Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I don’t really know if this is a new thing or not, but I saw the first of these videos just a day or two ago. So, it’s new to me and it may be new to you, too.
It’s a series of videos called The Backyard Sessions, produced by Happy Hippie. I like them for several reasons.

First, of course, is Miley Cyrus. I’ve seen her in three personae now. When she was Hannah Montana, my kids were right at the Disney watching age (actually, they still are, but they seem to have drifted away from the Disney Channel a bit, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not) so I saw plenty of that program. I couldn’t really see what the big deal was. It seemed to me not much different from every other Disney program, with its extremely corny, unsubtle humor and stereotyped characters.
Then, there was the trying-to-shed-the-child-star-image phase of her career. Like most people, I found it embarrassingly over the top and not very entertaining. I liked some things about her, such as being an open and honest advocate of marijuana, but the unsexy nudity and the whole Haka Tongue thing kind of grossed me out.
Now, there are the Backyard Sessions, and I have become a Miley Cyrus fan. I like the concept. It’s simple. Basically, they’re all filmed in her back yard (or maybe it’s at a studio which has an outdoor space that looks like a back yard – I don’t want to dig too deep), there’s a back up band, sometimes she sings solo and sometimes she has guests – (she seems to like Melanie Safka a lot, who was a one hit wonder decades back with “Look What They’ve Done to My Song”), there’s no nudity, no gimmicks, no fancy video effects, and a couple of things really shine through.
Everybody there seems to very genuinely be having a good time.
Miley Cyrus has a fine voice.
I hope she continues in this direction.
(I’m going to be out of town for the weekend. There might not be a blog tomorrow night.)

Whenever the news of the world is getting me down, like a killer cop in Wisconsin not coming to trial, or another Amtrak disaster (why can’t the USA have safe trains? Europe has safe trains. Japan has safe trains.), I turn to a science page, to restore my faith in the future. And faith it is, because if you examine the actual evidence and think logically, there’s a serious chance that we’ll fuck it all up and stupid ourselves righ into extinction.
That’s what I did just now, and my faith is restored. In the Netherlands, a short stretch of a solar bike path is producing ‘more energy than expected.’ Enough to power a house. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s less than 1/10th of a kilometer long, and it’s in the Netherlands, which is not exactly the sunniest place on the planet, and the experiment began last November, so it hasn’t yet been tested at the actual sunny time of the year, but it’s alrady a success.
It’s not the same as this project, but the technology is very similar. Basically, solar panels that are tough enough to work as a road service.
I’m looking forward to the future.

There’s an old expression, it’s been in songs, and on T-Shirts, and now of course you see it, or some variation of it, every couple of days on facebook because, I guess, out of all the people in the world, there has to be somebody who’s just seeing it for the first time, and likely a lot of somebodies who’ve seen it before plenty of times but have the memory of goldfish: You can’t please everybody, so you just have to please yourself.
That sounds pretty obvious. Please yourself, and people who think like you will also be pleased.
But it was running through my mind today, as words often do, and the ending came out different, and I realized the message of this little platitude is not all cupcakes and sprinkles.
“You can’t please everybody, so why even try?”
Sounds a bit more negative, doesn’t it? Yet, essentially, that’s what it’s saying. Go ahead and please yourself. Grab that last piece of pie. Take the last seat on the bus, screw the old woman. Crank up the music, who gives a fuck what time it is. Please yourself.
Of course, “You can’t please everybody, but if you make a serious effort you could probably please most people and that would be a worthwhile goal because it would make the world a better place” might actually be a morally superior philosophy of life, but it isn’t quite as catchy.

I’ll close tonight’s blog with two news items: Morgan Freeman is a huge pothead! Which is cool, of course, because so am I, and I quite like his ‘Through the Wormhole’ show. Carl Sagan used to love his marijuana, too.

The Tiger Woods/Lindsay Vonn breakup is because she caught him cheating on her. Apparently, the Tiger is not changing his stripes.
When all is said and done, Tiger Woods will be remembered for two things, and one of them is golf.

One of the problems with debating politics online is that there is a strong tendency – and since I do this myself, I am certain that others must, too – to just read the headline and jump right in.

After all, the headline lets us know the topic, and generally it’s something I’ve already formed an opinion on. Also, if we stopped to read every single article, we’d never get any commenting done, and where’s the fun in that?
So, the headlines today are all screaming “Seymour Hersh Says Obama Lied About Bin Laden Raid.”
Well, that’s certainly not the first time anyone’s made that claim, and I do respect Seymour Hersh. Also, in the immediate aftermath of the raid, when they said they’d “buried the body at sea,” (i.e. threw his carcass overboard) my bullshit detector went off loud and clear.
However, this is Obama, not Bush. There are a few things he’s been secretive about, like the Pacific Trade Deal, and some things that didn’t exactly work out like he said they would, but compared to the previous regime, he’s been George fucking Washington. Also, how would that work? If Osama Bin Laden were still alive, it would be a pretty neat trick to make everybody think you killed him. All it would take would be one video to make you look like a total doofus.
So, when somebody posted it on facebook I shot back with “Where is he then?” If he were still alive, he’d have been spotted by now, probably in a 7-11, hanging out with Elvis.
Later, I went and read the article. Hersh is saying that Obama co-operated with the Pakistani government to pull off the raid, Barry says it ain’t so.
I reckon that’s a rather minor detail. If you are a Pakistani who supported Bin Laden, it would probably piss you off, but the average American voter probably wouldn’t object if the locals got a heads up before the raid. Tempest in a tea pot.
I suppose I should blame myself for not reading the article first, but blaming myself is not something I like to do, so I’ll say the headline writers could have made that a bit clearer. Stupid headline writers.

Chuck Norris says it’s not crazy to believe that Obama is preparing to invade Texas, by holding military exercises and closing a bunch of Walmarts so they can dig tunnels – to the Oklahoma border, presumably.

Yes, Chuck, it is insane. And those Republican politicians – Texas Governor Greg Abbott and presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul – who are taking the claim seriously – are also insane.
It is as insane as thinking that Obama was born in Kenya.
While we’re at it, Chuck, you know all those Chuck Norris jokes people used to tell and maybe people who are 11 years old still do? They were meant to be ironic. Nobody actually believed that your tears could cure cancer, or that you’ve counted to infinity – twice.
I’m sure you must be aware of that. Or, at any rate, up to a few years ago I would have, but now, I don’t know. After all, Victoria Jackson apparently didn’t realize that people thought she was playing a character – a very dumb character.
And then there’s this “not crazy” statement. Here’s the breakdown on that, Chuckles: Texas is part of the United States. It would be linguistically and semantically impossible for him to invade Texas.
Despite your advertising program, you are not a ‘whole ‘nother country,’ any more than New Jersey is ‘The Garden State.’ Again, we have a case of people confusing fantasy for reality.
Which is one of the classic definitions of insanity.