Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

There are a lot of people who continuously tell me that I must leave the Democratic party because they suck just as bad as Republicans, which is true.  I would love to jump ship to a third party, just the same as I would love to take a vacation up to a hotel floating  in outer space, but neither one actually exists at the moment.   I don’t know why, because we’ve got the agenda, it’s Bernie’s agenda, which a majority of the American people agree with, and so we have the numbers as well, but it hasn’t happened yet.
It’s sort of like all the people saying we must leave Facebook, because Zuckerberg is selling our information, like we always knew he did (come on, how do you think he made his money?  It’s not as if Facebook charges a membership fee).  I don’t feel any particularly loyalty to Facebook or Zuckerberg, but I’ve got lots of contacts on Facebook and would, at this point, find it hard to live without.
Then,  there’s the floating hotel in space situation.  If a perfect site existed, everybody would go there, but it doesn’t.
So, I presented the question to one  of my gymnasium classes this morning.  Being teenagers, they are much hipper than I am, and therefore I consider them experts on social media.  They mentioned Twitter, which I do use, a bit, and probably should learn to use better, but it’s certainly not going to replace Facebook for me.  Then they mentioned Reddit and Tumblr.  Those sound intriguing, and that’s going  to be my project for this weekend, to set up accounts there and see how they work.
But I’m not abandoning Facebook just yet.

I haven’t looked too deeply into the shooting at YouTube headquarters in California.  The only person who died was the shooter (although a couple  of those in hospital are in pretty bad shape, so  that could change) so it doesn’t quite qualify as a massacre.  The shooter was a woman, which makes it a bit different from the usual profile.  You could say she was a disgruntled employee, but that  does not accurately reflect YouTube’s business model.  She was a disgruntled YouTuber.
There have been plenty of comments about it on Facebook, so my blog tonight is more in response to those than the act itself.

First, one of my friends was quite surprised to find that there is such a place as the Mark Zuckerberg hospital, and seemed to think that was a very bad thing.  Mark Zuckerberg donated 75 million dollars, and I think naming the hospital after somebody who donates 75 million dollars is  reasonable.  If every billionaire did that, we’d have a lot more hospitals, and when someone needs a hospital, they don’t care  much whose name is on it.
One gun nut meme I saw (I see a lot of them) somehow seemed to think this showed the futility of banning guns, because it happened in liberal California.  I  think it shows the need  for more rigorous mental health checks.  One other poster, though, had the best comment.  It was rather long, and I’m  not going to look  for the link now, but the gist of his  essay was that it was fortunate she did not have an AR 15, but a handgun.  Three injured, and herself dead, instead of 17 dead, or 26 dead, or 50+ dead.
The same person also pointed out that many of the things she posted on YouTube were activist vegetarian videos, of the “Meat is Murder” variety.  She probably didn’t even get the full irony of her own actions.

I am not a great fan of great quotes, they get passed  around the internet a lot and most people have heard  most of them  before.  I guess they need constant refreshing, because there’s always going to be some 13 year old kid who’s never even heard of Mark Twain.  Still, it seems like an oversimplification, like you’re reducing a person’s life to  one thing they said, and chances are good they never even said it, if you look at all  the things that are attributed to Einstein, Twain and Lincoln.
Having said that, of course I  have  a few favorites.  How could anybody not?  One of my favorites, because I  agree with it so  much, is from Gertrude Stein, who was really much more famous for being a friend of great writers than  a great writer, but she wrote some stuff.  When somebody asked her why she liked writing, she said “I don’t like writing.  I like having written.”

I agree with that totally.  Writing is an itch you need to scratch.  From the moment you get the idea until it’s down on paper and complete, writing is like that stray strand of celery that will not be moved from the space between your teeth.  Anybody who says rhyming poetry is easy  has not written  much rhyming  poetry, you can  take my word for that.
Then, one day, the torment is over.
Today I got physical copies of my latest book, Paradox, and I am very pleased  with it.  I read through  it all again (which doesn’t take long, because they are poems, and because I wrote them, so  I  was scanning, really) and felt pretty good about  every single poem, even a couple of the very  short ones, which didn’t have  much to say, but I felt they said it well.

I spent many long hours working on it.  I  spent many long hours working  on a couple of the poems individually. (Some came easier.  It’s always  a mix, isn’t it?)  Now, it has joined the collected  body of my work, and I can more or less forget about it  while I work on the next one.

When you shoot unarmed protesters, you have gone too far.  When you shoot unarmed protesters, and you brag about it, you are so incredibly wrong that you have to be some sort of  weird psychopath to think  you’re right.  This is where the Jewish people find themselves today.

Most are supportive of Israel.  It’s a natural thing for a Jewish person.   Irish-Americans love Ireland, Italian-Americans love Italy, and Jews throughout the diaspora love Israel.  But, if you love what’s going on there now you are sick in the fucking head, Jewish or not.  To paraphrase Hagrid’s words to Harry on  their first trip to Diagon Alley: “Not all Jews are nice.”
It absolutely defies belief that they keep escaping international censure for this, but that is because the U.S. will always, in any situation, do what Israel wants.  I don’t understand that, either.
I do have a theory about that, but it sounds like kind of a wild conspiracy theory, and it’s all straight out of my  own head, so take it with a grain of salt, but, here goes:  the Israelis know exactly  what happened to the U.S.S. Liberty in June of ’67, they know it was no miscommunication, no friendly fire, they had orders from LBJ to sink  it because he wanted a Middle Eastern Gulf of Tonkin event.  It was pretty clear by that time we were losing Viet Nam, and besides, the Middle  East is  even more lucrative.
A more updated theory would be that they’ve got the inside dirt on 9/11 (which would mean they participated in it, which I’m  not claiming, but not saying it’s impossible, either)
So, one would think that revelations of that sort would be as damaging to the blackmailer as the blackmailee, that Israel would definitely not want that information to come to light.
One would think.  But Israel, apparently, doesn’t give a shit what anybody in the world thinks.  Because they can murder unarmed civilians in broad daylight and get away with it.  Because they are Israel.
It needs to stop.

Just watched a video  on America vs.  Taiwan on  the issue of recycling.  There’s a whole series, I guess, the other day I saw one that was U.S. vs. Japan on  school lunches, and the Japanese  system was  brilliant, the kids cooked  the meal and cleaned up  after, and  the vegetables were raised  in  the  school garden.   With U.S. v Taiwan, it was  just  that Taiwan has musical garbage  trucks, so taking out  the  trash  is like  a visit to  the Good Humor man, and the bags for trash  were more expensive than the bags for recyclables.  Not bad ideas, but it struck  me as a  bit more of a gimmick than a comprehensive plan.

These videos remind me of an old joke, an old internet meme, about  how in heaven the cops are all  British, the cooks  are all  Italian, the mechanics are all German, and it went on with a whole bunch of nationalities but you get the gist, and hell is where the cops are all German, the mechanics Italian, and the chefs are all British.

It’s a bit of humor, of course, but there’s a point to it.   We could all learn from just looking, around the world, which is excessively easy these days, seeing who’s doing it best, and emulating them.  If Sweden can reduce their carbon footprint to almost nothing and completely eliminate their garbage, everybody else can, too.  If Germany can power their  whole  country on wind and solar, everybody can.  If Japan and China can build high speed trains powered by magnets, then everybody can build high speed trains powered by magnets.

When you can learn from the best, there’s no point in not learning from the best.