Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

One of my Facebook friends, one who I value highly because he’s a widely traveled writer, painter, and photographer who has taught me quite a few things (even though we have quite a broad range of things we disagree about as well, i.e. the origins of the human race) posted a painting which he said was painted in a ‘slightly altered’ state.
That prompted me to write this little poem:

We are all a little altered, by everything we find
There is no such thing as an unaltered state of mind

which is not really much of a poem but I think it would word well as the last two lines of a longer poem about how our minds are, at birth, a tabula rasa, and everything we do, everything we experience and perceive alters our minds a little bit. Which raises questions. What is the baseline from which we all deviate, and just exactly how different are we all from each other, and if a mind is altered, can it be altered back or does it keep going on and on with more random alterations until we are unrecognizable, even to ourselves?
So, I’ll work on that today.

The best comment I saw on Facebook today was with regard to the ‘canceling’ of Pepe LePew, the woman chasing skunk from the classic era of cartoons.
“I’m glad he’s canceled and my children are safe. Now my son can get back to playing Grand Theft Auto, where he just set a hooker on fire so he wouldn’t have to pay her.” That’s how you do sarcasm.
Made me think, though. Pepe Le Pew, Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head were things of my childhood. Most kids today are unfamiliar with them, have never seen a Pepe Le Pew cartoon, got bored with Mr. Potato Head after about two seconds and went back to the SIMS, and only know Dr. Seuss from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And they don’t care. They’ve got their own cartoons and games and they aren’t looking back at ours.
So, the whole ‘canceling’ thing only affects people in the age group where it doesn’t matter any more. I’m not going to forget Pepe Le Pew, and I’m sure I’ll always be able to find Pepe Le Pew on YouTube or somewhere if I feel a raging need for some sexist humor, and I still own plenty of Dr. Seuss books, including the now infamous Mulberry St. We might even have a Mr. Potato Head in a box in the basement, I’m not sure. As a toy, it actually stops being fun after a minute or two.

My wife and I have been binge watching Bolivar on Netflix, which I highly recommend, by the way. It is a rare intersection of interests. I like historical stuff and, to tell you truth, I know far too little about South American history. She likes anything in Spanish.
I would have preferred to watch it in English, with Spanish subtitles, or at the very least in Spanish, with English subtitles, but no, she wants it in Spanish with Spanish subtitles, to improve her Spanish, which is a bit unfair because her Spanish is better than mine. Nonetheless, between hearing it, and reading the text, following the action (there is a lot of action – sex, birth, death,fights, rape, and at least one hanging, so far), and occasionally stopping to look up a word, or two, or three, we’ve both been able to follow it pretty well and it is a good Spanish lesson.

Great news out of Nevada for Berniecrats. Brillian, glorious news, the best we’ve had in a long time. It doesn’t seem to be getting a huge amount of notice in the mainstream media, but I found articles in the Intercept, Fox News, and The Las Vegas Journal Review, with only a few minor discrepancies in the details.
The Democratic Socialists (i.e. Berniecrats) have taken over the Nevada State Democratic party! The ‘Nevada Dem Progressive Slate,’ led by Judith Whitmer of Las Vegas, soundly defeated the dishonestly named ‘Progressive Unity Party.’
That’s one thing that seriously pisses me off. Regular old DNC Democrats calling themselves progressives, while they fight against every progressive issue. The Fox News article on this seriously muddied the waters by referring to them as progressives in almost every paragraph, and they sure showed how much they believed in unity, right after the election.
“What hit us by surprise and was sort of shocking is that for a slate that claimed that they were all about unity, and kept this false narrative of division going on throughout the entire campaign — in fact they kept intensifying that — that’s what was surprising about it, was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.”
Of course, the meeting was held by Zoom, so there was no technical walkout, but there were mass resignations from party positions, and a sudden and suspicious transfer of funds.
Because they were never progressives. And they never gave a shit about unity.

The meme read “Forget Metal Detectors, Congress Needs Lie Detectors” I responded “Fact Checking is lie detecting,” which it is in a way and I thought rather a clever point. Then somebody added “Depends on your sources. See Rashomon.”
That irritated me a little bit. It sounded like a self righteous argument against what I said and Rashomon is a work of fiction, so what does it really have to do with anything? It seems like all anybody wants to do in an online conversation is divert it somehow, bring up a film or movie or something completely unconnected. It’s not so much “I have a valid point to insert into this conversation for your consideration and debate and more “Look at me! I can reference cool things!”
Well, before going off the handle in print and looking like an idiot, I decided to look up Rashomon and it actually was kind of a relevant comment.
Rashomon is about a murder, which everybody gives a completely different account of, so obviously some are lying, or at any rate telling ‘their own version of the truth.’
I’m quite familiar with the genre, my wife loves all the cop shows like that: ‘Broadchurch,’ ‘Black Spot,’ ‘Border Town’ and oh, so many more, where everybody in town is lying their asses off to the quirky and troubled detective from out of town. Because the truth is really elusive, and everybody has their own agenda.
So, yeah, doubt all sources. And keep on questioning.