Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

The further  we go into the future, the more we learn about the past.  It seems a bit ironic but it’s true.  When I was a kid, all of the kids loved dinosaurs, which hasn’t changed a bit, but we knew maybe 6 or 7 kinds – T Rex, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl and maybe two  or three others, because that’s all anybody knew.  As far as we knew, that’s all there were.  Now, kids learn about dozens of  kinds.

In the news today, archaeologists have discovered an amazing bunch of ancient Mayan ruins.  Now, we knew that there was some kind of ancient civilization there, because of the pyramids, and we know they fell from power before Columbus arrived, and it must have been several generations before, because none of the locals knew anything, but we never knew the  extent of their  civilization, or why it collapsed  (I’m guessing giant volcano, but maybe just because that would make a much better movie than an epidemic or a drought).

Maybe now we’ll find out.  Using laser technology to map the region from the air,  suddenly all sorts of things started to leap out.  Palaces, pyramids, irrigation systems, and walled cities linked by elevated roadways.  Scientists think the region had a population of over 10 million people.  It sounds very much as if it was at least the equivalent of Rome.

The further we go  into the future, the clearer we see the past, and the true hero of this story is the laser technology.  What will they discover next?

I do not want to write about the Nunes memo, because I hate writing about things I know nothing about (doesn’t mean I never do it) because there’s always the chance I’ll say something stupid, and then they pounce.

Of course, at this point, not much is known about the memo at all.  Sure, it’s been made public (I guess the version he gave to Trump, which is apparently different from the version he showed to the House) but we have no way of knowing if any of the charges therein (mostly, as I understand it, that the FBI is being really mean and unfair to Donald Trump) are actually somehow related to the truth, or if they’re made up completely.  My money is on the latter, but I doubt it makes much difference.

So, let me write about the movie I just watched, Pineapple Express.  It’s strange.  I’m sure a computer algorithm might look at movies I like and predict I’d totally love this one.
It’s a stoner movie and I’m  a stoner.  ‘Saving Grace’ was hysterical and ‘The Millers’ was really funny in parts except for the total sellout ending.

Also, I really enjoy stupid comedy.  Love the Three Stooges.  Love Jim Carrey.  Love about half of Adam Sandler’s stuff.  Hated Big Daddy.   Loved 50 First Dates and Anger Management.

So, it’s kind of surprising, but I’m not a big fan of Seth Rogen.  Just too many jokes about body parts, I guess.  The film definitely had some funny moments but James Franco, who had the best  lines, delivered them so  slowly – because he was really, really stoned – that you laughed before the joke was told and were ready to move on already.

The coolest part was the recap, when  they’re sitting  in the diner all  burnt and seriously injured and bloody, talking about how they’re going  to be best friends forever (Rogen, Franco, and one other dude) and Tommy Lee Jones is sitting  at the table  behind them, reading a newspaper.  Never says a damned word, was just there.

I’ve had a few friends on Facebook lately complaining about being banned by  Facebook, or sent to ‘Facebook jail,’ whatever that means because, of course, if I weren’t seeing their posts, I wouldn’t know there was any problem at all.  On the one hand, it concerns me, because all censorship  is bad.  On the other hand, I sort of support Facebook’s right to have such a thing as ‘community standards.’  I don’t know  that I’d draw  them as tightly, or as arbitrarily, as they seem to.  Back to the  first hand, I’m glad it hasn’t happened to me, at least for a long time.  When I first signed up, I was adding every friend request that came my way, and a couple  of times I had temporary bans against adding new people.  I  don’t really get the point.  Why should Facebook care how many people I  add or how  fast I add them?  If I was Mark Zuckerberg I would want the system to grow just as fast as possible,  with the greatest possible number of interconnections, new synapses in the hive mind.  Then again, if I was Mark Zuckerberg, I’d have invented Facebook but I’m not, so I didn’t.  On the other hand, I’m a little bit envious of those friends who’ve been ‘banned.’  At least their work is being noticed.  It’s what Abbie Hoffman once referred to as ‘subpoenas envy.’
The main thing, though, and the topic of tonight’s blog, is the ‘why?’.  Well, one of the friends having problems is a prolific (and brilliant) writer who often writes and posts photos about the people  of the South Pacific (Melanesia, not Polynesia) among whom he has lived and for whom he has a great affection.  The Facebook charge was ‘pornography’ which was absurd.  There might have been a bare breast or two, I never noticed, but there was never anything erotic.  It was clearly ethnography and not pornography.
Another one, however, let slip a comment which may have exposed the true reason.  “I post in over 100 poetry groups,” he wrote.  Damn, I post in 2 or 3.

