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Today, I wrote a rather lengthy and detailed reply to someone in a political post but before I hit send, I did the prudent thing, which more people on Facebook should do, and read through it again.  I changed a few phrases here and there, shortened a couple of sentences, and changed the phrase ‘fuck off’ to ‘back off’ because you’re not likely to convince anybody of anything by saying fuck off, but I kind of wish I’d left it the original way, because it did more accurately express my sentiment.

It was in reply to one of those posts, which everybody has been receiving about 50 times a day for the last several months, saying “but of course you must vote for Hillary in the general election, or you’re supporting Donald Trump.”

Fuck off!  I do not owe you my vote.  If you can’t come up with any better argument for your candidate than “You are required to vote for her because the alternative is to let the psychopathic Nazi win” then maybe it’s time for you to admit that your candidate really sucks and you should switch your vote to Sanders.

And that is, in fact, the best argument they can muster.  The ‘experience’ thing is pretty weak when her entire experience consists of failures (Health Care), being on the wrong side of issues (the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, Fracking) and making mistakes.  The electability thing is total bullshit when all polls show Sanders crushing Trump and Hillary…well, there’s only a couple of percentage points dividing them and I don’t trust Hillary to hang onto a lead.  On the issues, those that she isn’t on the wrong side of are things where she changed her position relatively recently, to be more like Sanders.

But what really irritates me is their assumption that they’ve got this all wrapped up (especially in light of the recently revealed shenanigans in North Carolina).  It’s as if it’s half time in the big playoff game and your team is down by, let’s say, 9 points.  The opposing coach  walks over to you and says “Excuse me, we’re supposed to win this one.  All of the sportswriters said we would, we’ve clearly got the more experienced team, we’re winning and, you know, we wouldn’t like our star quarterback to be injured before the Super Bowl, so could you please just try not to hurt him, O.K.?  In fact, maybe you could just not come out for the second half, it would be the decent thing to do.”

You’d say “fuck off,” wouldn’t you?  Well, that’s the way I feel about Hillary supporters asking me to pledge party loyalty, and asking me to refrain from saying bad things about her.

Fuck off.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Hillary Clinton cannot win this  without cheating.  If, God forbid, she gets the nomination, it will be proof that cheating happened.  This is not acceptable.

There was the push polling in Nevada, Bill’s shenanigans in Massachusetts and Florida (campaigning at the polling locations), the lack of paper ballots in Florida and the  funky ballots in Illinois where Bernie was listed 4th, behind Hillary Clinton and two guys nobody has ever heard of, the questionable voting machines in Ohio, the list of minor infractions goes on and on.

But there are two examples recently which I think are seriously  egregious, which should be challenged in court.  The first is the changing of an  article about Sanders in the New York Times.  Now, newspapers change their articles all the time – before they are published.  Now, in the internet age, they sometimes change them afterward – to correct somebody’s name, perhaps, or to remove an unnecessary comma.  But  what they did to Sanders was a horse of a different, and seriously fucked up, color.  They wrote an article about how effective Bernie had been in passing amendments to bills in congress.  In fact, he’s got the congressional record at that tactic, which is clear evidence that he knows how to deal with congress, and some of them were for pretty important stuff.  Consumer protection, reforming the Veteran’s administration, establishing local health clinics, jobs stuff, and  more.
After lots of Sanders supporters (and, in fact, the Sanders campaign) had linked to it, they went back in and changed the article.  Not small stuff.  They yanked a positive quote and shortened another one, they change the headline to insert the word ‘modest’ in front of ‘victories’ and they added a couple of paragraphs at the end which change the tone of the whole article.  There probably won’t be any charges, because the New York Times isn’t officially a part of the Clinton campaign. but still…they, like her, are sleazy weasels.

Then there was this little gem out of North Carolina.  Hillary operatives managed to weasel their way into the Sanders campaign and sabotaged the campaign from the inside, refusing to meet with local politicians who wanted to publicly endorse Sanders, canceling rallies, etc…

Now, admittedly, the Sanders campaign shouldn’t have let this happen.  But, Bernie’s running a clean campaign, and he probably didn’t even suspect Clinton of this level of dirty play.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters on facebook keep saying we shouldn’t say anything negative about her, but screw that.  After this, the gloves are off.  She’s a dirty, low life, Karl Rove style cheat.

