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I’ve never liked Bill O’Reilly much.  Of course, there’s nothing criminal about not knowing the difference between a felafel and a loofah, they’re both things that lots of people go through their whole lives without knowing what they are, and many other people know what they are without knowing what they’re called, referring to them as “that vegetarian thing with the balls inside pita bread” and “that long, scrubby thing you have in the shower” respectively.

Trying to pick up a girl by saying you want to stick a felafel up her hooha pretty much labels you as the worst pickup artist of all time but he paid the girl a lot of money not to charge him with sexual harassment and she accepted the payment, so that’s water under the bridge.

There was the lying about some journalism awards he said he’d received when he actually hadn’t but, eh, whatever.

There was the whole totally made up “War on Christmas” thing which  Bill O’Reilly started, and that did (and does) irritate me seriously because he injected actual animosity into what was previously just an over commercialized, slightly  obnoxious holiday.  Probably made Sascha Baron Cohen jealous as fuck, though.

There was the  “tide goes in, tide goes out, can’t explain that” statement, but that wasn’t so much of a lie as just garden variety jaw-dropping stupidity, since scientists have been able to explain the tides fairly well from around about the late 17th century.

But then he came out and made some self-righteous speech condemning Brian Williams  for saying the helicopter he was in came under enemy fire, when actually it was the helicopter ahead of him.  The press has to have integrity, O’Reilly said.  How can the public ever trust a reporter after a lie like that.

Well, it turns out O’Reilly told a lie that was a lot worse, claiming he reported from the Falkland Islands (or las Islas Malvinas, come te quieres) when, in actuality, he was reporting from Buenos Aires which, no matter what Bill O’Reilly says, was not part of the war zone and didn’t put him in any immediate danger.

His credibility is shot.  He should step down.  News reporters are not irreplaceable.  They are a dime a dozen.  Every local TV station has an anchorman who would be happy to take O’Reilly’s place.  For less money.  And with less attitude.

It’s late and I need to write something but I’m not too  excited about anything in the news.

A bit depressed at the news that Will Smith’s marriage is on the rocks, but that’s life – it’s not like he hit anybody or molested a child  or spit on his fans or anything, so it’s all good.

A bit miffed at Rudy Giuliani’s comments that “Barack Obama doesn’t love America” but that’s just Rudy Giuliani  being a jerk.  He blew it so badly when he was running for President that he has been irrelevant ever since, and this certainly doesn’t make him more so.

It appears that Russia is winning the cease-fire, which should be an oxymoron but in the reality of world politics it is not.  On the other hand, evidence mounts that Russia has armed the separatists, which everybody just sort of assumed all along and it doesn’t really matter if nobody’s going to do anything about it and I don’t think anybody is.

I tried to load a  “browser plug-in” even though I don’t really understand what that is but I was told it was free and it’s a thing that whenever a politicians name appears in an  article, if you hold the icon over the name , it shows all the corporations that are paying them money, sort of making real the idea that congressman should all wear jerseys like Nascar drivers with the names of their sponsors, but so far all it seems to have done is screw up my computer, I keep getting that gray box that says “A script is operating” or something like that,  and  all you can do is shut it down and restart again and again.

There’s my 250  words for tonight.

I am, in theory, a proponent of the concept that you should separate that artist from the art.  There is no correlation between brilliance and creativity, on the one hand, and a sense of morality, human decency and a pleasing personality on the other.

Ezra Pound, who wrote perhaps the most beautiful two lines of poetry ever:  “The apparition of these faces in the crowd, petals on a wet, black bough,” was a fascist piece of shit.  Bing Crosby beat the hell out of his kids.  Bill Cosby is a rapist.  Woody Allen is a child molester.  Mel Gibson is a racist nutcase.

It doesn’t matter.  Once their work is out there, it has a life of its own, and that belongs to the ages.  Or so I tell myself.  But, I was watching a Woody Allen film a week or so ago, where his brother-in-law, played by Alan Alda, is a successful Hollywood director and Allen is the neurotic, struggling, genius writer (as always)  and there are several sub-plots going on, classic Woody Allen stuff, and I flipped channels in the middle and watched something else because I couldn’t stop thinking “This guy touched up his little step-daughter in the attic.”

I’m not boycotting Woody Allen movies.  The allegations aren’t really clear, or proven,   and being a pervert doesn’t stop him from being a genius.  What if the stuff they said about Lewis Carroll were true?  Would we throw away Alice in Wonderland?  We  would not.  Still, it puts me off a bit and makes me look for something else.

