Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

A lot of people, in the Bernie groups I belong to, are debating the topic: when is it O.K. to start bashing Biden again? Should we wait until after the vote count is finished? Should we wait until the electoral college has voted, which I believe is December 13th? Or should we wait until we see who he appoints to his cabinet, or after the inauguration?
There are plenty who argue that we should not wait at all. People only voted for him because they hate Trump, so its fair game to attack him now. I was willing to wait until he’d at least done something concrete, because right now everybody’s celebrating and it might be construed as ungracious, even mean spirited. But, the centrist Democrats attacks on the left haven’t let up, so I’m starting to come around to the “What the hell, why should we wait at all” point of view.
Nonetheless, I want this blog to be a bit of an olive branch. Here are 6 things Biden could do that would force me to give him a bit of credit, and maybe stay off his back for a while.
1) Bernie’s Green New Deal, and of course that includes banning fracking. Damn. Fracking is literally poisoning the Earth. Literally literally. That’s what fracking is. It also includes infrastructure repair, so lots of jobs. And solar and wind power. And trees. And high speed trains.
2) Pardons for Assange, Manning, and Snowden
3) Medicare for All. Lowering the age to 60 doesn’t help that many people and restoring the ACA still leaves some people uncovered. For All. That’s the demand.
4) Close Guantanamo
5) Legalize Marijuana, like full legalization, and free all the people currently in jail for it.

6) Get money out of politics. This one’s a long shot, because without big money in politics there’s no way Joe Biden would be president.

They are all long shots. You can think of this as a wish list

Poetry wise, I had a reasonably productive day. I wrote several short poems, although only three that I deemed worthy of posting at Rattle’s Anything Goes poetry page, and of those three one was blatantly political so it probably won’t go in my next book. Not that I never include political poems in my books but, for the most part, I feel that political poetry does not age well, and this wasn’t one of the exceptional ones.
It was a productive day because I went on a binge of responding to people’s Facebook posts in rhyme, which I sometimes do. Most people are not impressed, the rhyming comments generally get fewer likes and responses than my other comments, and are often ignored entirely. Sometimes, they can end a whole thread, which figures. If Facebook is analogous to live conversation, posting a poem is about the same as speaking in rhyme during the course of an ordinary conversation. People will think it’s sort of weird and stare blankly into space, waiting for someone else to break the awkward silence and change the subject.
Yes, I speak from experience. There have been times in my classes when I’ve been bored and broke into rhyme. Most students never noticed, and I can’t recall a single instance where anybody was impressed.
Still, for me, it’s a good writing prompt and two out of five or six is way better than nothing out of nothing, so ….it was a good day.

It’s a bit different watching it now, after many years. Of course, it’s no longer groundbreaking, because so many sci-fi series have followed, but the big change is not in the series, it’s in the way we watch things now. I’m not just talking about binge-watching, although that, too.
It’s the internet. I was watching one of my favorite episodes today, the one where Riker was in a Tilonian mental hospital, and there was a Tilonian guard named Mavek and I looked at him and said “Well, danged if that ain’t Jeff Daniels of Dumb and Dumber fame” which I thought was cool because I always like spotting an actor in a minor role before they became famous.
So, I googled Mavek. Now, here’s the fun part. While Mavek the Tilonian was not, in fact, played by Jeff Daniels, just some other actor I’d never heard of who looks a bit like Jeff Daniels, there was also a listing for a Cardassian named Mavek, who had a small, but recurring, role on Deep Space 9. Apparently, through the many iterations of Star Trek over the years, they’ve had so many aliens that they had a hard time coming up with new names. Sort of like stars.
Anyway, he was significant enough that when I saw him, I recognized the character. But, the actor’s name was listed as ‘unknown.’
I can understand that happening with extras, in a crowd scene, but not somebody who actually had lines. There had to be paperwork, I’m sure he was paid.
So, my next thought is that he actually was an alien, some species that looks a lot like Cardassians, and he decided (as part of his fact-finding mission on 20th Century Earth) to infiltrate the set of Star Trek TNG and play a small role. Probably even got a chance to chat with Patrick Stewart, and other influential earthlings, without blowing his cover.
It would have been perfect.

Most people use Facebook to stay in touch with their family and friends, maybe to post some pictures from their latest vacation, or their children, or to talk about food, or music, or whatever they’re interested in. Some people post pictures of their gardens, some of their cars.
Myself, I probably spend most of my time arguing about politics, although I quite often post on poetry sites as well. The thing that often surprises me is that people get just as angry, and vehemently defensive, and self-righteous about poetry as they do about politics.
“The dung of stars” is what we’re all made of, I guess, that was the metaphor used, and I thought it kind of a crappy metaphor (pun intended). Actually, I thought it was overall kind of a useless poem, but I just decided to criticize that one line. Of course he replied, to say he didn’t need to reply to me, as my ignorance was vast and unfathomable.
I can understand an argument over politics becoming heated, and descending into personal insult. Happens all the time. You either get used to it, and don’t let it bother you, or you don’t last in those conversations, and come to avoid them.
But poetry?
Well, I guess I shouldn’t complain. It’s good that people take their writing seriously (even if it’s not great writing), it’s good that they are passionate about it.
It doesn’t really have much effect on the real world but, to be completely fair, neither do most of our internet arguments about politics.

Much has been written about Facebook’s new look, almost all of it negative – in fact, all of it I have seen has been negative – and I basically agree. None of the changes were necessary and some are downright obnoxious.
This morning, a few minutes ago, I decided to unfriend somebody. I’d never noticed him before, didn’t recognize the name, and his post was both ungrammatical and rather blatantly sexist. So blatant I thought perhaps it was intended as a joke, but it was not funny. Basically, it was ‘make me a sammich,’ but with a lot more words misspelled.
So, I went to my page to see if he was a friend. He was, surprisingly, and we had rather a large number of friends in common. However, when I’m unfriending somebody, there is a second step. When I look to see if we have friends in common, I then look at those friends. If I don’t recognize them, either, I proceed to unfriend without worry.
Anyway, I found the unfriend command after a bit of searching and watched the little wheel spinning round and round. Then came the confusing part. With no actual confirmation that he’d been unfriended, I clicked on it again. Now I wasn’t sure if he was truly unfriended or if I’d just inadvertently refriended him. It’s like if you have 3 locks on your door and leave one of them deliberately unlocked to confound burglars, but you forget which one it was and lock yourself out.
This is not entirely the fault of the new Facebook. I’ve had this problem before. But, still, it wouldn’t hurt for them to make it clearer. A simple announcement, a box perhaps, saying ‘this person is no longer your friend’ would do nicely.
Why can’t they just make things easy? I’m sure it’s just as easy as making things hard.