I have been sent numerous questions over the bare week at best of sharing this blog with others. My outlook here is to be open and perhaps help others enjoy what I write elsewhere by knowing me. So, here are a few of my answers to questions.
"When relaxing, what adult beverage and snack do you most enjoy and do you smoke? After all I saw you in a photo smoking a big one."
I have smoked cigars in the past. That might be true, but I never smoke a ton of them. I found I enjoyed the experience but I am also aware that my health is not so great that I am immune from side effects and direct effects from non-serious behaviors. As such, I am not having more of them. I have enjoyed Stoli on the rocks, Irish Whiskey, and Grainbelt Premium Beer. As I'm dealing with substantial health issues, the meds I take might interact with alcohol. I will never be dead from personal use of meds interaction. I can't say the physicians will always be in agreement on what I take. There might perhaps be an accident, knowing that people I once knew died of med interactions.
"Why do you live in Minnesota if you hate cold weather and snow?"
My reason for loving Minnesota comes down to the populace, ideals, beauty and hope. For a place with such cold, to live here, I think the people are warm, bright and overall kind and creative. I don't really have a thyroid that works, so it might feel colder to me than others.
"Who would you vote for in 2028? And please be serious..."
Winona LaDuke, Tulsi Gabbard, Jon Fetterman, Jesse Ventura, a reanimated Ross Perot. And those are serious choices, if I were to vote in 2028. I doubt I'll vote. I mentioned them in an article about 8 years ago too, and my views have not changed. (All but Fetterman who wasn't yet in national levels of government.)
"Do you see more war in the future?"
I believe that humans are violent. War is easier than hammering out problems and diplomacy. People who analyze international relations and Asia, all know that the Chinese playbook had aimed 2027 as the year they would retake Taiwan. However, both Trump telling allied nations, whether in NATO or SEATO that they need to take more responsibility for their own defense. When Biden and Pelosi changed American foreign policy by saying we would stand shoulder to shoulder defending Taiwan, it changed so much. It not only changed previous foreign policy plans, it reconfirmed to Taiwan uppermost, followed swiftly by South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines that a united front would isolate and stall offensive plans in China to act in aggression towards Taiwan, and had a chance to succeed.
"Why did America, if not you, vote for Trump?"
Americans are often said to envy wealth. Trump voters want wealth as well as wanting to abandon the social programs of the past, that they don't see as fair. But those who voted against Trump probably also envy wealth. Wealth can be a positive or negative as a driving force.
I know a man who was Democrat his entire life but voted twice for Trump. He told me how he had stopped seeing America as focusing on liberty and hope, and instead it was anti wealth now. For him, he thought it was America becoming like Europe, who he once respected, (he'd served in Europe to defend NATO against the Soviet threat) but now sees as a mix of people who wouldn't defend themselves, as well as anti capitalist. Or in other words, he said, why pay to send troops to a place with tons of money to defend people who wouldn't pick up a weapon and defend their own?
"Who are your favorite "fine" or "non-genre" artists?"
This is not a fair question. But I'll try. Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack and John William Waterhouse. But I've hundreds of fine artists I appreciate.
"Is it hard to review products when you've done it for 25 years? With nothing new under the sun, do you end up yawning and write to please the readers or is it heartfelt?"
I never lie in a review, but that is a harder comment to explain because at the peak of publisher and creator awareness of me, there used to be so many good products and I had only so many pages I could write a week. I eventually decided to only focus on lifting others, rather than criticize everything. For one thing, I could never do better than 99% of them all, and it was insulting, in my mind, to act as if I knew better than another person's viewpoint being expressed in art.
"You are nucking futs to think Ezra Pound or Yukio Mishima were anything but assholes and fascists!"
Feel whatever you like about them, I've read too many of their works to feel as you just expressed. And it isn't that I forgive all the bad choices, dark beliefs, I just about never, however, cancel others.
