Everybody hates a smart guy

Facebook sells your personal information!, they scream.  Well, you knew that going in.  It’s a free site.  Nobody’s forcing anybody to sign up.

Facebook sucks! they exclaim, with even less thought.  That’s a matter of opinion, I guess.  It’s got its pros and cons.  I’m not into the games, but they’re really, really easy to block.

It wasn’t even his idea!  The fuck it wasn’t.

He stole it from the Winklevoss twins!  Eh, they got paid 65 million, which is way, way more than they could have reasonably expected to make from their little Harvard dating site.  Zuckerberg made it into something much, much more.

Get off the couch, you worthless bunch of losers and go meet somebody in real life!  O.K., that one’s sort of valid but the reader will clearly note that it is directed at facebook’s 900 million worthless loser members rather than the CEO.

The type that stood out for me, though, were the ones that said stuff like HaHa! Zuckerberg lost 3 billion on the IPO, I hope he loses it all, HaHa!

Give it a rest.  He may be an arrogant, unlikeable person, but he’s never done anything seriously illegal or even blacklist level unethical.  If you hate facebook that much, don’t sign up for it.

Let the man enjoy his $20 billion in peace.  As long as he pays taxes on it.

I was writing about the whole big whoop dee doo the press is making about Obama’s smoking pot, as revealed in David Maraniss new, highly biased, anti-Obama book.  I can’t see why this is such a major story.  It’s a sign to me that a lot of people didn’t actually read Obama’s books, because he talks about smoking reefer in High School right there,  and the only new revelation was that he was a bit of a pot pig, toking out of turn (I hate that shit) and specializing in the old “enclosed space” technique (one of my favorites).

So, yeah, he’s a big hypocrite now that he’s president and not working to legalize marijuana, even going somewhat over the top to enforce the ignorant, draconian, reefer-madness type laws that are currently on the books.  Who are we going to vote for?  Ron Paul?

Mitt Romney, who has never had a joint, a beer, a glass of wine, a cigarette or even a cup of coffee in his whole life?  I don’t think so.

Anyway, the topic mostly enables me to link to  this cool piece of animation.  I love the Taiwanese animated re-enactments of American news.  They may be meant for comedy, but I believe they carry the essence of the story.

A Rainy Day at Malostranska Naměsti, by British artist Robert Crisp

Let’s call it a statement of intent.

American politics has gotten just plain boring lately, with Crazy Eyes Bachmann and her faithful sidekick, Marcus the Prancing Pony, out of the race.  No more Herman Cain jokes.  Newt is an ex-Newt.  We don’t have Rick Santorum to kick around any more.  Perry’s gone back to Texas and Ron Paul has been rendered irrelevant.

The situation has been rendered unamusing.  It may become exciting again, closer to November, in the sense that a football game is exciting, but I hate the fact that we even have to relate to politics on that level.  If Romney wins, it will be a disaster for America and, by extension, the entire world and I don’t think I am even slightly exaggerating.  It is not a fucking game.

So,  anyway, my resolution is that, unless there’s something amazing happening in the news, I’m going to start writing more about regular, every day stuff.  Like my teaching, or my family, or stuff happening in Prague, or my poetry, even though every time I throw my poetry up on the blog, page hits drop like a rock.

I know not a lot of people like poetry and, actually, I get that.  It’s cool.  What I don’t understand, though, is how do people know in advance?  What is it that lets you know, “There is poetry on that site, don’t click over there today?”

It’s like when you’re out walking on a really sunny day and suddenly the sky bursts open and the rain comes pouring down, and you’re standing under an awning that comes out maybe 5 centimeters over the sidewalk, in a doorway with two smokers and a fat lady, looking out at the street scene and all the people with their umbrellas, and you’re thinking “Who the hell are these people and how did they know?”

I’ll still be writing every day because this is my writing practice.  I hope you all keep reading.

If they want to try and paint Obama as an elitist…

But the real reason the O man is going to make it look like a cakewalk is that Mitt Romney, like all the other Republican candidates, peaked too early.  His party’s convention is still a couple of months away, but he’s got a lock on the nomination.  The scrutiny has begun.

Sure, this brings up lots of dirt on Romney, like the bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, the John Laubner incident, specific dirty deeds at Bain Capital and much, much more, but that’s not all it does.  Actually, Romney is probably glad to get all of this dirt out of the way early.  Not only does it pre-empt an October surprise, it practically inoculates him against one.  (Oh, he fucked a goat?  Well, I’m not surprised.)

The main thing it does, the great thing for Obama, is it establishes the rules early.  Mitt can’t say one day that he’s going to revisit the Reverend Wright controversy and then the next day say that he can’t be held responsible for his supporters views.

Which is it?

He claims that he’s not a birther, but he’s standing right up there on stage with Donald the Huge, King of the Birthers.

Which is it?

Now, all eyes are on Barry and Mitt, and the rules are being established.  If religion is a fair subject, we can make all sorts of fun of Mitten’s magic underwear, his post-mortem baptisms and all that other weird Mormon stuff.

If things that happened as kids are a fair subject, Mitt will seriously lose.  He was basically the Draco Malfoy of his prep school.

If, contrary to his weaselly Republican nature, Romney feels compelled to actually talk about issues like health care, the economy, jobs, whatever…then Obama will crush him.

The CEO

So far, one guy’s been fired and one is under arrest, but they are probably the whistle blowers.  The butler got caught with the papers in his apartment, in the Vatican, so he’s in jail, and the head of the Vatican Bank (Holy Shit, the Vatican has its own bank!) got fired, “erratic behavior” they said, but the way I see it, they figured out that the bank dude was passing the papers to the butler who was passing them to the press, meaning his most holy holiness of holies, former Nazi Joseph Ratzinger, hopes to keep those two quiet and carry on with his merry little crime network.

Oh, for the good old days, when the only problem with the Catholic church was so many priests buggering little boys.