Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

It was an interesting night. First, I printed out my poems for the evening, all four I had written. I had an idea for one more, and hoped to get it written while seeing the girls to their dance class. I actually wound up finishing it on the tram from Andel to Hellichova, but I’m glad I did because once I got to the NAPA bar, I realized that I didn’t have the rest of them with me. One short one was easy to recreate from memory and one I had, written out longhand, in a different notebook, and 3 was enough.
We had some new talent. The featured speaker I’ve seen there a couple of times at open mike and he was interesting, then a couple of women poets, the first had a very nice poem about the social life of butterflies, the second one was a “slam” poet which I guess means loud, fast, breathless and passionate, and she did a piece about waiting for a hurricane, about maybe seeing this house, or that tree, for the last time before the sea ultimately conquered the land. There were a few short stories, some comedy …all in all, a pretty good night.

I just watched a very interesting movie called, I think, Existenz, although I missed the first 15 minutes or so, and it was interesting because of the concept more than the execution. The basic plot was a very vivid, persuasive, virtual reality game and they were never sure if they were in it or out of it, if it was them or their character talking, and they went from dystopia to dystopia, from the time she got shot in the church, with the bone gun and bullet teeth, to the noir country store, to the trout farm, to the Chinese restaurant, to the battle scene, and on and on.
The idea of the blurring of reality and fantasy was interesting, but the problem with me is when I’m watching a film, unless it’s a truly great one and sometimes not even then, is that I keep rewriting the film, first of all guessing how each scene will end and when I get it wrong there’s a part of me that’s still following the other plot, but with this one it was more general, more tonal.
I kept thinking damn, why do they have to make it so grotty and gross, like all of the vivisection, the trout farm in particular but there were a few other scenes with cutting up frogs and lizards, and if you’re playing a game, how much fun is it to be an assembly line worker in a damned fish factory? Why not have some scenes in a beautiful forest, or on the high seas, or in exotic night clubs, and have some more glamorous people?
Everybody was sweaty, and diseased, and vaguely threatening, and they repeated themselves a lot. Is it that much more appealing to watch dystopia than utopias, or are they just that much easier to write?
Of course, a film has to have conflict so it can have resolution of conflict, but damn. Would it hurt to have a smidgin of fun in our fantasies?

Everybody’s heard of the internet of things, and despite the obvious sci-fi dystopian fantasies, you know, when people get killed by their fridge or showers in some freak way, I think it’s a pretty good idea. Personally, I’m not very up to date technically. but if people want to order pizza in everyday and have an intelligent robot who brings them beer, I’ve got no objection.
Some bemoan that this will make people lose their social skills and become vegetables, but I’m not too worried about that either. A lot of us didn’t have such great social skills to begin with and in cases like that, the life enhancement possibilities of the internet outweigh the human reaction available in real life.

Then, I am reading The Lord of the Rings now, for the first time in decades, and it’s great, of course. Haven’t noticed anything different about it, like how you’re supposed to react to books differently at different points in your life, but one point I’d kind of forgotten was the foreshadowing of the Ents when Pippin and Merry were captured by old Man Willow (which also may have foreshadowed the Whomping Willow in the Harry Potter series, come to think of it. Those Willows can be a nasty bunch.)

Then, I was smoking a joint, I believe it was the first one of the day today, and it hit me -the internet of trees. Of course, trees do have a communication network, root to root, leaf to leaf, pheromones on the breeze, I don’t know how they communicate, I’m not a Dendrologist (although I think that it would be a cool thing to be, largely because of the name)
No, this particular fantasy had to do more with installing computers in their trunks and monitoring devices all over them so they could be uploaded to the singularity, and we’d see what they see and they could think like we think and we could communicate and this could be extended to the birds of the air and the fish of the seas, and the seas, and everything. It’s more than just a small aritificial intelligence. It would be an Intelligent Earth. It’s coming.

