Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

It was an excellent day. I got one poem added to my Poems About Paintings site. The poem was written a couple of weeks ago, but there was a bit of disconnect and time delay in communicating with the artist. Still,it got done and I’m pleased about that.
Also, I set up a new page, which I haven’t started promoting yet and in fact, there’s no content on it beyond a bare introduction, so I won’t even mention the name at this point until I’ve got it a bit more developed, but, it exists, and that’s major progress. Really,so much of getting stuff done in this modern world is just the decision to finally do it. Starting a page is filling in a few boxes. A lot of stuff can be accomplished with a phone call. So, I have nobody to blame but myself for the fact that it wasn’t done 2 months ago.
Next project is getting the next book (online) published. “The Meaning of Life in Easy English.” I’m pretty pleased with that one.
Then, we went to a friend’s 50th birthday party. He’s got a band, who I’d never heard, and they turned out to be pretty good. Pretty much what I suspected, a bunch of middle aged guys pumping out 60s tunes, but they had the rock energy and everybody was dancing.
It was great to have a date night with Helena, it was nice that it was right in our neighborhood, just one tram stop away, it’s great that the kids are old enough we can leave them at home and go out now and again, and it was a bit surprising that, outside of the birthday boy and his wife, I knew precisely nobody, but that’s my own fault because I never get out any more. The cake was delicious and, walking back to the tram stop, we saw a full moon with a full circle rainbow around it. Life is beautiful.

Well, the CIA claims that Russians hacked the U.S. election. Laying aside the fact that the words “CIA claims” is a long way from saying a thing is actually true, I suppose we should entertain the possibility. After all, a lot of people say I’m crazy when I say that 9/11 was an inside job and I resent the fact that they’re not giving the idea a fair hearing, so I suppose I should at least for a moment consider the possibility.
Putin certainly had motive. As the head of the other nation which would like to be the world’s #1 superpower, he stands to benefit if the U.S. has a totally incompetent leader. Also, an extremely corrupt leader with close ties to Russian business.
Also, it’s no secret that he doesn’t like Hillary Clinton. She said he had no heart.
So, he had motive, but so did a lot of other people. Very rich, powerful and well connected people. People who, just like the Donald himself, do not want to pay their taxes.
Did he have the means? Well, I don’t know. It could be the U.S. is just filled with Russian spies, that they are within the Diebold corporation, and that they control election officials in several key states. It could be true, but I kind of doubt it. Too complex.

Also, if what they mean by ‘hacked’ is those e-mails that Julian Assange wound up with, then I think they are barking up the wrong tree. First, Julian Assange (who I trust far more than I trust the CIA) says that that’s not what happened. Secondly, even if so, let’s not forget that those e-mails WERE pretty damning – however they were revealed.
So, yeah. It could be, but I seriously doubt it

We ate at 3 o’clock and never had dinner. It was not necessary.

December is a big month in our family, and my wife’s sisters family as well. Isabel’s birthday is the 5th, and Sam’s is the 16th. On their side, my wife’s sister’s birthday is the 9th, Patrick’s birthday is the 12th (same age as Isabel) and her husband’s name day and daughter Natalie’s name day are around now as well.
So, we went out to a medieval restaurant in Dětenice, I might be wrong about the spelling, it’s somewhere in the northeastern part of the country, I didn’t know where we were, to tell the truth. Not important.

This is a 5 star review. It was great. Oh,they weren’t totally strict about the medieval theme: I know coca cola hadn’t been invented then, and the waitress, although thematically garbed and speaking in medieval peasant Czech, was taking our orders on a tablet. But that’s O.K. The atmosphere was perfect, a dark room candlelight room with long wooden tables, and a bit of banter. The portions were huge,we split meals and still had tons of food. We (Helena,Isabel and I) ordered duck and it was plenty but I also got a taste of cabbage soup,with pork, and I liked the way that was served, in a cooking pot, with a handle, slammed down on the table. Accompanied by huge rolls. Then a couple of people couldn’t finish their ribs. Sam pretty much cleaned up his order of pork and grilled pear, but I got his potato.
Then we went back to the cottage for cake.

Friday night, staying up late, but it’s not cool staying up late, just watching TV and writing the blog. I’ve got an interesting idea for a new page and a nice concept for a poem for the poetry reading on the 15th, but I don’t want to talk about either of those until I’ve actually done something about them, and I got very little done today on any front.
Which is fine. So,I guess I’ll just write about aliens.
I saw someone,I believe it might have been on Quora,giving an excellent reason why it might be a good idea not to make contact with aliens,which would be because the first species to develop interstellar travel might have dedicated itself to going around the galaxy and wiping out other developing species before they could become space-going, ergo a threat.
Then there’s the common opinion, i.e. that a civilization so technically civilized must be compassionate and benevolent, although I can’t see anything in our own history that suggests that as a necessary outcome.
There’s one thing I do believe, however, because I’m a glass half full kind of guy and feel it’s only natural, and kind of impossible not to, establish contact with them, if we know they are there. It would be completely against our nature.
I believe that the galaxy (and the universe, of course, but hey, we haven’t even colonized Mars yet, so let’s just talk about the galaxy) is vast, and there are probably new planets evolving technological civilizations all the time.
Some are going to be Vogons, and some are going to be Vulcans.

It’s not really a poetry slam at all, although the organizer sometimes refers to it as that. It’s a regular old poetry reading, and the one thing that marks it as different from Alchemy or Žižkovšiška is the encouragement of foreign languages. I suppose, since we’re in the Czech Republic, English is a foreign language and Czech the only language that isn’t, so allow me to rephrase: the Soma reading is a bit different because it encourages poetry in languages other that English.
Poetry aside, it leads to a good atmosphere, an interesting audience, and a bit more variety. And I learn a bit of French, every time.
Poetry aside, it was a great break after an exhausting week,not completely over yet but Friday will be a piece of cake, I even get to sleep in, I think.
And some of the poetry was great.
It went on long, but I hadn’t realized how long it was until I got into the Metro and found myself waiting for the last Metro: complete with a girl barfing her guts out on the way down the escalator.
The joys of Prague by night.