Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

A group of New Hampshire Republicans has written to Fox News, protesting the network’s plan to limit the number of candidates in their upcoming candidate debates.
The network wants to limit the number of candidates to 10. I can understand. Once you get too large a number, it’s just like American Idol, but without the talent.
The group wrote “The field of Republican candidates is perhaps the deepest we’ve seen in histor. It should be embraced as a positive sign of civic engagement and political leadership for the nation.”
Or, contrariwise, it should be mocked as being not only one of the largest candidate fields in recent memory, but one of the most insane.
Let’s take a look:
Marco Rubio, aside from not being able to drink a glass of water, is probably one of the least comically insane, and therefore the scariest. Loves war.
Ted Cruz. Howling for war with Russia in Ukraine. Not a good idea. Also, didn’t actually condemn the idea of Texas seceding from the union. Doesn’t know enough not to laugh at a funeral.
Rand Paul. George Clooney in “Brother, Where Art Thou” was doing time for impersonating a dentist, which I thought was just a funny Coen brothers joke. Apparently not.
Ben Carson. Oh, I would love to see Ben Carson get the Republican nomination. The baggers would be faced with a Hobson’s Choice. Vote for a sane, responsible, not crazy Democrat, or vote for the black guy.
Carly Fiorina. Demon Sheep Lady!
Mike Huckabee. Son tortured a dog to death. Thinks jokes about watching girls in the shower are cutting edge and funny. Believes Earth only 6,000 years old. Really.
Lindsey, two for the price of one, Graham, the president and first lady both. I shouldn’t make fun of his totally closeted and we don’t actually have any evidence gayness, but he’s a conservative Republican and they’re not supposed to like those things. He likes war.
Rick Santorum, the one who is really, really obsessed with gay people’s sex lives and runs for president every damned time.
Jeb Bush. Thinks his brother did a wonderful job. Either he’s placing family loyalty above political ambitions, which would be somewhat noble, but stupid, or he actually believes it, which would just be stupid. Like the rest of this stupid field, he is a climate change denier.
Scott Walker. Hates teachers. Hates policemen and firemen. Hates nurses. Loves billionaires.
Chris Christie. Crooked as the day is long and meaner than an abused pit bull. Deliberately blocked traffic across the George Washington bridge during rush hour. Should be thrown from same bridge.
Rick ‘Rootin’ Tootin’ Perry. You remember. The fondling the maple syrup guy. The ‘let’s all pray for rain’ guy. Him.
And let’s not forget Bobby ‘color me white’ Jindal.

I join with the Republicans of New Hampshire when I say ‘Put them all on stage. Let’s hear what they’ve got to say.’ This could be fun.

The Shit Guru is finished, there’s no more work to be done on that. A bit of promotion, choosing a teaser to post each day, trying to figure out how to get copies shipped to us without spending too much on shipping, hoping people will start ordering it on Amazon or Kindle, but basically it’s done and I’ve got a bit of time on my hands.
Except I don’t. One project ends, another begins. The past couple of days – a weekend extended by the fact that I don’t have any Monday or Tuesday classes at the moment- I’ve been working on Poems About Paintings, my new facebook page.
The hard part is just that the computer keeps fucking up (fact of the matter is, I hate computers, because I don’t understand them, and they sense that, that weakness, that vulnerability, and they take advantage).
There are about 30 poems that it doesn’t look like they’ll make it to the page because I can’t find the artist’s name, and in some cases the painting itself, because scrolling back further than a month is insanely time consuming.
It reminds me of my first computer, when you’d just have to wait a half an hour to even get connected.
Still, I’ve got 36 poems up so far, a few more will be added over the next few days and maybe forever, and I’ve been getting good feedback.
The artists like it, of course, because it’s a showcase for their work, and it makes reading poetry easy, for people who really don’t care that much about poetry, which is damned near everybody.
People like looking at pictures. Reading is work. We can bitch about that till the cows come home (I’ve never understood that expression. The cows come back into the barn every night, so ‘until the cows come home’ really isn’t that long a time), but the fact remains. As a writer, I can either adapt to it or remain unread.
I’m adapting.

