Look What They Done to My Country

Look what they done to my song, ma 

Look what they done to my song 

    --Melanie, 1970

"What have you done!", the woman shrieked as she ran across the icy Minneapolis street. "What the fuck have you done!" 

The SUV had already stopped moving, crunching up against a parked car. One bullet had crashed through the front windshield, two others were fired through the open driver side window at point blank range. 

By the time the the horrified woman reached the car, the ICE agent was already walking away, ignoring her screams. On the videos captured, his face appears to show no appreciation of having just taken a human life. 

It's just another day. 

Except for this woman's 6-year-old child. Except for her family members and friends. 

She was well-loved, the background stories tell us. She was unusually kind. She was involved in the community.

A physician on the scene tried to help, but was blocked by ICE agents. The victim was dead before she reached the hospital. She was probably dead before the second and third bullets burst through her skull. Spilling out of the glove compartment in the car were some of her daughter's beloved stuffed animals. The driver's side airbag was splattered red with blood. 

She was a domestic terrorist, we are told by the authorities, out to use her car as a deadly weapon. 

This 37-year-old woman with a glove compartment full of stuffed animals.

Look what they done to my song, ma. 

Look what they done to my song.

Well they tied it up in a plastic bag 

Turned it upside down, ma. 

Look what they done to my song.

I have seen the videos, and I have heard all the increasingly desperate, obvious lies. I have seen and heard the cold-hearted and stunning utter lack of remorse. She was the killer, we are told, not the man with the gun. 

And I am filled with rage. I am filled with a white hot hatred of those who are telling their evil tales, and of those who are offering their heartless, ignorant, careless comments on social media. Their irresponsible, disingenuous, cowardly excuses. It was her own fault. She had it coming. Good riddance.

I wish I could find a good book to live in 

Wish I could find a good book 

Well if I could find a real good book 

I'd never have to come out and look at 

What they done to my song

Look what they've done to my country.

She had a name, by the way. 

Renee Nicole Good

Murdered January 7, 2026

Love One Another

"I love mankind," he said,"but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, that is, as individual persons. In my dreams," he said, "I would often arrive at fervent plans of devotion to mankind and might very possibly have gone to the cross for human beings, had that been suddenly required of me, and yet I am unable to spend two days in the same room with someone else, and this I know from experience. No sooner is that someone else close to me than his personality crushes my self-esteem and hampers my freedom. In the space of a day and a night I am capable of coming to hate even the best of human beings: one because he takes too long over dinner, another because he has a cold and is perpetually blowing his nose. I become the enemy of others," he said, "very nearly as soon as they come into contact with me. To compensate for this, however, it has always happened that the more I have hated human beings in particular, the more ardent has become my love for mankind in general.

--The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here is a sentiment that Sartre expressed as well, and more succinctly at that, when he wrote simply that "Hell is other people" (L'enfer est les autres). This in turn has often been variously misquoted to read something like 'The only problem with heaven is other people'. But the point is the same. We nurture a cozy feeling of love toward mankind that is assailable only by mankind--not the fuzzy ideal, but the walking, talking, nose blowing critter itself. 

This brings to mind the scripture (John 4:20) which tells us that "If someone says,'I love God', and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he is not seen?

Well, you would be surprised, or more probably you would not be, for as anyone can see in social media posts and counterposts, the world is chock full of people who love God (supposedly) and at the same time maintain a nearly murderous disdain for their fellow human beings.

Ah well, just some things to think about, which have come to mind in my reading of the Brothers Karamazov, a very long, very dense, very talky novel indeed but one that has long been on my bucket list of things I really ought to read.

Happy New Year

Well Happy New Year, folks. I say this and despite being a lifelong New Years Scrooge. But I guess it's the thing to do. 

Despite the official ban on fireworks here in Bali, it is quite clear, at 8:00 p.m., that people intend to disregard this altogether. I have a good mind to call the local police, but I guess that wouldn't be very neighborly 😅 I suppose I should mind my own business (as if peace and quiet is not my business) and just watch something cheerful on TV, necessarily at loud volume. Something like The Walking Dead.

Best wishes for the year to come.

Flesh

What is crystal clear from the outset of David Szalay's novel Flesh is that Mr. Szalay has read a lot of Hemingway. What is equally clear is that he has utterly failed to understand how Hemingway Hemingway-ed. It's not a matter of short sentences. Szalay has that down. It's not a matter of terse dialogue, such as

Do you think so? 

Yeah. 

Really? 

Yeah. 

What? 

Yeah.

Sure.

Okay.

which, although unintentionally hilarious, does nothing to move the story along.

This is all tone and no intention. It is tone for the sake of tone, and it is silly. 

And it don't get much better from there, folks. 

Flesh is the story of an insensitive man of meager means who manages nonetheless to rise in the world by capturing the affection, for some ungiven reason, of a wealthy woman (or rather the wife of a wealthy man), and then fall again by his own clueless devices, whereafter, it is said, he lives alone. 

That's it? 

Yeah. 

Really? 

Sure. 

The most compelling question raised by this novel, in my mind anyway, is why it was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker prize. 

