Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Scott Pruitt, polluter at large, Trump’s Secretary of the  Interior, and existential threat  to life  on Earth,  has  resigned.  It won’t exactly leave a gap that needs to be filled.  His job, I’m sure, was to destroy  the environment just as much as he could, but I’m  sure Trump will find somebody just  as cartoon villainish to take his place.
So, let us not think of it as  a bump  in the road.  Let’s think of it as the opposite  of  a bump in the road.  For a couple  days,  maybe  a couple  of  weeks, things  may trundle along quite  smoothly  without to  much  more egregious, environmental wrecking  moves.
What really cracked me up was the wanker’s resignation letter.
He said he and his family have  been attacked.  I suspect he’s referring  to this: woman-confronts-embattled-epa-chief-scott-pruitt-at-a-washington-restaurant

As far as political protest goes, it  was  pretty mild.   Your average stand-up comic has to deal  with worse heckling.  She  just listed a set of  grievances, and it was all in a very calm, measured  tone and she occasionally looked at her list.  But, it was a long list, and it was an  accurate list.
Nonetheless…
When I heard that Pruitt  had resigned, I  thought  of this video  and thought  it was a funny  coincidence.  Then  I  saw his resignation letter, and this was exactly it.  He can’t go out for lunch with  a friend (and  accept huge bags of  cash under the table) if there’s going to be people reminding him how much he sucks and how much better the human race, and even planet Earth, would be without him, everywhere he  goes.
So, keep it up, brave soldiers of the Second Civil  War.  We achieved victory in the Battle of  Pruitt’s Run, but this could  go  on for a  long  time.

Just watched ‘Her’ and, since this is not exactly a new  film, I  don’t  know why I  bother writing a review, but talking about my  day proofreading a document about the legal agreement between a shopping mall  and its tenants, down to the size of light bulbs the shopkeepers are allowed  to have, would make for kind of a dull  blog.

It had a couple  of psuedo-sexy scenes but it is the story of a guy who falls in  love with an operating  system, and it sort of  makes him out to  bad as sad a human being as you’d think, but through the film you hear of a couple other people having relationships  with their computers and you wonder if its going to be like ‘Invasion of  the Body Snatchers’ and everybody in the world  links up, but in  the end  it’s nothing as dramatic as all that.

If you want a movie with lots of action and tension, this  wasn’t it, but it was actually a deep and thoughtful investigation of what it will be long as computers become more intelligent,  and  can talk to us as equal individuals.

Alex Jones, who is either the craziest, most delusional man alive or else is  just making a lot of money pretending to be the craziest, most delusional  man alive, says that Democrats are planning  to  start a Civil War on July 4th.
I expect his definition of ‘starting a civil war’ is something like ‘tweeting about what an  asshole Trump is,’ which I’m sure will happen.  After all, the 4th of July is a day, and that happens pretty much every day.
It puts me in mind, though, of all the end of the world pronouncements, which appear periodically, and of course everybody laughs at them, because the day after the prediction arrives, and what are you  going to do but laugh.  There’s also a bit of mystification at the mindset.  Not only are these people  predicting the end of the world, they are devoutly wishing for it.

In one sense, though, Alex Jones is correct.  Not  that there’s going to be a civil war where Democrats are out in the streets in massive numbers, shooting down their Republican neighbors,  besieging  their barbecues, taking their fireworks displays prisoner.  But there is kind of a cold Civil War going on in America.
Progressives,  and most people  with  a mindset born  in the modern world, see this as a war of words, a war of information, a cultural struggle if you will.  That’s part of the reason nobody  on  the left has been stockpiling weapons.
Just do the thought experiment, if you  will:  consider the people in  your life who own more than 10 guns.  You probably know a few.  You might even be related to a few.  Now, are those people Trump voters, or not?
Of course, there might be exceptions.  There could be some Sanders supporters, who believe strongly in a cleaner environment, ending private prisons, and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, who just happen to love going down to the range to shoot off their AR-15s, but they’re not the rule.
But, actual Civil War?  Nah.  Ain’t gonna happen.  And from July 5th onward, Alex Jones should be mocked mercilessly.

There was a comment, a fairly bland comment, the kind you get a dozen of every day, in which the commenter said “I miss the days when Facebook was about friends, it’s all  about arguing about politics now.”
Well, I don’t really agree because I  kind of enjoy the political argument aspect of it, but it’s not for  everybody and it’s not for every mood.  Of course, one can go  to different sites for different things and, even just on Facebook, if you don’t want to argue politics, you have the option of unfriending anybody who talks politics,  or in any event anybody who  disagrees with.
But, the site I’d like to see would make it easy  to go back and forth, to engage in  literary debate in  one place, argue politics in  another, exchange family  news in another section and…oh,  wait a minute, we’ve got all that.
Some people just have to bitch.

The question that came  up was something about ekphrastic art and when is it  a collaboration, and when is it plagiarism, or appropriation, or  something unethical  like that.  Generally, I’m an admirer of Woody Guthrie, and I love what he said about  people using his music without permission, I don’t remember the actual quote, I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like: “If somebody sings one of my songs, well they’re a pretty  good friend of mine.”  He didn’t  really  take a proprietary view of things.
I can understand the opposite attitude, of course.  For some, art  is a career, which means they can’t afford to treat  it  as a hobby.

But, I think the argument is likely to soon  become moot.  Art, of course, has always been full  of fraud, appropriation, forgery, and all sorts of skullduggery.  Now, however, with  the advent  of  the internet, we are in a whole new world.  It is a world in which ideas are seen  instantly by  millions of people and masses  of people  can instantly decide to all  mangle the same meme, in  a thousand different directions.  A poet sees a painting and  writes a poem about it.  A musician is inspired by a book.  A film is  inspired by a video game.
I’m  not saying that in the future all  art will be ekphrastic art.  There will  always be new love songs, and beautiful paintings inspired by  nature.
But a lot  will  be, and there’s no stopping it.