Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

At first,I did not believe that Donald Trump had actually tweeted a tweet with the word ‘unpresidented.’ But, I’ve seen it from a couple of sources now and, by this point, none of us should truly be surprised that the president-elect is a moron.
The tweet was about China did,their ‘unpresidented’ action. Apparently, they intercepted some kind of U.S. drone submarine.
A bit cheeky, I suppose you could say, as they were within site of the American surface ship when they fished the drones out of the water but, on the other hand, it WAS a U.S. drone submarine, and they were located a lot closer to China then they were to the U.S., so I’m not sure I totally blame China for this one.
But that’s not my point. My point is that he wrote unpresidented instead of unprecedented, which is unprecedented.
Maybe not entirely unprecedented. It reminds of Bush’s “is our kids’ learning?” But, saying he’s no stupider than Bush is not very confidence inspiring.
There are a few reasons why is think this is a serious danger sign, and not just a hysterical opportunity for late night comedians.
First, it’s probably not a typo. Although the c and the s are close to each other on a standard keyboard, you don’t hit them with the same finger. Of course, he was probably using a phone, but still should have realized that the word was wrong. It probably had a squiggly red line under it, for one thing.
Second, this is the kind of mistake that’s made when people have learned the word only from hearing it spoken, and not seeing it in print. Because it does sound like unpresidented, although that doesn’t actually mean anything.
Third, it means he doesn’t know the etymology of the word, doesn’t understand that it’s about precedent, and why the lack of it should make us sit up and take notice. Quite possibly doesn’t understand the importance of the concept of precedence.
Joke all you want, but I’m pretty sure he actually doesn’t.

Last night I watched a comedian stumble through his 20 minute routine, insulting a goodly number of the audience and bar staff personally, and probably well over half less specifically, with a torrent of profanity (it was clear that his favorite word was cunt, with fuck probably a close second, usually used as an adjective, as in “You fucking cunt”), but a large section of the audience were howling with laughter (I suspect they were mostly his friends, which would imply that in real life he is not quite the belligerent, sexist, racist lout he seemed to be impersonating.
Anyway, that’s not my point. Insult comedy is not a new thing, and certainly you don’t expect comics to refrain from bad language. Otherwise no Billy Connelly. No Gilbert Gottfried.
My point is, he’d occasionally take a break from being a complete asshole to just tell a set joke. Some of them were pretty funny.

Two windmills were talking and one said to the other one and said “What kind of music do you like and the other one said “Well, I’m a big heavy metal fan.”

A boy looked out his back window and saw his dad in the back yard, hunched over the lawn mower handle and sobbing uncontrollably. “Mom! Mom! What’s wrong with Dad?” “Oh, don’t worry, Son. He’s just going through a rough patch.”

Today, I was on the bus and the windmill poem came back to me and I started laughing, which I suppose can be a disconcerting thing to anybody sitting nearby. Without any context, without seeing any current source for the amusement, people could easily confuse amusement for some type of mental aberration.

I guess what I’m saying is that you remember the good stuff and forget about the bad, but I sure could have lived without the bad.

Just got home from the Žižkovšiška poetry reading, had the couple of slices of pizza that was left, and would like to get to bed soon. I really feel like the old man of the crowd, I’m worried about getting up in the morning and other people there were discussing their next drinking destination. That’s Prague for you. Midnight or no, weekday or no, there are always going to be some people for whom the night is young.
It was a pretty good poetry reading. Of course most of the poetry readings I go to are open mike, which means I can always get up and perform, and I feel a certain loyalty to the format because without that, I probably wouldn’t have written a 10th as much as I have, but, on the other hand, there’s something to be said for an official line-up, especially when I’m in it.
My stuff was well received and I appreciated that because the first poem I read was something I completed an hour before the show was set to start. Every act had it’s good moments, but I liked the two singers best. Both had original songs, both played guitar, both were decent musicians, but outside of that they weren’t similar in any way, really. The two comedians were quite different as well, although they apparently knew each other. The 2nd comedian, who was the next to last act, well, I don’t know. There were a couple of belly laughs in there when he broke into his running patter of “Fuck you, I’m the comedian and you’re the bartender, hey, Americans, you’re so loud, hey, Czech people, smile” to actually tell a joke. He was getting a lot of laughter, and I suppose he’s got the plausibility of denial and can always say “well, it’s comedy, I don’t hate Czechs, or Germans” but that’s not exactly what he said on the stage.
Anyway, it was a great night. Some old friends, some new friends, and a big fat joint. And now good night.

I’m not trying to blame the current tragedy in Aleppo on Hillary Clinton. She probably had a hand in it, but that’s not my point. The point of my blog tonight is to explain how the Syrian Civil War, which, it is becoming apparent, is being lost by the side the U.S. was backing, is similar to Hillary Clinton’s losing the general election, when she thought she had it won.
Syria, of course,happens within the context of Arab Spring, and Hillary Clinton’s failure is all in the context of the Democratic primaries. Of course,it looked like a popular uprising when the people of Egypt started gathering every night in the square, and it looked like a wonderful thing,even more so as it started to spread. But, it turned sour pretty quick. But, who knows.
(actually, you could include Ukraine in this story)
My point is that if all of these “spontaneous” rebellions had CIA support, then may be they weren’t such popular uprisings after all. And if an uprising doesn’t have the support of the people, then it can’t hold on to the gains for very long.
Likewise, by cheating in the primaries Hillary did not create a situation where suddenly the crowd were behind her, cheering and waving banners in the street.
No, she just left the country with a lot of splinter groups, and the least nuanced of them won.
So, with all sympathy to the people who are being slaughtered in Aleppo, we blew it. We blew it in Ukraine, and we blew it anywhere we actually got involved and tried to create a fake revolution for which there was not an overwhelming popular demand..
That’s about it.

The Utopian Project is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but I was overthinking it and now it’s up, it’s a page, and let the chips fall where they may, as the saying goes. https://www.facebook.com/TheUtopianProject/
The idea is to have a place where news of the day or great questions of our time can be discussed without the conversation degenerating into a binary loop, seasoned with dull insults, bad grammar and logical fallacies up the wazoo. Where you can have the type of conversation that teaches people more about the topic, which explores different options, looks at things from a new angle, and maybe, occasionally, arrives at a conclusion, or starts a subthread, or leads to a plan of action.
It is not social media. It is idea media.
How do I plan to do that? Read the rules. Will I be able to do that? That’s the challenge. I expect I can handle it up to about 200 comments a day, provided I spend a bit less time on Facebook, but I don’t think that will be a problem.
Because this is, in a way, what I hoped Facebook would turn into, and you do get occasional flashes (which also encourages me that a page like this can work)of brilliance there, but often as not you get the complete opposite.
For now, it’s rudimentary. I’ve posted two posts, and one of them is the rules. I’ll add a link to this blog. I’ll try to add a couple of posts each day.