Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Of course, Harry and Meghan are free to invite whoever they want to their wedding and are under no obligation to invite people they don’t like…sort of.  Even though he’s not in direct line to be king, he’s pretty danged close and, if Trump weren’t a complete and absolute racist dickhead, he would have been invited, just because he’s  the American president.  I bet Angela Merkel will be there, and probably several other world leaders with only the slightest personal relationship with Harry and Meghan.

But, he is a racist dickhead and Meghan Markle, who is of mixed race, shouldn’t have to put up with having him at her wedding.

Then, the news today was that Trump said he’s not going to visit England unless Theresa May can ban any protests.  Of course, that’s absurd.  Theresa May can’t ban protest in England any more than  Trump can ban protest in the United States.  You know, free countries and all, theoretically.

So, it looks like Trump might not be going to England any time soon.  I doubt if he would be well received in Haiti or Africa, either.  Certainly, he wouldn’t be a great hit in Mexico.  This is really a bizarre and unprecedented situation.  Up to Trump, American presidents have traveled abroad very freely.  In fact, it’s usually been a  chance for them to make  speeches in front of  friendly, welcoming audiences.

Nixon managed to go to China.  Trump can’t go to England.  Sad.

It wasn’t a terribly productive day, but I made progress on a couple of fronts, although the first example might not be progress at all, it’s putting one foot in front of another but this might just be footsteps in the swamp, pulling the boot  out of one suckhole and straight into another.  That is, dissatisfied with the feedback at one poetry site (approx. 800 members, and generally no one comments on anybody else’s poems except for a couple of guys who just seem to delight in being exceptionally nasty in their negativity) I decided to switch to another (membership about 20,000) and, so far, it looks like much  of the same thing, but we’ll see.

Then, I finally got the Table of Contents done on my next poetry book, and I feel very proud  of  myself because I took one poem out even  though  it was a long one and thus healthy  for the page count but, I must admit, it was  not  a great poem and, due to the line  length, it really didn’t fit in with  the rest of the book.  I’m generally a kitchen sink sort of guy so I’m quite pleased with myself that I am able to toss something aside  and give the book a bit more consistency and literary integrity.

Then, I was talking with a friend and he mentioned that you could designate your books on Kindle for  a giveaway once a month or so.  Not sure if that will increase  readership much, but I might just  give it a try.

The fam is off at the cottage  for the  weekend and I had a long list of things to get done, writing projects and  such, but of course I smoked a whole bunch and watched documentaries on TV all day, a couple of hours  about WWII, a bit about the murder of Dian Fossey which, despite  the  good  she did, couldn’t be called  surprising.  The poachers hated her, the Rwandan government hated her.  I’m guessing it was the government.

Then, I watched one on the origins of language.  Well, they started with cave paintings, which go  back to about 2,500 years ago, so I’m sure they didn’t predate language, but they are the first examples of written communication we know of, and that’s something that differentiates us from the animals.

Whales may sing songs to each other but I  know for a fact none of them has ever read a book.  If there was ever in real life a creature named Moby Dick, he is unknown to modern Whales.  Dogs may look  up and howl at the moon, but it’s pretty sure none of them know what the moon and the stars ARE.

Written language is very, very important.

Oprah Winfrey.  To tell you the truth, I don’t know  what I think about her.  On the one hand, she’s been a  very successful talk show host  for many years and millions of people love her.  My  mother loved her.  So there’s that.

Then there was the time she gave everybody in her audience a car.  That was pretty cool.  Of course, she’s filthy rich and it was well within her budget to give them all cars and it was tremendous publicity for her and I’m always a bit leery of rich people’s highly publicized donations to charity.  You do a bit of simple math and you realize it’s as if you or  I  were to give a couple of bucks to a panhandler.  Still, she didn’t have to give everybody a car and it was kind of a cool thing, and I’m sure greatly appreciated by the recipients.

Then there was that time she flipped out like a prima donna when she couldn’t get into a fancy shop in Paris because it was a private event and, besides, nobody recognized her because it was Paris and she’s not actually famous there.  But, maybe that wasn’t that big of a deal.
But, I sure did think it was ridiculous after her Golden Globe speech when all sorts of people started suggesting she run for president.  And I sure am relieved that Oprah has now ruled it out.  “Not in my DNA,” she said.  This is good.

The Democrats do not need a celebrity.  They do not need a better slogan, or a clever mascot.  They do not need Joe Biden, or young Joe Kennedy, or Michelle Obama, or Corey Booker.  What they need is a program which will help the American working class. And a candidate who genuinely believes in that program.

Barring that, they will  lose again.

I don’t quite understand Facebook’s most recent change of algorithm.  I’m not seeing more from friends and family, I’m not seeing fewer from businesses.  And, it’s still possible to  block a post, which I do occasionally.

But, when you block a post, they start asking you questions, like you need a reason to block a post.  I’m not too bothered even by that.  They’re trying to get information, I suppose, on what people want to block.

But, I wish that, in addition to the few options they give you, they left a space for ‘other,’ where you can type in your actual reasons, like “it’s been at the top of my feed for 3 days now.  I haven’t commented on  it and you should be able to figure out from that that I’m not interested in it,” or “It disturbs me that the person who created this meme can’t spell for shit” or “This is really lame.  That’s all.”

But, they don’t.  So, I take it from that that Facebook is not really trying to understand their clientele, they are just trying to classify and subdivide their clientele.
Mark Zuckerberg may be a great computer genius but he could really do himself a lot of good by hiring a few people who can understand normal human beings.