Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Normally, I avoid getting my news from television.  The very format means they can only deliver a brief summary, pretty much  devoid of nuance, and can’t  even come close to covering the whole range of issues going on  in  the world.  So, I get my  news from the internet.  I’m well aware that there’s a lot of bullshit there, that you can’t click on stuff from Breitbart or The Daily Caller, that sites that end in .com.co are just peddling straight up whoppers, that the Waterford Whisperer and Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker are intended as comedy, and that everybody commenting on Facebook has an agenda.  Still, for better or worse, Facebook is usually where I  go.
Today, I wanted a bit more detail  on the stampede in Mumbai and all  I’d seen on Facebook were ‘I stand with Mumbai’ type posts.  A noble sentiment, but not very  informative.  So, I  watched a bit  of BBC, and a bit of CNN, and was reinforced in my view that TV is part of the problem.
There was Trump saying “As to the death toll in Puerto Rico, I think we’re doing an excellent job,” which is the kind of garbled stupidspeak that, coming from any other politician would  be counted as a major gaffe, but reporters just kept shouting questions, as if bragging about how  many people had died was normal.
Then, they were talking with somebody  from the Spanish  government about the  pro-independence referendum in Catalonia, and he was talking about how ‘fake news’ had influenced the election.  Politicians around the world have seen that this line works  for  everything, and so they’re jumping on the  bandwagon.

On that topic, though, I don’t even  see why the Spanish government is fighting it.  If there’s a separate Catalonian state, and they remain in the EU, Spain loses nothing.  That’s  the beauty of the EU.

Hugh Hefner has died.  He was 91 but, still, it came as a shock.  That’s because I thought he’d died years ago.  91 is pretty old.  Of course, if you’re looking for reasons for his longevity, you don’t need to look very far.  He had a beautiful life.

Before there was internet porn, there was Playboy magazine.  It was, compared to what you see today, a bit of cheesecake.  In the beginning, it was barely nudity.  Sure, the girls didn’t have any clothes on, but they were coyly posed.  That loosened up a bit later on, as publications like Hustler (see People vs. Larry Flynt) took the Playboy idea and ran with it.

But Hef always kept it classy.  The magazine had great articles and hysterical cartoons (Remember Little Annie Fanny?), even if nobody ever read the articles.  And, like Walt Disney, he built his own fantasy world, except instead of a bunch of people in full body mouse costumes, he had the Bunnies.

I hear things had kind of gone down hill  in recent years.  Not too surprising, really.  Hard to keep up the Playboy lifestyle when you’re in your 80s, and I don’t know  how  the magazine’s doing these days, if it even still  exists.  Certainly, as far as a showcase for sexy women, it cannot compete with the internet and, since that was it’s raison d’etre, it is a thing of the past.

But, oh what a magical past.  Hugh Hefner was one of a kind, and his role in history is assured.

I’m guessing that most of you are like me, and hadn’t heard of  the Jones Act up until  yesterday or so.  Passed in 1920, one year after prohibition and votes for women (apparently one result of WWI was a manic desire to change laws), it says that all shipping between American ports has to be on American built, American owned, and majority American crewed ships.

This is  making it real difficult to get  aid into Puerto Rico, because, apparently, most ships aren’t American built.  So, it’s more expensive to ship  stuff to American ports which, even in the best of times, means things are expensive in Puerto Rico, despite the fact that they are not rich people.  They’ve been getting screwed for  years.

Now, of course, it’s an emergency, a crisis, and the obvious thing to  do would be to ignore that act for a while, issue a waiver.  Bush did it for Katrina (well, not right away, it took him a few days  before he realized what  was going on), Obama did it  forf Sandy, and Trump even did it for  Harvey  and Irma.  But not Maria.  It’s a slap  in the face, it’s refusing to give aid, it’s criminal.

Trump doesn’t give a shit.  It’s a big ocean, he says.   They are already in debt, he says.  (this is particularly offensive since, as a private businessman, he screwed Puerto Rico out of tens of millions of dollars on a golf course deal)  It would be bad for American shipping, he says.

I’ve been to Puerto Rico.  Once, about 25 years ago.  Nice place.  Friendly  people.  I had a good time.  So, this pisses me off.

