Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Two nights ago, at the Alchemy poetry reading series (which is  at a new venue which  I really like, by the way, right by  Grebovka park, it’s a place  dedicated to aristic events, has a great  stage, big comfy couches, and popcorn), I  read a rather longish poem about the Grandfather Paradox and the multi-verse theory.

Normally, I  write lots of short poems.  I like it  when I can  crank out a long  one, but the  short ones are  not  only easier to write, they tend to be more popular.  But  this  one was very  well received, which made me happy, because I want that to be the title of my next book: Paradox.
I was talking to a friend after the event and he said “I remember you wrote a long poem about evolution a few years back.”  This surprised me.  I’ve never put that poem into any of my books because it was so badly received.  Oh, it got the usual polite applause but I  could tell about  halfway through that  people’s eyes were glazing over and lines I was certain would get a reaction – if not an oooo, at least a bit of nervous laughter – got nothing.  So, I laid it  aside and forgot about it.

Today I went looking for it, and it was about the last poem I found among my ancient writings, but I found something  else instead – lots and lots of short poems that haven’t made it into any collection.  Some of them truly are crap, but there are others which deserve to see the light  of day, (the poem in question actually is pretty bad, I realized on rereading, but it talks about something important to me – it’s more about the future of evolution than evolution – and it rhymes, so I’m putting  it in, I think) and so they’ll go  into my next book, which should maybe be called Kitchen Sink, as in ‘everything but the…’ because that’s what it’s going to be.

Well, nearly two weeks after Maria wreaked  havoc on the island of Puerto  Rico, President Trump finally managed  to make  his way across that ‘big, big ocean’ for a visit, where he gave himself an A+ for his response to the crisis, joked about  how  much Puerto Rico was  costing  the United States, said it wasn’t really  all  that  bad because more people  died in  Katrina, and threw paper towels at the crowd (no, really).

First, the A+ remark.  Dude, you do  not get to  give  yourself a grade.  That’s not  the way  grades are  given.  I don’t even like liking  my  own  posts because I figure that’s down  to other people.  If you listen to pro athletes after a big game, they always are gracious and say “Well, my opponent was really tough and I  was fortunate to score a lot of (goals, baskets, touchdowns, whatever).”  They almost  never say “Man, I was awesome, I was so great out there today, wasn’t I?”  First, because it would be totally uncool, and second, because if you were awesome, other people would be saying so.

In this case, observers close to the  action and  around the  world are all saying that Trump sucks, that his response to the catastrophe is benign indifference at best, and deliberate genocide at worst.  Let’s review.  His first reaction was to say point out that Puerto Rico was in debt, which was  a rather nasty thing to say, especially as private citizen  Trump once screwed Puerto Rico out of 33 million dollars in a golf course deal gone bad.  Then, he refused to waive the Jones Act, which means he was DELIBERATELY OBSTRUCTING aid.  He relented on  that after  a couple of days of negative  press, but he  certainly doesn’t get credit for getting aid to the island in a timely fashion.
It has been two weeks.  By that time after a natural disaster (this is not a war, nobody is shooting at or resisting aid in any way), everybody should be rescued and a rebuilding  process should  have begun, like about 10 days ago.  That’s lost time.  Donald Trump can never, ever make up for  that, no matter what he does now.  And he’s still  not taking it seriously.   Throwing paper towels.  Asshole.

Such a dark day.  I feel a bit guilty even lamenting the passing of Tom Petty when there are 58 dead in Las Vegas.  It was unexpected, he was only in his mid 60s, just a couple years older than me, but many of  the dead were young, really young, with their whole lives ahead of them.
All we can do is mourn.  We could, of  course, try to prevent it ever happening again, but that’s not likely  to happen in America.  One person on my Facebook page said “Please  don’t make  this into a political event.”  I suppose she was being                well-intentioned.  Give people time to mourn without arguing about guns.  But I don’t agree.

Now is exactly  the time to  have this argument about  guns.  If we banned automatic weapons, and required  psychological  tests for  anyone wanting to buy a gun (and if you want to buy ten, that  right there is a sign that  maybe you’re a couple  of tacos short of a platter), then it would almost certainly reduce the number of this  kind of killings.  I say almost certainly because it worked  in Australia.  It works  in  most developed countries.  America is  not really any  different.

But, that’s one of the problems with  the USA.  In  fact, it’s one  of  the biggest ones.  We just refuse to learn from the example of others.  Everybody’s got  universal health care, and you can see that  it works.  America says no.  Germany, and Sweden, have almost  reduced their carbon  footprint to zero, but America  keeps  pushing  for  more  oil pipelines rather than putting up solar panels  and windmills.  A couple  of  states have had huge  success with  legal marijuana, but are the others learning?  Not so  much.
It’s just plain  pig-headedness and, especially on the issue of guns, it’s costing lives.

All of the newscasters  I  listened  to today kept  referring to Catalonia as ‘an area the size of Belgium’ and the way they placed the emphasis in that phrase, implied that that  was  rather a large area.  It’s not.  If it gains independence, it will be one of  the smaller nations in Europe.  Just the size of Belgium, roughly.

It would be viable, though.  It has Barcelona, which is a fairly important city, a seacoast which includes a major port and some nice Mediterranean beaches, some beautiful  countryside which isn’t completely useless for farming, some historical castles, and borders with France  and Spain.
I don’t see  why Spain is so incredibly hostile  to the idea of  their leaving.  If they stay in the European union, it will be almost the same as if they’d never left.  Witness Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  Of course, Spain’s tax base would shrink a bit, but so would the expense of trying to maintain by force what they can’t maintain with good will.

Anyway, regardless of the results of today’s referendum, Catalonian independence took a big step forward today.  Pictures of Spanish police beating old women with their nightsticks and smashing the windows of polling places have turned world opinion (at least the way I  read world opinion through the filter of Facebook) sharply against Spain and in favor of independence.

Basically, if the Spanish are big enough assholes to do that, the Catalonia deserves independence.  They should have it.

I’ve been wrong about Trump many times.  I thought he’d torpedoed his campaign right out of the gate with his  Mexican rapists remark, but no.  I thought  making fun of the handicapped reporter would  sink him for sure, even the most hideous right winger surely must realize  how offensive that was, but  no.  Then there was the pussy grabbing comment and I  thought there was no  way any self respecting female could back him after that, but plenty of women  continued to back him.

Now this.  Tweeting, from the golf  course, that the Mayor of San Juan is a horrible mayor and isn’t doing enough to fix the  problem, when the power  is  out, roads and  bridges  have been destroyed, many regions are still flooded, people across the island are hungry, having a hard time finding clean water to drink, and a large number of them are homeless, while he’s actually guilty of obstructing the  relief effort…well, surely this  must be enough to turn people against him.

No.   I see people on  my Facebook feed still supporting him.  This is depressing.
This is absolutely not excusable.  This is not just walking past a homeless person, dismissive and condescending like.  This is stopping to spit on them.  This is the high school  gym coach who makes the fat kid do push ups, then puts his foot on their back and laughs at them.  This is not just driving by a traffic accident and not stopping.  This is  stopping and yelling at  the ambulance drivers for blocking traffic.
This is absolutely monstrous and anybody who still supports him is a piece of shit, too.