I like Morgan Freeman, but I have always wondered how much that’s because of Morgan Freeman, and how much of that is because Morgan Freeman happens to narrate Through the Wormhole, which is an extremely cool science show.
He’s an actor, not a scientist. So, Neil deGrasse Tyson has more credibility, or Michio Kaku, or Seth Shostak. In fact, despite the old stereotype of scientists not being so great at communication, there are plenty of them today who are.

Still, I suspect the reason he’s hosting that show is because he has some interest in science. Otherwise, he’d just be looking for action movie roles like all the other big stars.
Today, there is one more reason to like Morgan Freeman. He has turned his farm in Mississippi into a bee sanctuary. The 120something acre spread is planted with stuff honeybees love, clover, lavender, other flowers, and Magnolia trees.
I admire Angelina Jolie for adopting those kids, it’s more than I’m doing but it’s a drop in the bucket. I admire the political activism of Mark Ruffalo and George Clooney, because I think they’re generally on the right side of things and I appreciate their support. I admire Bob Geldof for all that he’s done to raise money for hungry people.
But Morgan Freeman is saving the bees, and ultimately that means he’s saving the human race. Nobody can top that.
We spend a lot of time watching celebrity scandals and moaning about what horrible, selfish, greedy people they are. So, it’s nice to give one credit for doing something great, for a change.
Thanks, Morgan Freeman!

It’s been a while, two or three weeks at least, since anything in the world of science has totally blown my mind, but this blows my mind.
Scientists posed the question of a computer: How can a flatworm, which has been sliced sideways into a thin strip like a damned cucumber, still manage to reproduce? Because they can, you know.
The thing is, they really didn’t know the answer. This wasn’t something that had been programmed into the computer, because that information just didn’t exist. They were asking the computer to figure it out.
And the computer did. If that isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s damned well close enough. We can ask computers questions to which no human being on earth has the answer, and still get an answer. The mind boggles. The possibilities are endless.
Here are some questions we should ask computers: How can we provide clean, healthy drinking water to everybody on the planet? How can we prevent an asteroid from striking the Earth and killing everybody on it except maybe the cockroaches? How can we eliminate traffic jams? How can we build housing for all of the people of the Earth for under 500 billion dollars? What makes people laugh? How can we achieve peace in the Middle East without a giant flood that just kills everybody? What is the cure for the common cold? How can we terraform Mars? Venus? Is there intelligent life on other planets and, if so, how can we contact them? Should we contact them? How can we build a ship with a warp drive and room for a couple hundred people to wander up and down uncrowded corridors to their heart’s content?
And much, much more.

Selena Gomez sent a message on Instagram, which is, I guess, what the cool kids use these days, saying “I want to reclaim my name.” She goes on to write “Sometimes I get frustrated when I hear lies

about who I am. The Internet is meant to keep you “updated” but it just takes old news and freezes it like it’s now. You have watched me in pain and I’ve owned up to it through my music and actions. I grew up with you. I am beyond excited to show you the next chapter, the TRUTH. I’ve been keeping so many secrets… I’m reborn in every moment so who knows what I’ll become.. As long as I’m happy with me. #strongisbeautiful #healthyperspectiveonthemfools ”
I’m calling bullshit. Selena, you are 22. If you were a lesbian or felt you were a man trapped in a woman’s body, we’d have heard about that by now. You’ve shown no such indication. Alcohol problem? Piffle. You ain’t no Lindsay Lohan, that’s for sure. Relationship with Justin Bieber was all fake? Hey, we suspected that and always thought you were too good for him, anyway. Drugs? You can get away with a little bit of that, honey, and it’s obvious from looking at you that you’re not exactly doing an Amy Winehouse type amount.
If you were planning on going all nuts and trying to shed your cute kid image, I think you missed your window. Miley Cyrus did that as soon as her Disney show ended. She practically had her clothes off before she left the set.
In summary, if you’ve got “a secret” it had better be a damned juicy one, because the bar has been set way high.
I suspect that your secret is just that you are actually a boring person in real life, and don’t have enough scandal going on even to shock your old bosses at Disney. But, I’ll be following the tabloids, just in case you prove me wrong.