Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I spend a lot of time on Facebook on my poetry sites, and a lot of time arguing about politics. Usually on the poetry sites there’s not a great deal of argument. People either say ‘nice poem’ or nothing at all. There is the occasional criticism, but that’s not a great conversation starter, either. If somebody says “Your poetry sucks” I don’t really have a comeback. That’s an opinion, so they’re not necessarily wrong.
On politics, of course, I usually find myself arguing with right wingers, because they are so totally in the wrong…not just in their opinions, but in the facts they base those opinions on. Not only is their personal philosophy of life (I’ve got mine, Jack. Fuck off) immoral, but they very often do not have a clue what they are talking about. As argument goes, it is too easy. As far as communication goes…well, it’s not communication.
Today, however, I wound up on the other side, on two subjects. There was the guy who said “Walt Disney was a well documented racist and Nazi sympathizer.” I’d heard this before, but I kind of took issue with the phrase well-documented. So, I took the first step and went to Wikipedia. I know this is not considered real research, but I learned a lot about his life, so it was an educational afternoon. Wikipedia addressed, and pretty much dismissed the rumors. So, I pointed this out and the guy actually came back with some documentation. Not great documentation, it was a book that sort of sounded (I looked up the book, too) like a collection of conspiracy theories, starting with Hitler surviving WWII and living happily ever after in South America. I’m still not convinced, but the guy did come up with a quote out of the book from a Disney employee, and all of the words in his post were spelled correctly, so it was more interesting than arguing with the right wingers.
The other topic was Japanese internment camps. I’m not saying they were a good thing, or justifiable, but I rather resented people saying FDR was a horrible president, a racist monster, and not progressive at all. I pointed out that the camps were not exactly the same as Hitler’s concentration camps, and that FDR did do a lot of good, progressive things. Well, long story short, I am apparently the world’s worst racist.
That was, actually, exactly like arguing with right wingers.

There are two topics I would like to address tonight. First, football. I know, of course, that not all football fans are racist, and that not all racists are football fans, but there’s enough of a Venn overlap that they form a significant sub-demographic, and it’s a problem.
England was disgraced, not by their team, which played great and got to the final, which was a tightly contested game that they lost on a shootout, which is always more or less a 50/50 proposition. The team’s got nothing to be embarrassed about. Neither, I’m sure, do the majority of England fans. But those who reacted to the results with racial insults, what the fuck is wrong with you? If it were not for the same players you vilified, you probably wouldn’t have been in the finals at all. You made yourselves look bad, you made your country look bad. Go, hang your heads in shame.
Secondly, I am surprised to say, I have a good thing to say about Facebook. As some of you may know, I was banned from commenting on Facebook for 3 days for ‘violating community standards’. I blogged about it, so you can scroll down and read all about it if you’re interested.
But, I only served a bit over 2 !/2 days, and I was informed that the ban was lifted in a nice little note -I’m paraphrasing, but – ‘We’ve reviewed your comment and determined that it doesn’t violate community standards and you can go ahead and comment again and the original comment has been re-instated.”
I was very surprised. I wanted to answer back with a nice, little thank you not but, of course, there was no way to do that. So, I’m doing it here.

I’m on Day 2 of a 3 day ban from commenting on Facebook, for ‘hate speech.’ I saw it as a rather innocuous comment. What I said was ‘you are like a fledgling bird with a bad case of diarrhea, who can’t stop shitting in his own nest.’ Which was, I felt, metaphorically accurate and much better than saying “Dude, you’re a fucking troll” which was my first thought.
Now, I do not know the inner workings of Facebook, I doubt that more than a couple dozen people in the world do. But, I do know that people say worse things than that on Facebook all the time without consequence, I’ve said worse than that numerous times without consequence, and so you know that the admins don’t see every comment that is made. So, I suspect that this comment was brought to their attention, by the little shitweasel I compared, over generously, to an innocent chick in the nest.
Reminds me of elementary school. They provoke you, you respond, and they run screaming to the teacher. And the clueless, and overworked teacher believes them.
Anyway, I’ll post this, yesterday’s, and probably tomorrow’s blog to Facebook when I can. And perhaps be a bit more careful about my wording in future. Perhaps.

This blog comes to you tonight from the beautiful Hotel (and Wellness Center) Harmony, near Spindleruv Mlyn, in the tippy top north of the Czech Republic, where Helena are taking a relaxing weekend away from the kids, and the kids are pretty jazzed about having a weekend free of the parents, which makes me a bit nervous, but I guess I can live with it.
We’ve taken advantage of the pool and whirlpool baths, did that first thing, but then we went out for a long hike because this truly is a beautiful region. I enjoy ski resorts in the summer. Lots of good hiking trails, a stream to go wading in, some waterfalls, trees and flowers all around and every single house is picturesque in its own way. Being a resort town, the restaurant prices are high, even worse than Prague but not worse than the most touristy areas of Prague. But, we’re saving some money by not having the kids along, so it all works out.
We did get a bit lost at one point, walking along the stream (the Labe, in English the Elbe, which flows through Germany and empties into the North Sea at Hamburg, but here it is a stream) trying to find our way back into town and we walked right past it, but if we had not, we would not have seen the waterfall where we stopped to take pictures or the place with a picnic table where we stopped to dabble our feet in the rather icy water.
Being lost, in a place of great natural beauty, is not necessarily a bad thing.

I must admit, Haiti was not on my radar. It’s not exactly the center of the political universe. Everybody I’ve ever met from there has been nice, but that is true of most places where you haven’t met enough people from. I know that it is, historically, a country that gets screwed over a lot.
But, I hadn’t heard any news from there for a long time, and had sort of forgotten about it. Wednesday morning, about 1 a.m., a unit of mercenaries stormed the private residence of the Haitian president, shooting him dead, and badly injuring his wife.
Nobody knows for sure who’s going to take his spot, there are a couple of people who feel they’re entitled, so it’s all kind of a big mess, and while they search for the missing suspects (17 are in custody, 3 are dead and 8 are still unaccounted for)
I have lots of questions. Didn’t he have security people at his house? Are they dead, or were they captured, or what? If he didn’t have security at his house, why did they feel the need to invade with over 20 men? And the biggest question of all is why were 28 men, 26 Colombian military, and two Haitian-American dual nationals, and precisely zero local Haitians involved.
You can take my opinions with a grain of salt because, as I say, I haven’t been keeping up on the latest manipulations in Haitian politics, but it sure smells like some CIA bullshit to me.