Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Rabbits are kind of useless as pets. You can’t throw a ball and have them bring it back like a dog, and they are even more indolent and indifferent to human presence than cats. So, I don’t actually recommend them but we’ve had Fifi for about 7 and a half years now, and I am fond of her.
Right at the moment she is under the living room table and there is every possibility she will stay there for hours. Rabbits can do that. They are like women sunbathing, they can stay in the same spot doing absolutely nothing for hours.
I do not understand that mentality. It is foreign to me. I don’t even like sitting for 20 minutes on the Metro, or in a car, without doing something. Playing games on the phone, reading, something.
Sometimes, she sits on the couch and we get a good view of her, staring straight ahead. I wonder what’s going on in her little animal mind and I imagine she is a guru, meditating, and totally at one with the universe. She’s probably closer to it than I am, at any rate.

I saw a petition today that I decided not to sign, even though I could see their point. It wasn’t just laziness or indifference, as it sometimes is, because you see petitions all the time, and you know they generally don’t do any good. No, I actually thought about it and decided I disagree.
Apparently, somebody is planning to make some new Lord of the Rings movies (it should be a TV series – the episodes wouldn’t need to be three hours long, and you’d have the time to fit an actual bit of story in between the battle scenes), but apparently they will have -ahem – nudity. The petitioners object strongly to that; family entertainment, Tolkien’s original intentions, and so on, which is all true.
But, the way I see it, Lord of the Rings is in the public consciousness now (which is different from public domain. I’m not arguing the present legality of it, I’m just saying it’s the fate of all great literature), so it’s fair to do all sorts of versions of it. There will some day be an all black version, a puppet version, a silly Monty Pythonesque version, a musical, a cartoon, and one with zombies. And they will all find their audience and they will all make money.
If you want purity, you can always read the books.

As we walk across the Earth
there are people all around us
and they’re all a little different
from us in a lot of ways
so it would be exhausting
if we were to get offended
at every random thing
some random person had to say

Truly, you cannot avoid occasionally rubbing someone the wrong way. Admittedly, I don’t try very hard. I responded to a comment the other day with “Vegan food sucks,” when what I should have said was “Your plan to abandon the cities and have everyone on the planet living on organic communes and eating vegan food is highly impractical.”
I suppose I should try harder to be polite, but I think I’m going to go the other way. There is just too much going on in a world of never-ending news cycles, new scientific developments daily, and the culture wars being fought on so many fronts that it’s much easier just to let fly, say whatever you think, and let the chips fall where they may.
It’s the best way to go, I think. I am the type of person who has opinions, and if I don’t express them, who will?

You are infinitely more likely to get the truth about extraterrestrials from the extraterrestrials themselves than from the U.S. military – Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone has a way of hitting the nail right on the head, striking right to the heart of the issue. We don’t know if extraterrestrials have visited Earth. If they have, we don’t know if they are benevolent, malevolent or indifferent (my money’s on indifferent, but I don’t know any more than anybody else).
What we do know is that the U.S. military (as a part of the U.S. government) lies to us all the time. And it’s not just them. Every American police department, and more than 50% of the shows on television, portray the police as hard working, well trained, dedicated individuals when the evidence on the street proves that they are a pack of ignorant, racist bullies who will kill a civilian at the drop of a hat. And it’s not just America. Governments lie. They figure out what it will be in their best interest to say, and they say that. Partly because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be the government. If there’s one thing people hate more than being lied to, it’s being told the truth.
But, back to the UFOs. If they are extraterrestrials, and they haven’t killed us yet, then they probably don’t have any reason to. The fact that they haven’t communicated with is yet is also because they don’t have any reason to.
On the other hand, if there are no extraterrestrials (because of course there are UFOs, by definition) that presents us with a great opportunity and a tremendous obligation. On the one hand, we can explore, and colonize, the whole universe. Everybody will get the Mormon dream, a planet of their own. The obligation would be to survive, because if human life dies then all intelligence dies with us, and that would be a tragedy indeed.

I just saw a meme which said “If somebody declines an alcoholic beverage, do not ask them why. Just get them a non-alcoholic beverage,” and I thought ‘well, that’s a load of rubbish.’
Not drinking alcohol is not like some social taboo that people are going to be offended if you ask. It’s as harmless as asking “Do you like bacon?” or “Do you like Coen brothers movies?” Some people do. Some people don’t.
It might be a bit iffy to ask somebody what race they are, if it is not obvious, but I know some people who would and, as long as the question comes out of plain, old fashioned curiosity and no malevolence is involved, they’ll generally get away with it. Not everybody in the world is a crusader for social justice with a blog – most people are just trying to read the room and make friends.
Another big one is asking questions about gender, like ‘which pronoun should I use’ or ‘how do you guys actually do it?’ I recall an incident that happened in a village pub, like a really small village a long way from any major metropolis, and this was in the mid 1980s. Someone pointed out to our group that one of the ladies at the bar was not actually a lady. Myself, I was perfectly willing just to stay away, not ask any questions, because I’m a live and let live kind of guy. My friend Bill, a wildly extroverted aging hippie, went directly up to the person in question and said “Is it true that you’re a bloke?” A bit hesitantly, maybe sensing trouble, she (or he, I would have said then, but apparently the rules have changed) nodded. “Well damn,” Bill said. “You’re better looking than half the sheilas in here!”
What followed was a friendly conversation, which is the main reason pubs exist in the first place.
Some people have less restraint of their tongue than others, but as long as the question is asked in good faith, with no meanness involved, there’s almost nothing you can’t say.