Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

When Bernie Sanders said, in the very first debate I believe it was, “everybody’s sick and tired of hearing about your damned e-mails” I thought that was both chivalrous and reasonable.  The e-mails and all the squawking about  Ben Ghazi, I figured, were just right wing attack points.(that’s all Ben Ghazi is, for sure.  She did nothing  inappropriate in that case)

Guilty

But then a report  was issued today by the State Departments Office of the Inspector General (sort of like the Internal Affairs division of a police department, as I understand it) that said, “Oh, hell yeah, she broke the law.”
Mind you, they didn’t actually say they were charging her with a crime, which  is still a long trial away from convincing Hillary Clinton to drop out  of the race.  She is so determined to be president, she’d keep on campaigning if she was dead.

I loved the defense made by her campaign spokesman.  I paraphrase, but the idea was “Previous Secretaries of State have done it, too.”  Wonderful.  She’s saying she’s no more unethical than Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice.  Not exactly  the best choice for the Democratic nominee.

I would have preferred to beat her because of her support for war, and fracking, and private prisons, and her obvious corruption, but I’ll take this.  It is now suddenly a very real argument against her, and I hope Democrats in New Jersey, Puerto Rico, DC, New Mexico, the Dakotas and, of course, California, are paying attention.

I didn’t see the beginning of series 6 of Game of Thrones, although I’m sure it’s on some channel here  because  a lot of my students watched it.  They were polite enough to ask if  I actually  wanted spoilers before they spilled the beans.  RIP, Hodor.  I never really knew ya.

Really.  I know the series only through the books, and I’ve never  seen more than 10 minutes of it on TV.  That’s probably something I should remedy, but it means my view of certain characters is different from those who’ve primarily got their view from TV.  You must admit, Hodor did not have a lot of great dialogue.

But, he was one of the very  few characters in  the book who were totally, uncomplicatedly, good, and I guess that’s the same on TV.

It was a pretty  uncomplicated day.  This evening we had Robby Bubble (children’s champagne0 with dinner.  It’s essentially a sparkling apple juice but the plastic cork pops off and hits the ceiling and we get the fancy glasses out and clink glasses and make a toast, and we were celebrating Isabel’s  last visit to the speech therapist.

This morning I had occasion to look at my blog, because I was trying to figure out which of my poems haven’t been in a book yet, but I got distracted with the daily blog part, scrolling back through.
I don’t know if I’m improving as a writer at all, but I don’t think it’s getting any worse, either.  The quality of the blog has been very consistent since I started it, years ago.  One thing I did notice, though, and this is a direct result of my very negative habit of waiting until midnight or so to pick a topic and write: typos.

This would not be such a problem except that I am such a grammar nazi when reading what other people have written, so it’s a bit embarrassing and makes me look a bit like a hypocrite.  At one point I wrote ‘have’ when it should have been ‘half.’  Of course, there are different types of typos.  I’ve noticed lately that very often when I type ‘an’ it comes out ‘and.’  That’s just force of habit and an overly responsive keyboard.

Those who write ‘loose’ when they mean ‘lose’ and ‘could of’ when they mean ‘could have’ will still be reprimanded.

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I see on the news that China is going to build the world’s largest radio telescope, bigger than Arecibo.  That is great.  I do not  care whether the Chinese, the Russians or Brazilians are the first to make contact with aliens.  I just want it to happen soon, and the more telescopes we have searching, the better off we’ll be.

If opinions  that you state, are routinely disregarded
You should consider the possibility, that you are retarded

That was my rhyming zinger which I had all loaded up and ready to go against a particularly vile troll who was hanging out at my poetry web site.   (my in the sense of ‘where I go to participate’ like one might say ‘my  bar’ or ‘my supermarket,’ not to be confused with a claim of ownership)

He was coming on saying things like “Your poetry sucks,” to someone whose poetry doesn’t suck at all, as a matter of fact, which by itself shows a bit of originality compared to most of the unintelligible shite out there in the written world.

Some people explained to him (the troll), calmly and logically, why he was being a pathetic, little shitweasel.  Others just called him a pathetic, little shitweasel.  He just fired back with ‘Loser Liberals,’ and series of stupid memes, and “I’ll keep posting because I can” which sounds to me like a really stupid thing to be proud of.

You can put a pickle up your ass if you want, but it would  be a dumb thing to brag about, both because the action has no beneficial effect to anyone who is not the picklebutt person (even that is questionable), and because it takes no particular skill to put a pickle up your butt.  It’s just an unusual thing to want to do.

So, I spent a bit of time thinking about what to do with trolls like that.  Do you ban them entirely, or try to reason with them.  If B, do you take a confrontational or conciliatory tone?

I went back to the thread to post this little bit of doggerel you see at the top of today’s blog and the whole thread had been scrubbed.  Maybe the admin had the right of this one.

RIP Alan Young.  Of course, he was 96, and he hasn’t really  been a famous actor for a long time, but he was Wilbur Post on Mr. Ed and even though I was probably 6 or 7 when it went off the air, the theme song has remained in my head for life.

But, due to the miracles of modern technology, I could watch an episode today.  Couldn’t do that back then.  There was a joke  when Wilbur took Ed’s television away (because Ed wouldn’t clean up his stall) and he said “Don’t worry, you can watch it on the summer repeats.”

Alan Young with Mr. Ed

The thing is, though, it was really, really bad.  This show was on the air for years, and it was popular and, outside of the horse being able to talk, which was about as relevant to the plot as the flying nun being able to fly, it was a skit filled with one liners about men wanting their dinner ready  on time,women loving to shop for new dresses, everybody going gaga over celebrities, and other cliches.

I just don’t understand the nostalgia for the 50s.  The 50s were lame.

Nonetheless, RIP Alan  Young.

A funny thing happened at Sam’s football game today.  A ball went over the fence and, when I saw that nobody else was going after it, I decided to go get it.  I’d seen where it rolled into the grass.  But, I scoured that patch of tall grass, it wasn’t that big, and there was trimmer grass all around, would have seen it there, so it seemed to have disappeared.  Since nobody  else  was paying  attention no big deal, but it mystified me.  Then I noticed a path leading off down into the woods, and thought maybe thae ball had bounced back and rolled down so I decided to walk down a bit.  Well, it was a lovely, little wood, you find  these ignored little patches throughout Prague.  Not entirely ignored, of course, there was the obligatory derelict shopping cart.  Homeless have to live somewhere.  I could hear music, so walked to the bottom of the street and it looked like a lovely, little, residential neighborhood, just through the woods from the football stadium and I  thought, this would be a nice neighborhood to live in, and then I walked back up.  Just as I got to the top of the path, another ball sailed over the fence and  this time I was right there.
Then I thought, what if there was no first ball, what if I’d just had a premonition of the future and that had led me down that path, kind of a five minute time travel thing, and then I thought “Nah,  man, you’re just stoned.”  But, it  was a pleasant thought.