There was the Spit it Out poetry  reading tonight at A Maze in Tchaiovna, which kind of caught me flat footed. I found out about it a week  ago and had just had the Soma reading, and with Alchemy coming up next week I had to scrape  the old barrel  to come up with enough material to make tonight worthwhile.  In the end I had five or six very  short pieces, which didn’t fit the mood of the reading at all, or maybe it  did, but I was definitely overshadowed, in a very good way.

It was definitely a small audience, so almost as many performers as non-performing audience members, and sometimes the line got a little blurred.  The guy who was just sitting in the back playing guitar for his friends got roped in and, after a very nervous introduction did a couple songs and did them just fine, at least one was his  own, there was a dog  act, which was also  unplanned, a group reading of ‘Howl,’ a group poem which, IMHO, is  sort of pointless as a poetry exercise but it’s not bad as a friendly little  nerdgame.
Kae, the organizer, did a couple of poems I’d heard before and one  called, if I recall correctly ‘Outside the Museum of  Broken Relationships in Zagreb.’  There was a new guy, a very British gentleman of African origin who spoke of poetry as therapy, of writing while angry, and in writing of giving voice to all  the thoughts rolling around in  his head he did, indeed, give them voice.
Not at all the kind of thing I write, very passionate and emotional, whereas  I’m  just trying for rhyme, interesting word juxtaposition and occasionally a hit you over the head with a clown hammer obvious point, but that’s all to the good, we’re not  competing, we’re not  doing the  same kind of thing at all.  He was damned impressive and raised the bar and that is a good thing.  That is a great thing.

I still  have to finish my long poem on interdimensional travel, but I have until Monday.

About a year ago, Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem, which is really kind of a crap song, isn’t it?  I think Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land’ from Woody Guthrie would make a much  better, peppier national anthem, or maybe Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party in the USA’ or maybe we could just pick  a new one every  few  years, which would be much more in keeping with America’s modern, trend-driven character.

But, that’s not my point.  He knelt to protest the treatment of black people by police.  He knelt to protest the murders of Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Fernando Castile, and hundreds – yes, hundreds – of others.

He lost his job.  Progressives spoke up for him, flag people criticized him, and football fans argued over whether or not he was such a great quarterback that maybe he wasn’t just cut for due cause, which seems a bit odd to me because he was considered good enough before the protest.

But, for the most part the  furor had died down until Donald Trump stepped in, calling him a son of a  bitch  and  urging the flag people to walk out of the stadium (which isn’t likely to happen).  Now everybody’s kneeling, even one woman who sang the  anthem.  Whole teams are staying in the locker  rooms, and plenty of people are questioning why they have to play the anthem at an entertainment  event at all.  Flag people are upset because football players are ‘protesting the flag’ which is like  saying Rosa Parks was protesting public transportation (I  borrowed that from Facebook – thought it was a pretty good line), and people are lining up soldier’s quotes on  both sides.  A lot of the people on my Facebook page are  just bitching about football, and  how it promotes violence.  The original Black Live’s Matter issue is being largely overlooked, for which I blame the media.

One positive aspect, and this is the point I want to make.  It’s a bit like in Catch-22. when they made everybody sign a loyalty oath before they could  get a meal, and then two loyalty  oaths, and on and on, until somebody with rank came into the cafeteria and said ‘Fuck this, give everybody food.’  (I’m paraphrasing)
For the past half century or  so, at least, America has become progressively more flag and symbol obsessed.  The whole ‘flag pin’ thing, which was an issue in more than one election, the anthem before all sporting  events, the pledge of allegiance in  schools, and political campaigns slapping up flags wherever there was enough  space, flag T-shirts, flag hats, flag towels, flag underwear.
It’s worse than bloody Christmas.  And now, Donald Trump may have ruined it.   I’m not giving  him credit, he didn’t ruin it on purpose, his intent is just to run with it, to cover himself in the flag as all politicians before him have.  He has ruined it, though.

It is now O.K. to not like the national anthem, it is  now O.K.  to  ignore the flag because, you know, Trump is a plonker.

It’s like a breath of fresh air.