A lot of people are upset about the betrayal of old and sick people by certain members of the Democratic Party, and rightfully so.
Here’s the deal. Bernie Sanders proposed an amendment (his specialty) which would have allowed Americans to import drugs from Canada, where they are way cheaper, like half the price or less, because American drug companies are money sucking leeches. 13 Democrats jumped over and joined the Republicans and voted against it.
I repeat. It was in favor of letting people buy drugs, at a lower price, by importing them from Canada, which is a very nice place.
Now, I don’t know what this was an amendment TO, but that’s kind of irrelevant. Both sides try to attach amendments to bills they don’t like, bills they will probably vote against anyway, because then if the bill passes, it sucks a little bit less, and if the bill doesn’t pass, well, O.K.
Corey Booker’s (D- Big Pharma)bullshit excuse doesn’t wash, either, which is that he was concerned about safety. Yeah, right. That’s about as much of a straw man as voter fraud, with its 5 or 6 reported incidents since,like,forever. There has been no epidemic of Canadians dying from tainted medicine.
On the other hand, it’s not hard to find out why these 13 Democrats voted the way the did. Every single one of them- let me repeat that, every single one, without exception, has received large ‘campaign contributions’ from pharmaceutical companies. Every. Single. One.
Now, political corruption is nothing new, and it’s hardly surprising. The thing that amazes me, and depresses me, every time something like this happens, is how cheap they actually sell out.
The highest paid hooker in the whorehouse is, in this case, Patty Murray of Washington, who got a tad under half a million dollars. Booker was in the top 3 or 4, certainly. Poor Maria Cantwell, also of Washington, only got paid 59,000 for voting to let poor, elderly people die. I’m not sure if she was less greedy, more needy, or just later to the game.
Add all the numbers together, though, and you realize that it’s cheaper to buy the United States congress, like all of it, than it is to own an NFL team, or to produce a major Hollywood movie. Out of reach of the average person, of course, but withing the reach of hundreds, maybe thousands of individual Americans.
We aren’t just being screwed because Trump is going to be president. The rot goes much deeper than that.

Americans in the Czech Republic are often critical of Czechs on public transportation, the way they all stare blankly at nothing at all and do not make eye contact, or smile, or engage in conversation, which is kind of a ridiculous complaint, really, because it is the case on public transport every where in the world. Who tries to talk to strangers on public transport? I generally find that when someone does, they are either crazy or up to no good.
Also, what do Americans know about it? Their visit to Europe is probably the only time they’ve even used public transport.
It was a routine ride, just 7 minutes long according to the schedule. I got on and sat down in the first available seat. I got the impression that the lady sitting opposite was irritated at someone sitting there, but that was not my problem so I opened my book (Lord of the Rings. Haven’t read it for years, and it’s every bit as good as I remembered.) and started reading.
“I was in the library yesterday.” She had a very soft, timid voice. At first I thought I was hearing something, in my head, like a disembodied voice. I looked around and then back at her and she was smiling and repeated it.
“I was in the library yesterday.” Did I know this woman? Former student, possibly? That happens, occasionally, out and about in Prague, after 18 years of teaching, and it can be awkward because I am notoriously bad about remembering faces, and names. Her English was good. Or was it just a conversational gambit, based on the fact that I was reading a book?
“Oh,” I said, not wanting to appear rude and, to tell the truth, I am all in favor of people engaging in conversation with strangers on public transportation. We have too little communication in this world.
I guess there was enough of a question in my statement to encourage her to continue. “I read a book on astronomy and a book on biology.” Well, that could be interesting. I’m interested in astronomy. I’m interested in biology.
I still didn’t know what to say, so I held up my slightly battered copy of the repository of Tolkien’s genius and asked “Have you read this book?”
“Oh no, I only read science books. No fantasy.”
The conversation lapsed after that, I decided to get off a stop early and walk the rest of the way. I was early so it didn’t matter and, despite the freezing temperature and ice on the sidewalks, there wasn’t much breeze so it was a reasonably pleasant day.
So, I said goodbye and as I was getting off the bus she called after me “Would you like a cigarette?”