Tuesday, August 17, 2010

IMMIGRATION

Once upon a time, the most beautiful land in the world chose a good-looking, young, brown hero, a Dem to rule the land and live in the White Palace.

They called him "Boss." The Boss has to follow the constitution made by the very old, very first ruling gang who founded the land. The Boss has a lot of work to do to fix the economy, wars, unemployment, and a real-estate crisis, and things can't be fixed without a bunch of new rules.

Rules have to be okayed by the new gang -- Reps and Dems, whites and browns, mostly rich people who have plenty of time to work on the rules. They were chosen by the folks who lived in the big cities, one-horse towns, farms, beaches, and no-name, no-where-everywhere places on the map.

The folks loved the new boss. The Reps didn't. They didn't want things changed, but the Dems knew if some of the rules didn't change, folks were going to go hungry and have to sell their houses and cars, and not send their kids to college.

So every time the Boss tried to change the rules, the Reps in the gang said, "No siree, Bob," while the Dems got sweaty nervous, and comforted each other, figuring they'd change the rules later.

Even so, the Boss fixed quite a lot of things because a "boss" has power. Being a convincer type of guy, by golly, he convinced some Reps NOT to say, "No siree, Bob." And of course, he had the pen every boss of the land gets to have, in order to mark the X on the paper that makes a new rule work.

He got some of the failing car and housing businesses working again with a whopping amount of money in an Economic Stimulus plan. And that meant jobs for some of the folks who were hungry, selling things, spending money they didn't have.

He negotiated and got a huge tax cut, the biggest tax cut that was ever made for the folks who weren't rich; got Credit Card reform, and Student Loan reform, so young people could go to college and eventually pay back what they'd borrowed for tuition.

The Boss also got more civil rights -- fair and equal pay for women; also a Hate Crimes act; also Wall Street reform -- new rules about money that the land desperately needed so it wouldn't go broke again in a couple of years.

Despite the "No siree Bob-ers," the Boss, a talented wheeler-dealer, got unemployment insurance extended. And because the Boss went to international meetings, he cooked-up "don't make or sell nuclear weapons" deals with the Russians and a bunch of other countries who were worried about terrorism.

What surprised the Reps -- really pissed them off -- what they couldn't stand was the fact that he got a Health Care reform bill passed.

Yes, and Boss made a good deal with BP, the oil guys. They're paying for fixing up the land that's been ruined by BP's oil spill.

All this, while the pissed-off Reps have been spending $3 million bucks a week on advertisements putting down every single thing on the Boss's agenda.

But wow, just the other day, the Boss got $600 million for the land's immigration problem -- border security -- 1,500 new enforcers and drones along the borders of the southwestern states. Also, last-minute, before the Dems and Reps disappeared for vacation, he got $26 billion for various states who are out of money, to help them pay for teachers and emergency workers.

Well, the Reps are furious. They want to change the constitution -- it has some old-fashioned things in it that they're desperate to change -- especially NO more automatic citizenship for brown, half-breed babies.

The Reps are working night and day, raising money for the big election day two years from now. They want a white Rep in the White Palace -- the browns, according to the census, are going to be majority soon.

The question is "when." White women are having fewer children. The Latino browns are having nine brown babies for every one death, compared with a roughly one-to-one ratio for whites.

Yes, the Reps are seriously frantic, and the Dems are definitely sweaty nervous. Is this fairy tale going to have us and the brown Boss living happily ever after, or a new, pale face Rep moving into the White Palace?

Monday, August 16, 2010

DISAPPEARING THINGS

I became a blogger, because my novels were not being published. There used to be 12,000 blogs and now there are 1.5. million, and every day more. (That is a helluva lot of competition.)

And books -- ten years ago maybe 242,000 books were published. Now, 1,050, 000 are published, but they're mostly e-books -- for every 100 hard backs , 200 e-books are sold. Amazon, with the Kindle, says that by the end of last year, 3.7 million people had electronic readers. They claim that by 2015, there will be 30 million reading e-books on their readers.

Well ..."Don't cry for me Ar- gen- tin -a... " (I'm humming the tune, probably off-pitch.) What does this mean if you are a writer? It means further and further away is the dream, the hope, the faint possibility that the novel you write will be published. (I put away that dream away, but dreams remain shadows of themselves, and sometimes, in the dark, I'm scared.)

When I saw this picture in Newsweek, I felt sick to my stomach. Zoom IN on it! Look! See how it was ten years ago, and what's happening right now to things we do and use!

Newspapers -- 178 of them have died. And letters -- I can't think in the "billions" -- I just picture 207 B and 175 B-- see that 31 B letters are being mailed.

E-mail rules the world. Online research is HUGE!

And while I am frowning about that, I see the fantastical figures on texting --400,000 text messages were sent ten years ago. 4.5 text messages were sent this year.

I see people on their cell phone keyboards, tapping away with a finger confidently, in the abbreviated language texters use.

On Facebook, I've been getting messages with LOL or :) or :O or ^-^ symbols, and have to look them up online, in the "Emoticon Dictionary."

What bugs me may not bother you, but if you like games, CD's, or iTunes -- well, zoom in on the picture, and brace yourself.

Double-brace yourself! The big guys, the Kings -- Google, AT&T, and IBM aren't whispering about cloud computing -- they're saying CLOUD COMPUTING is HERE and coming to your desktop!

Oh dear, maybe we'll be sending invisible messages into the vapor with ultra Hi-Fi, practically inaudible twitticons, that only a dog's ear can hear.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

SEAN PENN IN HAITI (video)


John and Emily chat about actor Sean Penn, impressed by the fact that he's still managing a tent camp in Haiti. After six months, most of the country is still like a war zone.

Emily tries to get John to express his opinion on Penn's talents as an actor. John's reluctant at first, but he digs into the subject, and delights Emily with his clear understanding, and appreciation, of the way Sean Penn creates a character for each of his films.


Saturday, August 14, 2010

BACK FROM VACATION


I'm home
and full of pep.

Tomorrow, look
for our video post
SEAN PENN
IN HAITI.