Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Some might call it a double standard.  I call it behaving appropriately according to the environment.  So, of course I communicate a little differently with people on Facebook than in real life.
And, I do not deal in exactly the same way with everybody on Facebook.  I draw a sharp distinction between people I know  in real life and people I don’t.  Sometimes I respond snarkily before looking and then someone I know might get a more acerbic post than I would probably make in their presence (Yeah, Mick, that’s you).  But not very often.  The cute animal people, the food photographers,  and the people who post a gazillion photos of their vacation I generally leave alone, except maybe an occasional ‘That looks good’ or ‘How lovely.’
I generally only send birthday greetings to people I know, but I am a bit more generous with the congratulations, because I like to see the little balloons go up.
There have only been a couple of times I have unfriended somebody I know in real life, but just Facebook friends?  It doesn’t take much.
I unfriended somebody today, and it was probably an over-reaction, but that’s O.K.  My page is too crowded.  The issue was Indian (excuse me, Native American) affairs, and he was on about ‘the worst kind of racist’ which is apparently a white person who doesn’t know much about Native American culture or the issues.  I was feeling argumentative, so I said “No, the worst kind of racist is the kind who wants to kill people from another race.”  So, now I was the worst kind of racist, and horribly ignorant, and shouldn’t be allowed to vote, etc…
So, the argumentative feeling having passed, I just deleted him.  He was kind of a one trick pony anyway.

I got my best time ever in Sudoku today and wrote two short poems.  That’s about it, but I think it puts the day in the positive category.  The Sudoku thing happened this morning, when I had a short window as the person I was waiting to meet was stuck in traffic.  The phone was already in my hand, and it has sort of become a habit.  I didn’t really expect to finish before she arrived, especially when I saw the puzzle.  It looked damned near blank.  But,  one space followed another, everything clicked, and I finished, just as she arrived, in 8 minutes and 40 seconds.  Hardly a record, there are lots of people on that site who are finishing them faster, but a personal best is a personal best.
The two poems, likewise, were nothing Earth shattering, but I liked both of them well enough.  The first was inspired by a photograph a friend posted, a full moon over Old Town Square, and he talked a bit about how the full moon after the Harvest Moon is called the Hunter’s Moon, because the original inhabitants of North America saw that as the time to go out and stock up on meat for the winter.  Makes sense.  Also, it made a nice poem.
The other one was short, and rather grim.  It was about the end of the world  which, as I believe I have mentioned before on this blog, is imminent.  Seriously.  Twelve years is not a long time, especially as we don’t seem to be taking any concerted action.    The EU did pass a fairly strict anti-plastic law recently, but that’s far from enough.

I love Tulsi Gabbard because she’s got all the right positions and quitting the DNC to support Bernie Sanders, for which she got a really nasty e-mail from Clinton and NO DNC funds for her own congressional campaign, was a rare act of political courage.  If Liz Warren or Al Franken had taken a stand like  that then, they might be in contention for the 2020 nomination, but they didn’t and they aren’t.
But, I must admit, I find Tulsi  to be kind of a boring speaker.  Not offensive like Trump, not irritating like Nancy Pelosi, just not super dynamic like Bernie Sanders.  She’s quiet.
It wouldn’t be a disadvantage in a president.  Lots of great managers and executives are less than stellar public speakers, and I would be fine with voting for her if she should get the nomination.  It might make it harder for her to get the nomination.
Bernie, on the other hand, keeps setting the crowds on  fire.  He’s all over  social media, commenting on every topic.  There is a series of viral videos with him walking with people to the polls to vote.  Hundreds of people, marches several blocks long.  He made a speech that I  saw a couple of days ago, which I thought represented a slight shift in priorities, one of which I heartily approve.  Now, Bernie has always been good on the environment.  He doesn’t take money from the oil industry, so he can vote against their pipelines.  He’s talked about ‘transitioning to a green economy’ but he seems to see it more as a jobs program than anything else.  But, in this speech, he referred to it as ‘perhaps the most important issue facing our planet’ and he cited the 12 years report.
This is good.  I cannot understand how everybody isn’t just totally going nuts over this.  There is scientific consensus, very broad agreement, that unless we drastically change course in the next 12 years, the human race is doomed.  Like, within a few generations after that, the Earth will become uninhabitable and all human beings (and cats, and dogs, and elephants) will die.
Thanks to Bernie, medicareforall is now a mainstream position, backed by a large majority of the American people, and a $15 an hour minimum wage may become the de facto situation with or without legislation.
If he’s turning his attention to the environment, he might just save the human race.

I just saw the most ironic headline I’ve seen for a long time:  Trump: “U.S. Will Increase Nuclear Arsenal Until Other Nation’s Come to Their Senses”
Ha!
First off, how much are we going to increase it?  We already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole planet.  We already have far more than any other nation.  Does the fish faced orange fool think that other nations will come to their senses if we have a thousand more nuclear warheads?  a million?  a billion?  a gazillion.  Our nuclear arsenal is already  so huge nobody can wrap their mind around it.  So, nobody is likely to ‘come to their senses.’
And who, exactly, is he threatening?  He loves the North Koreans, and the Saudis, and the Israelis, and the Russians.  China?  Well, maybe, but they are so busy making money and building roads and dams and high speed railways all over the world that the likelihood of them provoking a war with the U.S. is remote indeed.
The one nation that needs to come to it’s senses is the U.S.  Hostility to everybody is not likely to lead to an increase in world peace, and reversing all environmental regulations, what few we have, is  not sensible at all when virtually every  scientist in the world agrees that  we must solve the environmental problem in the next 12 years or we are doomed.
Also, congress is saying we can’t afford Medicare, and Social Security, and Food Stamps.  So, we sure as hell can’t afford more nukes.  That’s just nuts.

I began work today on my next book, or maybe my next next book because there’s also the next book of poetry and I can’t be certain which one will be finished first.  I’m planning on calling the poetry book “The Quest for Enlightenment and Stuff” because most of my poetry books are a random collection  of stuff, but the very act of writing is a quest for enlightenment.  It’s certainly not a quest for money.
The book I started today is just a collection, so it should go very quickly.  It’s to be called “The B.O.M.B.,” which is an acronym for best of my blog.  So, I just have to read through them all, select a hundred or so, write an introduction, and design a cover, which is sort of suggested by the title.
For me, it’s sort of like looking through old photographs.  I  get reminders of incidents in my past, what the weather was like, and my state of mind.
My state of mind, I’m surprised and a little disappointed to find, has not changed all  that much since January, 2010, when I began.  New Year’s Day, actually.  So, it’s one resolution I’ve actually kept.  But, I wrote a lot then about how  the world was going to hell, and couldn’t possibly get any more right wing than it was.  Guess I was wrong about that one.
It sure brought back some memories – remember that time Sandra Bullock kissed Meryl Streep at some awards ceremony?  I’d completely forgotten, but it’s in my blog.
Then there was the winter morning when Sam left his hockey stick at the tram stop and I had to run down and retrieve it and Isabel was sleeping (she was 3), but she was awake before I got back, and she was not happy.

So, the book, like the blog, will be a mix of the political and personal.  While the blog is political more than  50% of the time, I think the book will  lean a bit more to the personal.  However, we’ll see.  It’s the selection process that’s going to be hard.