Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I don’t quite understand what’s happening with Greece. Yeah, I know they are having an economic crisis, and can’t repay loans, and the EU is drawing a line, like they’ve never actually done before, but once you start talking economics, you’re talking a language I don’t quite understand.

I hope it works out O.K. I’d like to see Greece stay in the European Union, because they are part of Europe. They are an important part of Europe. Sure, they may have fudged the figures a bit when they joined, but I expect the governments of all the other EU nations understood that at the time, and figured it would all work out.
Sure, the EU might have been a bit over ambitious, it may have expanded a bit too far a bit too fast. But still, the EU is a noble experiment and I hope its expansion continues. If Greece is out, it’s a move in the opposite direction and it will be a long time before new members are added. So I think, for its own sake, the EU should be doing everything it can to keep Greece in.
Also, I like Greece. This is the country that gave the world civilization, democracy, and the Olympics. The scientific method, also known as rational thought, comes from ancient Greece. It is the birthplace of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Democritus who discovered the atom, and Archimedes who discovered the rule that two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time and, realizing the brilliance of his own discovery.jumped out of the bathtub and ran naked through the streets shouting “Eureka!”
It is the country of Ouzo and Moussaka and Bazooki (sp.?) music, and men dancing in lines like Zorba.
It is a land of friendly people, relaxed meals lasting for hours, a plate of olives, a plate of sardines, a plate of bread, a carafe of wine, and nothing ever running out at the same time.
They have wonderful beaches, and sunshine most of the time. That’s not going to change, whatever happens politically.
Greece is a great country. Not everything is about money.

As a person who’s written a few sonnets (check out my book, 155 Sonnets), one of my pet peeves (right up there with people confusing to and too and writing loose when they mean lose)is people who call their poems sonnets when they are clearly not sonnets. Sometimes, they are barely poems. But, you can’t tell them anything.

In comedy news from the Republican primaries, let’s talk about Donald Trump. Never before has a candidate’s announcement of their candidacy gone so badly. It was the line about all the Mexican rapists coming across the border. Of course, Republicans say this kind of crap all the time, but Trump somehow managed to be a little bit extra offensive.
First, all over Mexico they are selling Donald Trump pinatas. There are all sorts of Donald Trump memes on facebook in Spanish. Five minutes into the campaign and he totally lost a major demographic.
Then, he got fired by Univision, the Spanish speaking TV station, which really wasn’t too surprising. With that, he lost his connections to a couple of beauty pageants. He’s got a hot wife, but that’s got to be a serious blow to his standard of living.
Then, he got fired by NBC. Whoops.
I guess he’ll just have to go back to being a property developer.
Instead of responding to these events with humility and apologies, he has responded with bluster and rage. Not good, Donald.
If you can’t handle Univision and NBC, you can’t really be trusted to negotiate with Putin.

A lot of words have been spoken and praise enthusiastically given for President Obama’s eulogy of Charleston pastor Clementa Pinckney. Maybe a bit too much.
First, it was a eulogy. The emphasis should not be on the eulogizer but on the eulogized. This is not Obama’s fault. He focused on the good Reverend’s life, and mentioned all of the other victims. It’s not his fault if everybody watching swooned over his speech.
Secondly, it was just a eulogy. A speech. We know he’s good at giving speeches. He mentioned all the right things. The culture of racism. The need for gun control. That doesn’t exactly bring us gun control. Once again, though, not Obama’s fault. It’s a miracle he got Obamacare passed, and that he hasn’t gotten the U.S. into any ground wars. His administration will definitely be rated a success by historians, and maybe a couple decades and a few hundred more school shootings down the road, we will get gun control. Maybe.
Third, the singing. Amazing Grace is an obvious choice at a funeral. I don’t see why everybody was so surprised. Yes, the man’s got a nice voice. He’s not exactly Marvin Gaye, but I’ll bet he’d be a lot of fun at karaoke night. I’d say his singing is about like his basketball playing. Good enough to be a key player on a great High School team. Not quite enough to go pro.
I’d like to add one thing. Nobody knows what Obama will do after being President. I sure hope he doesn’t go into lobbying. He might go back to teaching law. He could probably get an appointment to the Supreme Court. He could, if he chose to, just retire. He’s earned it. Maybe write another couple of books.
But I think he should become a preacher. He would have, in that role, a great deal of political influence. Martin Luther King did. The Pope does. Why not Obama?
He obviously has the skill set.

Not today so much, because today all I’ve seen on facebook is ‘Oh my gosh, Obama’s so wonderful, now we have gay marriage’ but often I have seen comments from people like ‘How could somebody come onto MY page and say such nasty, hateful things about my writing/painting/whatever.’
Of course, I haven’t read everything on their page, and certainly not the offending comment because they’ve deleted it, but I think at least some of these are due, not so much to harsh comments, but to over-sensitivity.
The implication is that everybody should either offer positive comments or say nothing at all. How unproductive is that? Grow a thicker skin, people.
It could be that part of my objection is just jealousy. I’ve never had anybody come onto my facebook page and tell me that my writing sucked (People have told me my opinions suck plenty of times. There has even been the occasional, much more general ‘you suck’ kind of comment. That’s O.K. That’s nothing new.) I suspect, from that, that nobody’s actually reading my writing.
Don’t get me wrong. I actually think my writing is pretty good. I’ve read through my novel several times, and it holds my interest. I can read back through this blog weeks at a time, and nod along in agreement. Yup, got that right. I am generally totally satisfied with my poetry. The rhymes are tight and, in every single case, I agree with what I say.
But, I’m sure if lots of other people were reading my work at least some of them would be writing in to say “You suck. Your metaphors are weak and cliched, your rhymes are trite, your word play is juvenile.”
Let me just go on record here and now. If you come on to my facebook page saying shit like that…I’ll either answer you or not. But it’s O.K. I won’t defriend you for it. You’ll have to do a whole lot worse than that to get defriended.

It’s been a big news day, and not all of it good, by any stretch of the imagination. Three terrorist attacks. The one in France only killed one person, but he was beheaded so that was pretty gruesome, and the mosque bombing in Yemen was in Yemen, a country where we are used to hearing about these things. The one in Tunisia was the scary one, with 37 (at last count) tourists shot and killed on a beach, which can seriously ruin your afternoon.
In good news, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the individual states can’t stop gay marriage. It seems as if Justice Kennedy has decided he’d rather be remembered in history as one of the good guys.
But, overshadowing all these news items is the news the Bristol Palin, who has spent the last several years lecturing American teenage girls about how they shouldn’t have sex before they get married, even though she obviously had herself, because she’s already got one child, is preggers again.
She wrote, in a public statement on the internet “I don’t want either lectures or sympathy.”
Well, I’m not going to lecture her. As a guy, I’m all for girls having sex before they are married. I suppose I could lecture her for being a huge fucking hypocrite, taking large sums of money to tell people not to do something that she’s doing plenty of. (we don’t yet know who the father is, or even if Bristol can narrow it down to 1.) It would be similar to me telling people they shouldn’t smoke marijuana just because somebody offered me a million dollars. Seen in that light, actually, I can understand it. If somebody offers me a million bucks, I’ll say whatever they like. So, no lecture.
Sympathy? You’ve got to be joking. Bristol is young and has shitloads of money. Sure, being a mom is hard, but she can afford to take all the time off she needs so she’ll be fine. So, no sympathy.
No, I’m just going to have a good laugh about it, as I think most people will. Because she is totally ridiculous.