Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Today was an excellent day. I slept in until almost 8, which is late, and that was nice, and then got up to check hotmail and facebook and wrote a poem to go on my poems about paintings page. It wasn’t really a great one, but it was a nice one.
I’m churning out 3 or 4 a day lately, mostly very short ones, but short is a length I like.
Then, I went to meet a friend for lunch, a friend who I haven’t seen for about 10 years, and he bought a copy of my book, which was great. We ate at a Chinese restaurant I used to eat at often, like 2 or 3 times a week at least, when I worked in that neighborhood, but that was about 6 years ago, and it’s a very busy place.
So, I was quite surprised when one of the ladies recognized me and said “Oh, we haven’t seen you for such a long time, where have you been?”
Then, I went to Shakespeare and Sons Book Store on Mala Strana to ask if they’d take my book on consignment but didn’t know if they would because I left a bunch of my poetry books there like forever ago, and last time I went back they were still on the shelf, like socially awkward teenagers at a party.
But two of my poetry books had sold, so they paid me for those and took 2 copies of The Shit Guru on consignment.
I wonder who bought them? If it was somebody I know, that would be nice, friends supporting me, but if it was a complete stranger, somebody who walked into the bookstore and opened them out of casual curiosity, that would be even better. That is when I will know that my writing has some validity, when total strangers read my stuff and talk about it to other total strangers.
Came home, played around on facebook, wrote a couple more poems, added a couple of pictures to the Poems about Poetry page, which is growing nicely, both in content and followers.
And now it is time to sign out. Buona Notte, everybody.

It was kind of a lazy, pleasant Sunday. I didn’t get much accomplished although I did write one short poem which wasn’t bad. Spent the day on facebook and watching TV.

The exciting news of the day is that Philae is back on line! Philae, the little landing craft that landed on comet Churrito-Guryamashunkaplotz a few months back after meandering around the solar system for about ten years in an unprecedented and awe inspiring example of logistical forward planning. Whatever we learn from the comet, we learned that NASA scientists can park like no driver on Earth.
Well, it landed on the comet, sent back info for a few hours, or maybe a day or two, I forget, and then it’s battery went dead and we all thought “Well, that’s over. Nice while it lasted.”
Now, it’s a bit closer to the sun, heated up, and the batteries are recharged. This is the biggest scientific 2nd half comeback since Hubbell.
I am pleased.
In an interesting update on the Rachel Dolezal case, it turns out her parents are Christian Fundamentalist wackadoodles, who believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago and Darwin is an agent of Satan, or some such bullshit. I can understand her wanting to get away from that, but her methods are a bit extreme.
My theory is she felt her parents loved the adopted children more, and wanted to be like them.
Watched an old movie on TV, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell. Saw it when it came out, probably at a drive in with the family, so that’s enough elapsed time it’s like seeing it for the first time. The first thing that struck me was that it was the same plot as Mama Mia, except Greece was Italy, and all of the guys who thought they were the teenage girl’s father were married, and it wasn’t a musical. Also, Meryl Streep may be a fine actress, but she’s no Gina Lollobrigida. Other than that, same film.

The thing that surprised me most about Hillary Clinton’s official entry into the presidential race this morning was that I thought she’d officially entered the race months ago.
So, it was a bit of an anti-climax.

One thing about the speech that didn’t surprise me at all was that it received about 10 times the media coverage Bernie Sanders official campaign announcement got, and I don’t even remember Martin O’Malleys official entrance speech, and I follow these things.
There is little doubt that the press loves Hillary. It could be just because they like the story, first female president and all will sell some newspapers, they’re used to writing about her and certainly her husband is always good press. Could be. I suspect they’ve got more cynical, calculated, financial motives, though.
I suspect that because ‘the press’ is made up of a few large corporations and corporations always have cynical, calculated motives.
It was a good speech, I suppose, those excerpts of it that I saw, and those excerpts of it that I read. She gives a good speech. I don’t think it will be enough, though.
She talked a lot about income inequality but she’s a bit late to the party. That’s Sanders’ issue now. There’s the lingering suspicion that she wouldn’t be talking about it at all if he hadn’t made it an issue.
She also made a couple of fairly positive statements about the environment, which is good. I like the environment. But, a couple of statements doesn’t make up for the fact that she’s in favor of fracking, which is about as anti-environmental as possible. She’s got a long way to evolve before she’s in line with most Democrats on green issues.
In short, she’s going to have to seriously raise her game if she expects to get the nomination, and I don’t think she can do it.

I never have got around to reading “Black Like Me” but I did read “The Human Stain” by Philip Roth, about a black man who can pass for white, and why he does, and what that gains him, and what that costs him. A good read. You could definitely understand why he did it.

Rachel Dolezal went the other way. A white girl and, from the look of the ‘before’ picture, unambiguously so, she has been passing as black for many years now. She taught an African-American history class. She is the head of the Spokane area NAACP (why do they still call it that, and not the NAABP, or the NAAAAP? I guess that last one would be a bit unwieldy.)
Now, she’s been outed. Her parents (who are a little bit miffed) spoke to the press. One thing I wonder is why it took so long. Didn’t she have any old friends from High School who recognized her and spoke up? Former boyfriends? I guess it’s easy to lose contact and drop out of sight if your not actually trying to keep up contact. But this is a fairly high profile lady, who seeks the limelight. She gives speeches. She heads organizations. She tweets.
So, that’s the hot topic today. Is she mentally disturbed? Is it O.K. because she’s helping people? Should we just carry on counting her as black because isn’t it her choice, after all, just as a man can become a woman or a woman a man, why shouldn’t a white girl call herself black?
I’m sure we’ll get a lot more info on this in the next few days. I’d be particularly interested in hearing from her adopted, black younger brother who she’s been passing off as her son – I’m sure race was a topic of conversation in their household growing up, and I’d like to know what their parents attitudes about it were.
I’d like to hear from her teachers. Was she a normal child growing up? Is this the first time she’s tried to take on a different identity?
In short, I’d like to hear more. And I’m sure we will.

Technology is improving so fast and there are so many cool ideas out there to save the planet that I’m sure the planet could be

saved, within a very short period of time, if we would just get it together and start working on all of them – solar roadways, mag-lev trains, covering parking lots with solar panels, artificial islands floating in the sea and growing crops while cleaning up, walipinis, urban gardens, agrihoods, naturally filtered swimming pools, cannabis, hemp, bike sharing, recycling, electric cars, bee sanctuaries, windmills, driverless cars, engines that run on poop, and much, much more.
We could be living in a fucking utopia, is what.