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It’s happened again. A white officer killed a black man. It was completely unprovoked. It was recorded on film. The officer’s face was clearly visible in the video. Yet he has not been charged with murder, or attempted murder. I saw the video. It is amazing that the man, Jacob Blake, 29, survived, and I hope he pulls through. Which would make it attempted murder, but at least the police officer should be charged with that.
Instead, the police came up with this weak ass statement: “As always, the video currently circulating does not capture all the intricacies of a highly dynamic incident. We ask that you withhold from passing judgment until all the facts are known and released.”
We saw the video. It shows that the man was unarmed, and that the officer shot him several times in the back, at point blank range. What more do you need?
It does not matter if Jacob Blake had spoken impolitely to the officers, it did not matter if he had outstanding traffic warrants. They shot him point blank, in the back, multiple times. The officer was close enough to him to grab him by the shirt, he could have easily arrested him without gunfire. If, indeed, there was anything to arrest him for.
The officer needs to be arrested, and tried. That should just be standard procedure.

Somebody posted a picture of this on Facebook and asked me (well, they asked everybody) what I thought of it. I think it looks like a stream of vomit, and that would seem to indicate that the artist doesn’t like biographies much. However, kinder critics have compared it to water coming out of a hose, and a tornado.
But, it’s not the only place in the world books have been piled or shaped as works of art. The tower of books at the entrance to Prague’s main library springs to mind. A floor to ceiling hollow tower of books, with a little space to poke your head in, and there are mirrors on the floor and ceiling so you get a view of infinity, which is a nice statement, because books contain other worlds, an infinity of knowledge and fantasy.
But, I think there’s another reason you see books used as an art material, and let me illustrate it by deviating from it a bit. I have seen a lot of cafes in Prague, this probably has happened other places as well, and it’s not quite as common as it used to be, but it’s still a thing. Lots of cafes decorated with old stuff that nobody uses any more. Typewriters, sewing machines, old farm equipment, stuff like that, heavy on the wood and rusted metal.
My theory is that when communism ended, a lot of people said “Hey, I think I’ll open up a cafe, but then comes the question of how to decorate it. Well, a lot of those people had a lot of old junk sitting around in the attic, and if you clean it up and space it out a bit you can call it art, and it’s not at all unpleasant.
That’s why I think you’re seeing books used as an element in art. Nobody reads books any more, at least the number has significantly dropped, and there are a hell of a lot of books out there with no function.
So, they are turned into objets d’art. Could be worse. At least it’s constructive.

This may seem like a niggling, superfluous, even frivolous grammatical argument, and it is. But it’s also a harbinger, a foreshadowing of something more ominous, and we should all be wary of it.

The argument is how many spaces should be left after a period and before the next sentence. Old codgers and grammar traditionalists such as myself say two. All the hip kids and Silicon Valley technocrats say one.
This is in response to a comment I saw on Facebook from one of the latter group saying “Now you are free! You no longer have to put two spaces after a period!”
This is not freedom. Freedom is being able to put as many spaces as you damned well please. This is the first step. The number of spaces is now determined by the media you are using. Try to leave two spaces. See what happens.
First, the computers determine how many spaces between sentences is correct, and offer helpful spelling and grammar suggestions. Some day soon, those will be auto-corrected and it will be difficult to spell anything in an alternative fashion. As a grammar guy I kind of like that idea, even though I realize it’s a slippery slope.
Eventually you will not be able to post anything that is incorrect or employs logical fallacies. We will have a world in which arguments are conducted intelligently, and to the best possible conclusions. It will be great for scientists, engineers and mathematicians and will lead to a stronger society in some ways, but it will be a less human, and far less free society.
Proceed with caution. If you are writing out your remarks longhand, or using a program that allows it, you can still leave extra spaces. Just to fuck things up, you beautiful rebel, you.

Who knows if this will be the worst year ever for hurricanes and wildfires? Maybe it will, because that is the general trend with global warming, but maybe it won’t because last year will be hard to top, especially on the wildfire front.
Just saw a map with little fire icons all over the Western U.S., I don’t know if it’s actually that bad but I have heard about firenadoes in California, which is a new wrinkle, and when nature actually evolves a new way to fuck you up, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. The same map showed two Carribean hurricanes brewing, and the scary part there is they are on a convergence course. According to the map, one will hit a bit East of New Orleans with a top wind speed of 65 kph and the other a bit west with a top speed of 55 mph, so not the worst hurricanes ever, but it’s the convergence that’s kind of scary.
The other scary thing, of course, is that the U.S. is not any better prepared for these disasters than they were last year, or the year before, or the year before that.
If the human race goes extinct, it will be because we let it happen.

Normally, my days consist of watching TV, arguing with people about politics on Facebook, and smoking way more pot than your average person in their 60s.
But, today was a bit different. Well, the morning was like that. Then my wife, our daughter, our niece and I took a bicycle trip to the zoo. It’s not too far, it’s a pretty good bike path for most of the way, along the river, you can watch the kayakers practicing in their stairstep pools which look like a salmon ladder. The zoo was nice, it hasn’t been so long since I’ve visited it that there was anything new, but their were a couple of baby elephants just a few months old, which was cute, and we were all seriously impressed with the giant newts, except for Helena, who stayed out of that pavilion on the grounds of ew, gross.
The second event was the poetry reading, which I just got back from, and there was a bit of a link between the two because I wrote a little poem at the zoo, which went like this:
There are kangaroos, and wallabies, and even wallaroos
Which are, at least as far as size, somewhere between the two
We saw a few of them today, while strolling through the zoo
Lovely, lovely, lovely wallaroos
and it was as popular as any of the other poems I read.
It was a lovely reading, at Grebovka, but ended with a rare twist. Two park service guys came around and told us we were making two much noise, and drinking in the park was not allowed after ten p.m. They carried on with the reading, but I took that as my cue to leave.