If I were going to post on facebook today this is what I would have posted

Yesterday I told people on facebook I was tired of all the nitpicking and misunderstanding that had been showing up on posts lately and I was going to stop posting for a while.

Several folks spoke up in sympathy and defense and that was much appreciated, but that wasn't what I was looking for. More, like a prizefighter I am taking a good rest between rounds. After all we have two and a half more months of Trump to put up with.

The cause wasn't disagreement or criticism. As a writer exposed to the public eye most of my life I can take the criticism and disagreement. What I got tired of was people misunderstanding and then making an argument out of it. Or people picking some irrelevant item in a post and blowing it up to discredit the whole idea. I can deal with disagreement, I can't deal with stupid. Actually I can. Stupid or nasty I can delete and block and I have done that. The meme here is a case in point and the most flagrant example of what I'm talking about.

That was posted when the Juno space probe approached Jupiter in July. I thought it clever and funny, but a guy jumped me calling me ignorant. Mind you he was one of the few people on my friends list whom I didn't know but was a friend of a friend so I had accepted his request.

Well for the life of me I couldn't understand what he was ranting about and I tried to explain the Jupiter-Juno relationship in mythology and how it was a joke.

On he went with his rant until I think I figured out what he was talking about. Somehow he interpreted this as me claiming the approach to Jupiter was contrived like the claims that the moon landings were faked in video studios.

I assured him that was not the case but he wouldn't have it and I finally called up the old "you can't fix stupid' rejoinder, blocked him and unfriended him. Sometimes I think it might be better to leave the comments there and expose the writer's ignorance, but I thought better of it this time.

That was probably the most outrageous of those responses that bothered me, but most were along those lines.

For anybody else who doesn't get it, according to my late friend Pat Monaghan's "Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines," Jupiter, the head god, was a philanderer and had many mistresses, most of whom he successfully hid from his wife Juno. So the joke is it took 400 years and NASA to send Juno on her way to expose the scoundrel cavorting with his concubines in planetary orbit. I hope that settles it. I am pretty sure Patricia would have loved that.

Anyway I didn't leave facebook for good,  like I said, taking a break and catching a breath for some mind clearing. And, as Pat Paulsen used to say: Thank you for your support. If when I come back it starts up again I am going to start correcting grammar and spelling and I am sure no one wants that, including me.

And just to add to the humor this comment came up on the original meme post: "Brian Speer: Not all of Jupiter's moons are named after his mistresses. Ganymede is named after a young boy from Jupiter's curious phase.



Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines