Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I am going to conduct an experiment.  As most people who know me know, I smoke rather a lot of marijuana.  I don’t  know if I can say ‘more than average’ because then the question becomes ‘more than the average what?’

If it’s more than the average person, than obviously, because you have to factor in all those people who don’t smoke at all and that drives the joints per day average down to a fraction of 1, and probably a small fraction at that.

If it’s compared to the average person, I don’t know.  I used to average a couple of joints a day, but I can’t do that any more and still present myself in front of a classroom of students, stand upright, not slur my words, and stick to one train of thought, so now I average 2 or 3 joints a day on weekends, maybe 1 on other days if I don’t have an early morning class coming up.

Here’s the problem, though.  Living in Europe, I have become accustomed to rolling European style joints; a 50/50 mix of marijuana and tobacco, in a cigar length concoction, with a cardboard filter.

Thursday, as we left for the cottage for Christmas, I had a hell of a cough.  I didn’t take anything to smoke  – sometimes I do, and enjoy it on a long walk around the countryside – but this time I decided to play it cool in front of the in-laws and go cold turkey for a few days.

Getting back to Prague, with my  cough pretty much gone, but still jonesing for a joint, I was faced with a dilemma.  So, I decided to roll one the old fashioned, American way and see how it went.

It went fine.  I’m not saying I’ll turn down anything that’s passed my way in a smoky pub, but for the moment I’m going back to this style when  rolling my own.

(written on December 25th but couldn’t post.  Cottage.  Computer problems.)

The war on Christmas is over and we won. At any rate, we survived.

This, the period we are entering now, is my favorite time of the year. The hoopla, the folderol, the songs, the cards, the silly jokes about reindeer with red noses, the same stupid movies which, for the most part, have little enough to do with Christmas….Love, Actually was actually a pretty good movie the first four or five times I saw it, as was Die Hard, but a film (with the sole exception of The Rocky Horror Picture Show) is not a tradition. Once you’ve seen it more than half a dozen times and can recite the lines along with the actors, it loses all interest as a film.

We celebrated on the 24th, Czech style, with carp and potato salad for dinner before the opening of the presents. My favorite this year was a chair. This blog, henceforth (as soon as we get home and get it assembled) will be written from the comfort of a plush, swivelling, ergonomic chair. Perhaps it will lead to a kinder, more generous view of humanity type blog, but I doubt it. I can be perfectly cynical from a position of comfort.

This morning I woke up early – it wasn’t actually early, but everybody else was still in bed – and went for a nice, long walk. It actually wound up being much longer than I’d planned, which happens sometimes when you don’t plan at all. At the neighboring village of Vesela (which means Joy), I took a right, because that is a way I’d never explored beyond the first couple hundred meters. It was a peaceful walk. The whole time I was out I did not encounter another human being. A few cars passed, I saw one bicyclist at a distance, but other than that I saw a lot of cows, who stared at me blankly, with neither fear nor interest, and a handful of barking dogs fiercely defending their property. I can sort of understand that if your property is a marijuana field or a luxury car lot but keeping a kennelful of vicious, barking mongrels in Český Ráj strikes me as the sign of an asshole. It’s like putting a loud, hyper-sensitive car alarm on a piece of shit car that nobody in their right mind would bother stealing.)

I kept expecting to find a turning to the left so I could get back to where I knew, but never did. I did find one forest track on the left and followed that, but at the bottom of the hill it ended at a farm and I had no choice but to walk back up the way I’d come.

I eventually came to a place with an intersection and some road signs, which pointed me, without any ambiguity, right back the way I came.

When I got home, the cousins had arrived and the entire dining room table was Lego Land. One of them had got a Star Wars lego set, another a lego police station, and Isabel got a lego shopping mall. Put together all the lego sets in the world, and they would equal the whole world.

