Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Tonight, nobody wants to hear about a bunch of gun waving weirdos out in Oregon.  Tonight, it’s not the right time to talk about why I think Bernie Sanders will win the Iowa precinct caucuses and the Democratic nomination and the presidency.  Tonight, it would not be enough to write a little blog about how my day went.

David Bowie, 1947 – 2016 RIP

David Bowie died today.  In fact, I feel a little bit inadequate writing about him.  Others followed his career much more closely, and can quote more of his song lyrics.  I’ve been reading the eulogies and watching the videos all day.

But, he was great.  I remember in the summer of ’73, there was me, Chuck Fitch and Steve McCullough driving out from Phoenix, Arizona to go inner tubing on the Salt River.  We’d dropped some acid.  We were listening to Suffragette City.  The windows were open.  The sound was blasting.

When I read the Hunter S. Thompson bit from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about  how they did all the drugs and then they picked up the hitch-hiker, who jumped out of the car and ran like hell at the first opportunity, that’s the moment in my life I relate it to.

I remember how cool I thought Space Oddity  was, because I’ve always been a science fiction fan and I thought it was great that somebody in Rock was talking about outer space.

I enjoyed him in “The Man Who Fell to Earth” but, as I read through all the tributes today, I realize he was a much more prolific actor than I’d known.

The videos I’ve  watched the most, perhaps, is Lazarus, from his latest album, Blackstar, which was released two days before his death, on his 69th birthday.  He knew he was dying.  The public didn’t.

Lazarus is a farewell song.  It is about death.  His own death. He produced that video, and acted and sang in it, while in the late stages of cancer.

Many musicians have written great songs, although he certainly did write an awesome number.  Many actors have been in a few cool movies.  But I can’t think of any artist, in any medium, in any genre, who had such an impressive death.

Good bye, David Bowie, and thank you.  You changed the world.

I sometimes think, and it’s logical for me to think this, that maybe I am underinformed about world events.  I almost never watch TV news.  I seldom even look at a newspaper unless it’s to do a sudoku puzzle, and I wouldn’t have even known that magazines still exist except that my wife is fond of the genre.
I get most of my news through facebook, which skews my viewpoint even more because birds of a feather flock together, and your friend list is your flock.  As someone who leans to the left, I’ve obviously got more friends who lean to the left than the right.
I will follow links, and so read a variety of news articles from different sources, but very seldom even look at an internet news site and just read the news – except when I’m stuck for an idea to write my blog about.

So, I just scanned through the old Huffington Post, where I used to leave comments regularly but they  asked me to change my password one too many times, so forget them.  I found I’m not missing anything at all and I’m up to date on all of the main stories.

r.e. the Cruz birther kerfuffle.  It’s the kind of thing people who are against him are going to make a thing about, and people who are for him are not.  It’s like me making fun of Chris Christie’s weight.  If there were a left wing governor of similar proportions, I wouldn’t make jokes about it at all.  I doubt it’s going to be a real issue, in the end.  There are lots of reasons to never elect Cruz president, but being Canadian is not one of them.

And speaking of Ted Cruz, the ‘spanking Hillary’ comment is, indeed, a good reason to hate him.  But, it’s not a good enough reason to like Hillary.  The only thing about her I do like is the fact that the very mention of her name is like a rock thrown into the Republican hornet’s nest.

So, in one sense, it would be an entertaining 8 years if she won, listening to insane right wingers scream about how she’s violating the constitution and being a socialist and shoving feminism down everybody’s throats and all, but….

We’ve just had 8 years of that shit.  It’s frustrating, having to defend Obama against the Republicans when he still hasn’t close Gitmo, hasn’t charged any Republicans with crimes, and hasn’t even started the kind of jobs program that Sanders would.

That’s pretty much what 8 years of Hillary would be like, and I’d rather not.

Saturday, day off, spent most of it on facebook and reading A Dance of Dragons, Isabel got back from her ski trip, nothing eventful but a pleasant, lazy day all around.

Got into a couple of arguments on facebook today.  One was about the  difference between phase and faze and I always figured the phasers on Star Trek were fazers, because they faze you, they stun you, but that is apparently not the official Star Trek spelling, so I lost that one.  The  other was about the Clampetts state of origin on The Beverly Hillbillies.  One of the great unknowns.

I reached the conclusion that the less relevant a conversation to real life or any actual importance, the more likely it is to  attract participants.  Which, I guess, is neither an original thought or an unusual observation.

The coolest thing I saw today on facebook was a photo of a snowy owl in flight from a traffic cam in Montreal.  There’s been many an argument over cameras watching the public’s every move, and it appears those of us concerned with privacy and civil rights have lost.  But, it isn’t working out like we’d feared, or even as they’d hoped.  In fact, it’s kind of backfired on them.

Yup, they’ve caught a few criminals here and there, that’s one plus, but it doesn’t seem as if crime has decreased, as it should have.  The unexpected benefit, of course, is  that cameras everywhere means some police officers have been exposed for their brutal, cruel and unfair practices.  No convictions yet, but the problem has been exposed.

Plus, we get random photos of cool stuff, like owls.

I’ve just started book 5  in the Song of Ice and Fire and I’ve got  a  theory, which is  probably not going to come true, because George R.R. Martin is writing  the  books and not me, but there may be spoiler alerts  in this blog if  you’re  not up to book five (season 5? I don’t know how the TV show works, I’ve  never seen it), but  if you are  worried  about spoilers, ha, ha, your problem,  you could stop reading  now, I  suppose,or trust that I won’t give away too much (not making any promises) or you could go on  the idea that since  I’m guessing  wildly, spoilers don’t count,  and they really don’t unless I’m right and, to be perfectly honest, I’m usually not.

Not Who He Appears to Be?

Anyway, here it is: Since Jon Snow, according to the shapeshifter in the preface, has latent shapeshifting powers  but doesn’t really  know it yet, and Bran Stark does, too, and since Jon  and Bran have the same father  but a different mother, they must have inherited it from old Ned, which might  mean that Ned Stark is not actually dead, but his soul jumped into the body of the nearest person at the time of his death, which would be the executioner, Ilyn Payne.  And it would make sense that weird old Ilyn  never told anybody about this, being as his tongue is cut out.

I suppose this theory could also  raise Robb from the dead, too, but then he’d be inhabiting the body of one of the Frey’s, and I  get the feeling they are in for a long, slow, and brutal decimation of their ranks at the hands of the semi-dead Catelyn,  in  revenge for  Robb’s murder, but that  would just be too weird because it could  lead to Catelyn killing her son without  knowing it  was her son to avenge her son even though her son will not have had been murdered.  Not completely, anyway.

A lot of tension but too many tenses.

Far-fetched, I know, especially since people  you thought  dead but later turn up  alive (like Bran or Catelyn), usually  reappear within 4 or 5 chapters  at  most or at least within the same book.

But, I guess I’ll just have to read it and see.

I believe I may have  been  guilty  of misreporting a couple of days ago when I said that one of  Obama’s 23 executive orders called for background checks not only on gun purchasers, but also on gun shop  owners.  Although I think it might not be a bad  idea, I haven’t seen  it repeated anywhere else, so I think I may have been guilty of  reading too fast.  A pretty good summary (although not a total list) is here.

We just got back from the bus station, seeing  off Sam’s friend for his trip  back home,  to Innsbruck.  It started snowing while  we were standing in line, waiting for him  to board his bus.  Lightly at first, and then faster and faster.  I started to write  ‘softly’ at first, but even in  a blizzard, snow  falls  softly.  It may be huge, fat flakes falling swiftly, but  it is still  soft.  That is the nature of snow.  If  it had  been rain, it would have  been quite unpleasant.  As it  was, it was beautiful.

re the story of the professor who got  fired  for  saying  that Allah  and God  are the same.  It  strikes me that all versions of God, at least  in monotheistic religions, are automatically the  same, as they’re imaginary.   Even taking a somewhat less atheistic, confrontational tone, what people are  believing in  is  an ultimate superpower, an entity which created the universe, which is all seeing and  all knowing.  The name doesn’t matter much.  There are differences  between  Athena and Thor, Pan and Anubis, because they are  not  so all powerful, but each has a  specific jurisdiction, a different  characterization, and different abilities.  Between God and Allah, there’s no  difference like that.