Here are a couple of things I learned today.  Dogs (and wolves) are the only animals who understand the human concept of pointing.

Mountain gorillas eat about 20 kilograms of food a day, which is important because they live in the mountains, and it gets cold at night.

Approximately 1,000,000 Russians died in the siege of Leningrad.  That’s just one battle.  One city.

Women sleep, on average, 20 minutes longer than men and one theory about why this is so is that they multi-task more than men, therefore they are using a greater percentage of their brain, therefore they need more sleep.

I’m not going to take up too much space commenting on B and C.  With the mountain gorillas, you could have told me they eat 10 kilos or 30 kilos, and I’d have been equally unsurprised.  I’d never really  thought about it before.

On the first one, I am very surprised.  I would have thought at least chimps could figure that out, and maybe even horses.  But, it was on Discovery Channel, and as much as I am bothered that Discovery  Channel seems to spend all their time lately on people who fix up old cars and catch alligators and go fishing and other, boring shit like that, this was one of the kind of programs that used to be their mainstay, so it’s probably solid info.  Also, I teach English to 4 and 5 year olds.  Most of them seem to think that ‘point to’ means ‘run to, jump up and down and attempt to rip it off the wall,’ so maybe it’s a more esoteric concept than I’d thought.

On the second one, this is a handy piece of information for guys to know.  Not only is it a cool piece of trivia to whip out at a party when you want to convince the girl you’re with that you’re a serious feminist so that she will have sex with you, but also handy advice when you’re actually living with one of them.  Do you remember the guy in Catch-22, not Yossarian but one of the other characters, who was in love with the prostitute?  She wouldn’t give him the time of day, until he (who was just trying to keep her away from other guys) guarded over her while she slept through the night and after that she  was totally in love with him, because that’s all she’d really wanted was a good night’s sleep.
Sleep – it’s the one thing you can do in bed that women want more of than men.

I am in favor of political correctness.  Sure, I had to take a lot of jokes out of my  repertoire, and give my two second self editing function a little bit more power, but it hasn’t hurt me none, and  society’s  a better place.  O.K., maybe it’s a bit of a limitation on absolute free speech, and I still believe that, legally, absolute free speech is a right.  But just having the right doesn’t make it right.

All political correctness means is don’t use words that are racist or sexist, and try not to be an asshole.  Piece of cake, really.

There are some people, I’ve noticed, who can get away with saying outrageous shit about race, gender, disabilities, whatever, and it’s fine.  I’m not one of them, so I opt for discretion.

Louie C.K. is actually not one of them either.  I saw a clip the other day where he was putting down a heckler, and this was presented as a clever example of him putting a heckler in her place, and the crowd was laughing, but I saw it and thought “What an asshole.  All he did was call her a stupid cunt  and it wasn’t even funny.”  And the thing is, normally I like Louie C.K.

An example in the other  direction is this:  Martha Stewart is, among her other characteristics, a white woman, just about as white as white can be.  But, in this clip, you see her getting away with incredibly racist and sexist jokes.
I think I’ve figured it out.  You can get away with a bit of racist or sexist humor if you are not at all racist or sexist.  The reason Michael (Kramer) Richards’  career was ruined by that racist rant a few years back isn’t that it wasn’t funny (although it wasn’t), it was because people realized he  meant it, there was some real racial bitterness behind the attempted joke.

If you have any doubts as to whether you’re somebody who can get away with it or not, you’re probably not.  Best to not even try.

Just got back from a poetry reading and, in many ways, it was awesome.  There was a stand-up comic who was actually funny, a singer songwriter playing guitar, sweet, heartfelt songs, and during the intermission there was a firedancer in the street, people in the flats opposite were coming to their windows, separated by walls, brought together by spectacle.  It was a small space, with one unisex toilet stall but in addition, a urinal which was only separated from the common area by a shower curtain, paintings around the bar and back wall of which the comic said “It’s so hard to find an artist who’s both drunk and homeless.”

People seemed to like my stuff O.K., so I had a great time.  Saw a few people I hadn’t seen for a while.  Met a few new people.

Žiškovšisška, (which either means Žižkov clown,  or Žižkov pine cone, I’m not certain which, and I’m not about to wake anybody up to ask and can’t be bothered to look it up) on Bořivojova 67, just up from Lipanska tram stop.  Apparently, they do  it once a month but have lots of other  stuff going on there, too.