:

or restaurants like this:

But here's an indisputable fact—every position I've ever attained has been the direct result of a relationship with a friend or an acquaintance putting in a good word, dating back to my first job as a dishwasher in 1979. And you can say all you want about bootstrap-pulling and earning everything you've gotten, but isn't that just an easy way out?

If we can rationalize that we're all given an equal opportunity to succeed, that we're all viewed by our economic and legal systems as colorless and classless, then we never have to acknowledge that there's a big problem with race in America.

Maybe we can all dig a little deeper.