Now, we have a new one to add to the list.  Afroman has put out quite a few albums but he’s basically a one hit wonder.  He’s the guy who wrote that “Because I Got High” song which was a big hit about 13 or 14 years ago, and is a hell of a lot of fun to do at Karaoke because everybody sings along and, often as not, somebody will offer you a toke afterwards.  I love that song.

And, you would think, somebody who loves the good herb so well would be a mellow dude, like Cheech and Chong, like Willie Nelson.  But, no.  Yesterday, in Biloxi, Mississippi, a woman danced up on stage, which was maybe a bit uncool, interfering with the show and all, but hey, it’s a party, it’s an entertainment event and she was having a good time.  She wasn’t a threat or anything.

Then, he turned around and punched her, hard, in the face.  Because, beneath it all, despite his artistry, he’s an asshole.

He’s out on bail, but I hope he goes to jail.  And I sure hope he doesn’t say he did this because he was high.

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.” —David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.” -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 

I must admit I have not yet read anything by David Foster Wallace but that is apparently an oversight I will have to rectify as soon as possible because, damn, that is a great quote.

It is, indeed, odd,  but there’s the rub. We live in this world, this society of human individuals; animals elevated above the animal world by several millennia of invention, and language, and art, but still only a minority, a small minority, are capable of plumbing the depths of others’ minds and souls; of venturing into the world of ideas, and thoughts, and visions. The vast majority walk the city streets or country roads, and smile and say hello when they meet, but the interior of the other person is no more meaningful to them than a building or a tree; something to be interacted with, but beyond hope of truly being understood, much less felt.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh, maybe it sounds like a bit of a negative rant about the human race, and  I don’t really mean it that way.  When you need somebody  to unblock your toilet, you call a plumber and you don’t worry about it to much if he (or she) is interested in philosophy.

And I can’t claim  that I’m  very adept, myself, at understanding what’s going on inside other people’s heads, or in getting them to understand what’s going on in mine.  Still, I try.  That’s what I’m looking for.  I want to communicate with those individuals who are members of that minority.

The artist seeks an audience. The audience seeks an artist.

 

I write poetry, as a lot of you know, and it’s generally a pretty harsh and thankless field.  Even the great poets are only recognized among other poets, and most not even that.  I’ve noticed, on facebook, that when I comment on somebody’s post in rhyme, it is generally ignored, while some others can post a status update of “I don’t want to get out of bed this morning” and it will lead to a spirited debate with hundreds of comments.  I can’t figure it out, so I’ll stick to my plan: I’m going to keep writing, in the hopes that eventually I’ll write something so blindingly brilliant it will be unignorable.

Today was a pretty good day.  On my way to my first class, which turned out to be my only class of the day,  the morning light was sharp coming over the buildings and actually lit up a patch of the derelict,  pink, ex-military hospital that gives Invalidovna its name,  and I thought “To see things in a different light, is more than just a metaphor” and I’m pretty sure that’s a good first line for a poem but I haven’t got anything more written down – that’s my task for tomorrow.  One concept I want to get in there is that morning light is different from evening light, which is weird because you’d think they’d be exactly the same, parallels, but morning light means clarity, sharpness, new beginnings, brilliance, a lack of ambiguity, whereas evening light is soft, nostalgic,  relaxing, a precursor to the darkness of night.

Anyway, after that I spent most of the day on facebook, and got two poems written there, which I liked, although they were pretty much ignored, and if you hate poetry, especially rhyming poetry, you can stop at this point because the rest of the blog is mostly cut and paste.

The first one was in reply to a post commemorating Galileo’s birthday:

Galileo Galilei

Was coerced, and forced to say

The the Sun moves round the Earth

I would have, too, for what it’s worth

To tell an itty bitty lie

To stay alive and not to die

Now, it’s alleged that he said

The Earth moves round the sun instead

Sotto voce, sort of muttered

“Nonetheless, it moves” he uttered

I don’t believe he said those words

Because, if anyone had heard

He would have been executed

And his voice more swiftly muted

Still, it’s irrelevant, just because

Whatever Galileo said

In his desire to keep his head

Indeed it does, indeed it does

 

And the second was a more general thought on the weirdness of having  “facebook friends” who you don’t actually know in real life, or at any rate not that well, but  we’re all kind of the same.

 

I see the family photos, upon my facebook screen

Of people who I’ve never met,and never even seen

In a park, beside a lake, as pretty as you please

Or in Uncle Bob’s back yard, between two leafy trees

The children standing in the front, their smiles are nice and bright

And the patriarch and matriarch, with hair so snowy white

Each in their position, each one has their role

They look just like my family, though I don’t know a soul