Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

When things happen in threes, you tend to  sit up and take notice.  Anything that can come in threes: school shootings, police murders, celebrity weddings, sharks, whatever.  The second incidence already strikes you as a coincidence, and so the third convinces you that this is beyond coincidence.

Also, I do tend to  see conspiracies, and probably shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, because this is a nice story, something with hope for the future. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I read three articles today on cures for cancer.  The first was that surgeons at a cancer institute had cured one woman’s late stage breast cancer, by a revolutionary method.  I didn’t quite understand it, but it involved removing just a bit of  the tumor and analyzing it down to the cellular level and then they find the immune cells and replicate them en mass and reinsert them and they eat the cancer.  And that’s it.  They’ve cured one, there will  be more, and the study to  perfect this  method  will continue.
The second was about how wasp venom was a miracle cure for cancer.  I wonder how they figured that one out.
The third one, of course, was an article about  cannabis curing cancer, one person’s personal testimony, but I read those all the time.  There’s a certain social media  bias at work,  I’m  sure.  I’m interested in all things cannabis, so I  see those stories.

But the ungenerous thought that struck me was: why was I  seeing lots of other (because two becomes lots of  when  you’re thinking that way) articles about possible cures  for cancer?  ‘Ha!,’ I thought.  ‘They’re bringing these out now because they want to pre-empt the cannabis cure, because the power structure fears marijuana more than  anything except maybe women and atheists.’
But I’m sure that’s not true.  Any way, there’s no reason not to continue to research all possibilities.  Even the wasp one.

Just got back from  the Alchemy poetry reading for  June and, well,  it  was  definitely interesting.  It’s usually all very polite and such, but that  broke down  at a couple of points.  There was an argument at my table between an Israeli and someone who felt strongly against what Israel  is doing, as most decent, sane people do.  The Israeli thought he was paying a compliment, I’m sure, when he said “Your shirt looks just like an Israeli army shirt.”  (It was green.  It looked sort of like all military  shirts everywhere.)  It was not received as  such.
There were two featured readers, which is a bit of overkill, but I guess you have to catch the visiting talent when they’re in Prague and I’d rather see two new performers than none, so there’s that.
I liked the first one, the girl.  She had a love of cheap puns and alliteration.  I don’t know that there was any earth shattering message, but she was  quite  entertaining to watch, put her heart  into  it, she did.
Then the  guy came on and wandered through about a 15 minute preamble in which he talked about some of his other projects, he’s written a children’s book (it’s the new Harry Potter!), and about all the voice work  he’s done, and how he’s really interested in Alchemy, like the real stuff, with us it’s just the name of a poetry reading but he’s all  into  the arcane writings and stuff, and he talked  about  how we all  need to be happy and live  in  the moment and yadda yadda, and then before he started  singing, he put up  his YouTube video on the screen, him being soulful at the top of a cliff, soulfully walking  through the  grass, kneeling in  an old church, and so on, and  then when he finally began, he had background music coming out of his notebook or whatever.  He actually had  a nice  voice and a couple of  good songs, if he’d just cut the intro to about 30 seconds, left off all the tech shit and just done it unplugged, it  would  have  worked fine.
He got a polite enough reception, so I thought maybe it  was just me but then we went out to smoke a joint and everybody was out there bitching about how pretentious he was.
That was the last Alchemy for the summer, so maybe I need to  focus on  my  next book.