In the evening, several of us took a walk to Vesela (just to Vesela) to look at the town Christmas tree. I wasn’t expecting Rockefeller Center, or even Prague Old Town Square, but even so, it was kind of a feeble display. We weren’t sure if the main tree was supposed to be the biggest one, at the entrance of the parking lot which passes for a town square, and was decorated by a single, blue garland, or the one across the lot, just behind the dumpsters, which was smaller but at least had twinkling lights. There was also one higher up the hill, but that was probably just in somebody’s back yard.

It was a lovely walk, though, and the kids were very happy with it.

Tomorrow morning we’re off to the cottage and we’ll get back Sunday night.  I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have there.  I’ll blog if I can, but don’t be too surprised if this space doesn’t get refreshed for a couple of days.

It would fit.  It’s the solstice season, when everything freezes up, people stay indoors and nothing happens.  Time to hibernate.

Of course, it’s a big. wide world and things are happening all around it that are worth  writing about.  The Chinese are creating a strange and terrifying hybrid of an internet game and a narc on your neighbor program.  Elon Musk did some very cool stuff in space.  Global Warming is still, and very obviously, happening.  An AI program was asked “What is the meaning of life?” and replied “To live forever” which means, as far as I can see, that the Turing Test has been passed.

But, I don’t expect any real changes between now and January.  Neither Clinton nor Sanders is going to abandon the Democratic race, at least not until Super Tuesday.  Trump will continue to lead the Republicans.  Trump could drown a sackful of puppies during halftime at the Super Bowl and he would still lead the Republicans.  He’s already threatened to drop nuclear weapons on somebody – anybody – and they weren’t bothered a bit.

So, I’ll blog if I can, but if I can’t, I remain completely confident that the world will continue to turn without me.

There is no bottom.  We passed the point where the bottom was supposed to be a long, long time ago.

Trump’s comments about Mexican rapists, and Megyn Kelly being on her period, didn’t damage his popularity even a little bit.  Excusing his supporters who beat up and pissed on a homeless guy didn’t offend the kind of people who show up at Trump rallies.  You would think the blatant unconstitutionality, or at least the obvious parallels to Nazism,  of making Muslim’s wear little, yellow crescent moons like the Jews in Germany in the ’30s would have offended those of his supporters old enough to remember those dark days.  Nope.

He’s made a lot of offensive statements just  in the last  couple of days.  The one I find the most horrifying is the “What’s the use of having nuclear weapons if you’re not going to use them?” (this may have come from a spokesperson – still, Trump stands by it.)  Basically, Trump’s main campaign promise is “I’m going to nuke  somebody.”  It’s shocking how many Americans actually seem to think that is a good thing.

The next two statements came in the same speech, like within 30 seconds of each other.  Most of the press has focused on the ‘Hillary got Shlonged in 2008’ because of the creative use of the Yiddish word shlong, which means dick.  Hillary got dicked in 2008.  Obama’s a black man.  Therefore, he must have a big shlong.

But, in my opinion, what was worse were his comments about Hillary’s bathroom break, which made her a few seconds late during the Democratic debate.  “Where was she?  Where was she?  We know where she was.  I can’t  talk about where she was.  It’s disgusting.  It’s too disgusting.”

Seriously?  The man’s been married 3 times, he has a daughter, and he thinks women going to the bathroom is disgusting.

I do not understand the women at Trump’s rallies.  And I hope none of them ever have to go to the toilet.

Tonight is the  night, the winter solstice, the exact moment in the world’s journey around the sun when the night is as long as it gets and the sun, in northern climes, nearly disappears from the Earth.

There can be no doubt that to primitive peoples, who didn’t have a real good understanding of how the world works, this could be a bit disconcerting.  Will the  sun ever return?  Well, of course every primitive person over the age of 4 could remember seeing the same scenario the year before, so the numbers thinking the world would end were probably, even then, few.

And even knowing the workings of the  heavens the way we do now, it’s still kind of an amazing day, one worth marking the passage.  Tonight is the longest, darkest  night of the year.  After this, the days get longer, we see a bit more sun each day.

Spring is coming.  Rejoice!