Brilliance on every page, the book cover blurb gushes. 

Well, I stuck with it, friends, to the dreary end. I kept waiting for the brilliance to show up. It never did. The author could have said the whole thing in a short short story and succeeded just as well at saying nothing at all.

Water Sports

Pouring down torrential rain nearly every hour of the day here in South Bali, accompanied of course by streaks of lightning and crashing thunder. I managed to get down to a cafe for coffee this morning, but as soon as I arrived the heavens opened again and the monsoon resumed. I was sitting outside at a table protected beneath the overhang at the roof, but the rain eventually got around that by coming in sideways so that ultimately my right arm and right pant leg were wet, the pages of my book were wet, my cigarettes were wet, and my coffee topped off with rain water. But I am both stubborn and lazy. I did not want to leave my spot and go inside the cafe, so I can't really complain. In any case, my attention was attracted by something else - - two nearly naked tourists, a woman in a bikini and a man in swim trunks, strolling along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, happy as clams. How about that! I guess when the water comes to you, you may as well swim.

Merry Christmas

Well, Merry Christmas everyone. 

As I have mentioned before, there is no Christmas to speak of in Indonesia, and yet I feel Christmas in my heart anyway. Although to be honest, I woke this morning in a bit of a Scroogy mood. Everyday now, for longer than I can remember, I awake with a numb left hand, and despite the numbness, the hand is also painful. I don't feel ready to get out of bed, and yet I can't go back to sleep with this dead hand at my side. So I spend a lot of time twisting myself in various positions in an attempt to return feeling to the hand, in which I am generally, eventually successful. By that time, however, I am fully awake and find no reason to remain in bed. My back as a whole is painful anyway, as is my neck, and so I drag myself out from under the covers and begin my day. 

A glass of water and medicine first, and then I open the door for the dogs, two of whom are usually waiting impatiently on the doorstep. Sometimes three. 

I turn on the TV, I prepare my instant oatmeal, and the dogs now impatiently wait for their milk. 

My plan for this Christmas Day is to go down to the mall later, which is fully open and offering various Christmas events such as carols and a chance to meet Santa Claus. Obviously, the mall caters to tourists in the sense, although of course Indonesians always enjoy a festive atmosphere, even if they don't know what they are being festive about. 

I will have my coffee and my pastry and finish my yearly reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Then I plan to wander about being festive like everyone else, being always mindful, as was Tiny Tim, of he "who made the lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

A Wonderful Life

Coming out of the Grand Lucky grocery store this morning, I was greeted by a violent downpour of rain, and so of course rather than swim over to my motorbike, I joined a line of smokers sheltering under the storefront roof. I found myself standing beside the same very tall man I had been standing behind in the grocery line. He was tall as well sitting down. 

"Would you like my seat?, he asked, starting to get up. 

" No, no, I'm fine."

(Gosh, how embarrassing it is to be so obviously old that a younger man offers his seat. But hey, I have my pride).

So I struck up a conversation. 

"What are you, about 6'5"?"

"6-6," he said. 

"Wow, that's tall."

"Yeah, especially here in Indonesia."

"Ha ha. Indeed." 

We exchanged a few common details after that. Where are you from? How long have you been here? And so on. As it turned out, the young man, maybe late twenties I figure, was from Syria.

"Well then you must be quite tall back home as well," I noted. 

"No,' he said. "I'm always the shortest one in any room." 

Holy cow! It's a nation of giants. Perhaps The offspring of the nephilim, who knows? 

Anyway, we continued our conversation about this and that, and it continued to rain, and eventually the conversation settled on how so many foreigners spend their time here complaining about everything. They complain about the traffic, they complain about the drivers, they complain about the culture and all of the ceremonies, they complain about the service, they complain that things are not the same as they are in their own countries. 

"They ought to be learning about the people, appreciating a different culture, respecting the traditions, opening themselves to other ways, he said. "Instead they complain."

Too true. I've seen this many times in my years here, even among foreign residents. Everything is better back home. Why then are they here? It's a puzzle. There are, as I told the young man, many foreigners here who just hang out in their own national groups, the French with the French, the Australians with the Australians, and so on. They don't learn the language, they don't join in the lifestyle. Their constant sport is simply complaining.

Well we moved on to how I had come to be here and to the various countries we had visited, including Japan, and also China, where he had studied language. He teaches language back in Syria. 

"How did you like Hong Kong?, he asked. "Did you get to see much of it while you were there." 

"I'm sure I did," I answered, "although it's not like I can remember much. I remember enjoying myself. But my girlfriend planned the whole thing, so we were back and forth and up and down and who knows where." 

"Your girlfriend from here?"

"Yes. Java."

At this he smiled approvingly. 

"You have a great life, Sir." 

The rain had now ceased, and the giant man offered his giant hand for me to shake. 

Folks, we are all the same. Most of us are just the same, wanting to connect, seeing one another as fellow human beings. The haters would like us to see things differently. They would like to pit us against one another with lies and fables and accusations, relying on a lack of actual knowledge and experience. But don't let the haters win. That's my Christmas message. We have so much more in common than they would like us to think. 

It is indeed a wonderful life.