When arguing with gun nuts, as most Americans have to do at some point or another, they are all around us, the arguments are always the same.  You may win on any one of these arguments, you may cite statistics, you may phrase the perfect zinger, it doesn’t matter.  They will jump to another argument and carry on. oblivious.  The fact of the matter is  they love guns.  They love guns beyond all reason, more than they love life itself (don’t ask  me, ask  them.  That’s what ‘you  can have my gun when you pry it from my  cold, dead hands’ means), more than they care  about kids getting shot in school, more than the flag, Mom and apple pie all rolled into  one.  So, you’re never going to  win.
But, I was sitting out on  our newly cleaned (Thanks, Helena!) balcony today, smoking a joint, when I  realized that there are two good  arguments  to counter the whole “tree of freedom must be watered with the blood of tyrants” argument they frequently use.  Usually, I just use argument #1 against that, which is “Ha!  You and your army of overweight, under-educated, T shirt wearing, Trump voting gun range warriors are going to overthrow the U.S. government!  Hoo boy, that’s not only ridiculous, it’s delusional and dangerous.  You know, tanks, helicopters, shit like  that.”
But, there’s another good reason.  Any revolution that uses force is not an actual revolution at all.  For the last 50,000 years or so, the rule of force has been the way of society.  Wht’s revolutionary about continuing that?
No, the revolution that we need now is a revolution in intelligence, in information, in the way we relate to each other, so we can move forward in concert and make progress and create a better world.  Anything short of that isn’t a revolution at all.

Very often, when someone posts something I  disagree with, I will , after thinking about it for a moment, reply with an appropriate rebuttal.  Sometimes people don’t like that, they consider it raining on their parade, meddling in their business.  I think of it as constructive engagement.  They see it as heckling.
Sometimes, I’ll correct people’s grammar.  That really pisses a lot of  people off.  I’ve become a bit more circumspect about it over time.  For instance, if somebody writes “I’m so sorry Aunt Mabel died, were all going to miss her,” it’s probably not worth pointing out that there should be an apostrophe in  we’re.

On the literary pages I  frequent, there is a great amount of disagreement about when and  how often it’s O.K. to plug your own work. It’s generally agreed that ‘too soon’ and ‘too frequent’ are to be avoided, but the exact definition of ‘too’ seems to vary from person to  person.
People have different strategies about who  they choose as friends, whether or not  to send birthday greetings to people they don’t know  in real life, whether or not  it makes you look superficial to use too many emojis, or nerdish to use correct punctuation in a short message.
In political arguments, which I engage in frequently, there are questions about whether or not it’s O.K. to make jokes about people, sometimes when those people are just begging to have  jokes made about them. Also, the kind of trash talk that may be de rigueur when playing games is considered an ad hominem attack, and sarcasm is very often misunderstood.
Also, sometimes you’ll raise a point and people  want you to  cite a source, which is sometimes because they’d like a source, and sometimes it’s just because they can’t answer the argument and they’re stalling for time, or hoping to use your very source as a counterattack.  (Oh, you read that in The Guardian.  I never believe the Guardian.”)

We all wonder what the correct etiquette  is.  Well, here’s how I  see it:  We’re into new territory, and things are changing right in front of our eyes.  There is no official set of  rules, so they are evolving  as we go.  We can no more agree on them than we can in real life, because that is our nature as individuals.  So, I think  we’ve got to be a little bit flexible.  Because, if everybody refuses to bend, then something’s going to have to break.

Friday afternoon is the spring of the week, because the  workweek, which is  the  winter of the week, is just ending, and you are full of anticipation for the weekend, aka the summer of the week.  That’s why it’s my favorite time of  the week.
My kid lessons went fairly well this afternoon.  It’s always  a fine  line knowing how strict to be, to what extent am I a teacher and to what  extent am I a  baby sitter, a hired clown.  Today, though, they were being reasonably  good, they were giving stupid answers, but they were giving answers, they were playing the game.  So, about halfway through, I decided to quit while I was ahead and let hem play the game they wanted, which was  just to have one kid draw  something on the blackboard and  the first one to guess what it is draws the next picture.  Kind of  slow  and inefficient as a language  lesson, but they enjoyed it.

Then, we went out for pizza for dinner.  Outdoor dining, now, of course, a perfect night for it (It rained this afternoon, it may rain again tonight. We are between rains)
I thought I was going somewhere with this, but that’s my blog for tonight.