One tweet. Four deliberate, purposeful lies.

This tweet got a little loss in the political firestorm of the last couple days, which is understandable. Not only did Trump disparage Haiti and refer to African countries as "shitholes," but he managed this act of indecency on the eight year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake and on the cusp of Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. 

Timing is everything, I guess.

Still take a look at this tweet:

The real reason that Trump has cancelled his London trip is out of fear of massive protests (a fact the White House reported before Trump attempted to change the narrative) , but in addition to this lie, the tweet contains three other lies. 

1. President Bush sold the former embassy and initiated the move. NOT Barack Obama.  
2. The sale of the former embassy paid for the new embassy, so the price of the new embassy is irrelevant. It didn't cost American taxpayers a dime. 
3. The move was made for security reasons. The former embassy was not deemed safe and secure enough for our diplomats, so a change was necessary.

His tweet was so inaccurate and disparaging that the US embassy in the United Kingdom put out a press release correcting his lies. 

With any other President, a statement containing three deliberate lies in order to support a fourth lie would be an scandal of enormous proportions, but Trump lies so often and with such impunity from his party or supporters that this tweet is all but forgotten amidst the hundreds of other lies and racist remarks. 

These are not normal times, even though a small but still astounding 36% of Americans continue to support this racist, coward, and serial liar.  

It's hard to understand. 

Kolf: Golf played on ice. And yes, we're going to play it.

A friend sent me this pen and ink drawing from circa 1620 by the artist Hendrick Avercamp and purchased by King George III. It’s kolf. Golf on ice.

Which, of course, is amazing.

There’s actually some scholarship on the rise and fall of the kolf (and it’s sister sport, colf), which was apparently (and stupidly) replaced by billiards as the preferred winter sport.

Living in New England, our golf season typically ends in November, and it doesn’t start up again until March or April. For three to five long months, we dream about golf but are unable to play.

Enter kolf.

I sent these images to my golfing buddies, one of whom happens to live on a pond that’s perfect for kolf. He’s also an obsessive compulsive perfectionist, and he is already planning the course, which will include holes sunken into the ice and bunkers made from snow.

It will be cold, and it will be frustrating, but it will also be amazing.

I can’t wait for the pond to freeze.

Bare-breasted women are perfectly fine but Dicks was offensive?

Though my most recent novel, MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND,  is published in England (and doing quite well), I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting the country.

But it has come to my attention (through its publisher's recent defense) that The Sun, a popular British tabloid newspaper, publishes large, color photographs of topless women on Page 3 (so ubiquitous that it is routinely capitalized) every day.

When I say popular, I mean popular. The Sun has the ninth-largest circulation of any newspaper in the world and the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Other interesting facts about Page 3:

• After polling its readers, the Sun also instituted a policy of only featuring models with natural breasts.
• Up until 2003, The Sun could legally publish photographs of 16 and 17-year old girls.
• The Sun also has an official Page 3 website, Page3.com, which is one of the most trafficked websites in all of the United Kingdom.

After reading all this, I am confounded.

This the same country where I was required to change my last name because my publisher feared that Dicks would be considered too offensive.

Bare-breasted women intermingled with the important news of the day is apparently just fine with British audiences, but a book with the word Dicks on it, even if it’s clearly a last name, would be too much for them to bear.

I don’t pretend to understand the British psyche, but I’m also not sure if it’s even possible to understand.