So I’m breaking the retrospective into multiple bits and writing/posting them from time to time, interspersed with any new commentary (read: whenever I feel like it).

P.S.: Pop’n and kool-aid do not mix.

The problem is, I’m playing a game of Werewolf with a bunch of people I’ve never played Werewolf with before. This is not conducive to actually doing anything intelligent during the game.

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I still haven’t heard from relocation. For that matter, I haven’t heard from the background check people. Please excuse me while I go crazy.

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Oh, yeah, and I haven’t found anything for my dad for Father’s Day, either. (Except a card.)

I fail at life.

For reference, the first one was this, and the last one was this - neither things that I’ve seen on eBay in the past year. At this rate I’ll also have to miss this, which always seems to be around but never at a reasonable price.

Clearly, this is karma. Please excuse me while I go mourn for the loss of Bemani.

He said this was no problem and cashed my check. 2.5 weeks later, he posted in my thread saying, “Dude, I guess you dont want your game… If you dont reply back, I will ship it to the old address.”

Why do people agree to terms they have no intention of following through on? I blame the EULA, myself - people have learned that they can sign a huge contract and then get out of it later by claiming they didn’t read the whole thing and it wasn’t fair to expect them to. Naturally this leads via slippery slope to people refusing to read a two-line disclaimer repeated three times in prominent positions.

Naturally.

Unfortunately, these are exactly the homes that prospective landlords don’t want to rent to single people.

You’d think I’d be welcome - I have a high salary and good credit history. But certain ads outright specify “no single people, please.” (And far more specify “seeking a stable couple for 6 month lease,” or “couples and families only.”) Why? I’m not sure, really. I posted a question about it and got back a snarky response about how single people throw wild parties all the time and don’t clean their homes.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. If I were a landlord and justified not renting to single mothers with a claim that “children wreck everything,” or “babies scream all the time,” I would be vulnerable to liability under Washington state law, which prohibits housing discrimination based on “familial… or marital status.”

But the consensus among fair housing lawyers is that these protections only apply to positive familial or marital status - that is, only discriminating against someone because they *are* married or *do* have children is prohibited. Discriminating against someone because they are *not* married or do *not* have children is permissible, and singles have no legal recourse against it.

This opens up a fascinating can of worms. What if a woman, man or couple is infertile? They could make a convincing legal argument that this is a disability. And people with disabilities are protected under fair housing law. So a landlord couldn’t legally discriminate against them if he knew they were infertile - but to get legal protection, they would have to disclose their medical history to him. This can serve the landlord as a primitive form of medical screening. The very unhealthy or the otherwise disabled are more likely to be infertile than others, and in this interpretation they must either give up on the unit (with no recourse) or disclose their poor health (inviting further discrimination).

How does this policy extend to the other protected categories under FFHA, such as race? If I turned down a nice black family of renters because “black people are scary - other tenants would be uncomfortable,” I hope that HUD would come down on me hard. What if a landlord turns me down because “white people aren’t friendly - they make bad neighbors”? Is that just tough cookies for me? What about Latinos - are they protected or not? Asians? Native Americans?

Banning positive status discrimination while allowing negative status discrimination is a way for the government to say that one group is better, or more deserving, than the other. This in turn causes exactly the kind of social stigma and discontent that the FFHA was designed to prevent. Once more, political correctness wins - and equality loses.