What are you looking forward to in 2021? How can we keep a positive outlook? What are you excited about? This is what the Culture Clash Staff asked me to keep in mind when writing an article for their January issue. The article is due tonight at midnight. They’ll probably let it slide until daylight if I decide to pull an all nighter like back in the old days (last year). Last year was pretty different. The only thing I can say I’m looking forward to in 2021 is more changes.

The election is over. Here on the Estelle Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), there is both joy and sorrow at the results. A bunch of, “I told you so’s” are going around, as well as, “I told you he would never win!” and, “I told you they would cheat and steal the election.” It’s all over for now and we can all let our collective breaths out, through a mask of course. We can look around and realize that our world has not come to an end, or that money hasn’

I was alone at the end of the bar staring down one more shot of tequila when something green, shiny, and plastic caught my eye. It was wedged between two bottles of forgettable bourbon on the shelf in front of me. I wanted it like a rash wants lotion. Glenda and Will were at the other end of the bar, deep in conversation. Something about new shoes and leftover Thanksgiving turkey. What’s the best way to cook a steak? When is the best time to buy crabmeat? They were heavily en

The first time I did acid was with Winston in Long Beach. He assured me everything would be fine. He’d done it hundreds of times. I trusted him. After dropping the cute little smiley faced piece of paper on our tongues, we started walking up Pine Street. What better way to experience life than among a crowd of our own kind. Well, that was my first mistake. LSD is not a casual drug. Derived from the rye fungus Ergot, it was synthesized by Sandoz Labs just after World War II. I

2020 was a horrible year; a bold statement but for many people, this statement is viciously true. 2020 consisted of a war scare, hornet swarms, large-scale forest fires, and in the US alone around 14 million people were laid off and 269,000 died from COVID-19. It’s fair to say everyone is ready for this year to end. Sadly the effects of this year are more than capable of holding thousands of people back from their true potential. In 2021 people need to get their act together.

You remember those days when you were a kid at a sleepover with your friends? You were in your pajamas, stuffing your face with pizza, snacks, and soda like nothing could go wrong. Then one of your friends pulled a DVD out of their bag for a movie you’d definitely never heard of and that probably shouldn’t exist. “This is the worst movie ever made,” they said. “And it’s gonna change your life.” 2020 was a lot like that bad movie night. We may have just endured what was undeni

In 2008, scientists out of the University of Vermont’s Complex Systems Center invented the Hedonometer, a tool that aggregates word data from online tweets and blogs to determine the general mood of society as a whole. They determined the amount of happiness in the world could be quantified by examining the online dialogue, and assigning numerical values on a scale of ten to a list of 10,000 hand selected words. If we were using more positive words in our texts, like “love,”