Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Well,  my big accomplishment of the day was I finally got my most recent book, “Rheets 2014” submitted to create space, and I recommend it to anybody who would normally buy a book of poetry, or in fact, anybody who wouldn’t normally buy a book of poetry, too.  They are short poems (Rheets are rhyming tweets), couplets mostly, one for every day of the year more or less.

It ain’t Harry Potter, that’s for damned sure

In the news,  the BBC is airing a mini-series based on “The  Casual Vacancy,” J.K.  Rowling’s first post Potter book, but apparently they’ve changed the ending because it was ‘too grim.’ (spoiler alert- if you haven’t read the book, I’m going to mess it up for you.  If you were  just planning on watching the TV presentation, carry on reading)

I’m not happy about that.  Sure, it was grim, but British TV is no stranger to grim.  Look at Midsomer Murders.  They are never satisfied with just one murder.  By the time  inspector Barnaby solves the case, there are inevitably three corpses, and sometimes they get killed in a pretty ‘grim’ fashion.

The ending of Casual Vacancy was pretty grim.  A baby dies and a teenage girl commits suicide, by heroin overdose.  But I can’t imagine how they are going to conclude it without that.  It is a book with a lot of intricately interwoven stories,  and  without that ending, it just won’t be the same book at all.

The screenwriter, who writes for the East Enders (well, there’s your problem, right there) said “You’ve got to think that it was worth it and that the characters aren’t just a pack of shits; they’ve got to be a little bit funny, a little bit understandable.”

Actually, I thought that was where Rowling did an excellent job in the book.  Even  though a lot of the characters in the book were kind of horrible, you felt for them.  Even the heroin addict mom.  Even the arrogant rich couple.  Even the kind of creepy guy who thought he had a shot with Barry’s wife, on account of Barry being dead and all.  You understood their motivation, why they saw things the way they did.

But, the Beeb apparently didn’t think TV audiences would get that.  Maybe they are right.  After all, we are talking about people who don’t read books.

Q: What do Kanye West and Brian Williams have in common?

A: It doesn’t really matter what happens to either one of them.

Brian Williams, with President Lincoln outside Gettysburg

So, Kanye West has done it again, sort of.  It wasn’t as dramatic as his drunken “Ima let you finish” speech a few years back, interrupting Taylor Swift when it was her turn to accept a Grammy.  This time the award went to Beck, and Kanye tried to make sort of a joke out of it but,nonetheless,  it was a repeat performance, stealing the show, messing up the moment for somebody else.  Seriously poor sportsmanship, and a misunderstanding of what awards programs are all about.  Basically, you don’t always get to win. The people you want to win don’t always win.  Whoever wins, some people are going to be disappointed, but they and their friends are expected  to keep smiling and applaud for the winner.  It is the same whenever awards are given, from employee of the month to Miss America.  It is not an election to political office.  You don’t get to ask for a recount.

I know this is not going to happen, but I think Kanye West should probably be barred from attending the Grammy’s in future.  If you or I behaved in an egregiously anti-social manner twice at the same pub, we’d be barred, either permanently or until the next change of management.  It’s justified.

Also, it won’t really hurt Kanye West at all.  It won’t limit his freedom, it probably won’t hurt his career, and it wouldn’t even stop him from winning any awards in future – just from picking them up in person.

As  to Brian Williams’ little white lie, it’s not an evil thing, he didn’t actually hurt anybody, but he did lie, he got caught, and he will never be seen again as a 21st century Walter Cronkite.  (In retrospect, I wonder if Walter Cronkite was even what we thought Walter Cronkite was but he’s gone now, and safe from scandal for all eternity)  Sure, I think he should lose his job.   It’s not as if he’s going to be forced into unemployment and poverty.

TV news reporters, even anchor people, are pretty interchangeable, and there are thousands and thousands of ambitious young actors who would love to take his place.  All you have to do is look sufficiently pompous and read stuff off of a teleprompter.  It’s not like these people actually have to understand the issues or anything.