It not only explains why Facebook put a block on him posting in groups, it might also explain why nobody pays any attention to my poetry.

4 or 5 days ago somebody on one of my Bernie (or maybe Tulsi) pages posted a post which predicted that Joe Kennedy was going to give a standard DNC talking point speech and the same people who went gaga over Oprah would jump right on the Kennedy bandwagon.

Boy, was he ever right.  With nothing but the Kennedy name and the Kennedy face, he’s being mentioned as a presidential contender, following right in the footsteps of Oprah, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris and anybody  else the DNC thinks can distract progressives from actual progressive causes and checking whether or not aforesaid individuals actually have progressive voting records.

Well, they don’t.  Young Joe Kennedy is every bit as much a tool of the pharmaceutical industry as Corey Booker is.  He didn’t support Sanders Medicare for All proposal, and he has a lot of stock in an evil pharmaceutical company which charges an outrageous price for a life saving drug.

The thing the Democrats don’t realize (or, more likely, are willfully ignoring because their political futures, their 1st class seat on the gravy train, depends on them ignoring it) is how much things changed in 2016.  Of course, progressives were awakened, and galvanized.  A lot of us (me included) had actually bought into the bullshit about how America was a right wing country and we needed to compromise and things like universal health care just weren’t realistic, and it was a beautiful thing to realize that it wasn’t true.  That there are millions and millions of people, maybe even a majority, who support a very wide range of progressive positions.
Another thing, which is also thanks to the internet, is it’s incredibly easy anymore to look up somebody’s voting record.  It’s not even to difficult to find out who their donors are.

I can’t predict how this civil war in the Democratic party is  going to play out, but we’re not putting up with the bullshit any more, and that’s just a stone cold fact.

I am torn.  On the one hand, Trump refusing to  impose sanctions on Russia even though congress voted for them overwhelmingly amounts to contempt of congress and, if congress did not consist of a mix of weak willed Democrats who would cower in  the face of a particularly aggressive hamster, and Republicans who are so far up Trump’s butt they can no longer see daylight, they could easily begin impeachment proceedings, which I would seriously love to see.

On the other hand, I think that ‘sanctions’ as a general rule are a childish political ploy.  They generally hurt the people of the targeted country and do not harm its leaders, or even its economic leaders, one little bit.  They are imposed, as a general rule, to make it look as if some action is being taken, rather than as an effective action.  There could be exceptions, but I doubt if this is one of them.

Yes, Russia’s done some bad things in the recent past – the seizing of Crimea for one thing, the air accident that killed the Polish prime minister (yeah, accident, right) for another, but this isn’t about any of those.  This is about Russia’s ‘interference’ in the 2016 election which, as far as I can figure out, amounts to a couple of troll farms taking out a few thousand dollars worth of ads on Facebook which show Hillary Clinton with devil horns.

Nobody’s claiming that Russia actually hacked the voting machines or anything like that.

So, on the one hand, I agree with Trump that the sanctions are not a good thing.  On the other hand, I would love to see congress impeach him over his refusal.

But, maybe not.  It would be more like  the Andrew Johnson impeachment in 1868 than any other.  Congress only passed the tenure act because they knew perfectly well Johnson would break it.

So, I guess what it comes down to is this.  I would love to see Trump impeached, but I’d like for it to be over his conflicts of interest, perhaps income tax evasion and money laundering, and for being a totally incompetent moron who is an embarrassment to the whole country and a clear and  present danger to the human race.
But, like I  say, I’m torn.