I got defriended today.  That’s O.K.  I didn’t actually know the woman in real life, and we didn’t particularly have a close facebook connection even, so I’m sure I won’t miss her much.  Also, since I’ve got about 1,500 friends on facebook, it happens sometimes.   It’s  probably even happened a few times without me even noticing it.  It’s only happened once or twice with people I also knew in real life, and one of those cases  I  didn’t notice for a couple of weeks.  I regret those cases but, what can you do?  It’s still not as bad as getting rejected in real life.

There are two ways of explaining why I got defriended today.  One is the difficulty of expressing  tone of voice in print.  The other is that she was being over-sensitive.  It was a  discussion of how to teach gifted children and the point I made was “gifted or not gifted, kids are kids and need discipline and a set curriculum.”  She accused me of lecturing her and talking down to her (no I  wasn’t),  of being old fashioned (perhaps true in this case, but not as a general rule) and responding to the headline without having read the article. (that’s true)

I  think part of the problem is that people have different  opinions of what the unwritten rules should be.  I see a lot of people post stuff and then get upset when somebody actually disagrees with them.  They want likes.  They want share.  They want comments limited to “That’s true,” or “That’s exactly how I feel about it.”

We’ll reach equilibrium eventually.  I’ll continue to say what I like and those people will all defriend me eventually.  Meanwhile, I will be left with friends who enjoy a spirited debate  once in a while.  Everybody will be happy.

Ceres is a dwarf planet.  When poor Pluto got demoted, it was fair in a sense because  otherwise they’d  have had to elevate Ceres, and four or five others, to full planetary status, which I would have preferred  because the more the merrier, but there have to be limits, I  guess.

It’s in the news because there’s a spaceship up there, named Dawn,  close enough to get  some good pictures, better than they’ve ever got before,   and   it’ll  settle into an orbit in a couple  months.

This is particularly interesting because Ceres could possibly have life.  Maybe not life as we know it, maybe not intelligent, technologically capable life, but life. It’s a rocky planet, with water.  It’s  too far from the Sun to be in the Goldilocks  zone, it’s  beyond Mars, but scientists think it might have some kind of an internal heat source of its own, so some of the water might be liquid under a crust of ice.

I   don’t know how they could possibly find it, since a landing is not planned, but  if they find evidence, I’m sure there will be fresh missions.  Even if we were to find some weird alien fish, in a totally sealed in world, hidden from space (how would they have got there?), that would totally make it  obvious that life is common, abundant throughout the universe.

In any event, I’ll be watching this one closely.

The headline (on the article I’m not even going to bother linking to, because it’s so bloody obvious) said “New Study Finds Marijuana May Be Effective Against Depression”  and I thought “Well, duh.”

You know what else is effective against depression?  Music.  Dancing.  Handicrafts.  Italian food.  Chinese food.  Chocolate.  Wine.  Pets.  Sports.  Long walks along a tropical beach at sunset. Sex.  Movies with the 3 Stooges.  Basically, anything you like to do is going to be effective  against depression, at least temporarily.

Of course, I’m sure the article was talking about clinical depression and not what I think of when I think of depression, which is basically having a bad day and not being in a very good mood.

Even so, I think it was stating the obvious.  Marijuana is a mood altering drug.  It makes you feel light headed, euphoric.  I’m pretty sure it won’t make many people feel more depressed.

Another very positive development for the pro-marijuana crowd is that legal pot has been so successful in Colorado, it may lead to tax rebates for all of its citizens.

Of course, there is also the massive amount of evidence that it  cures various forms of  cancer. Mostly anecdotal evidence, so far, but I haven’t seen much evidence to refute it.

So, lots and lots of good reasons to legalize it everywhere, across the board,   but it  doesn’t look like it will happen any time soon.

Why is that?  It must be because some people are making big money  keeping it illegal.