Archive for the '..The Dude' Category

TO Press Or Not To Press (THe issue of gayness in music and I don’t mean sexually)

Published on March 23, 2009 in ..The Dude. 1 Comment

It has recently come to my attention that the issue of the use of synthesizers in Rock n Roll is music’s version of the Roe V Wade debate.

Only more important.

When is it ok to use synths in a rock genre? Is it ever ok? DOes it’s use violate god’s natural order?

Good questions all. I myself have been split on this issue over the decades. I must admit that to some extent I have pushed the debate aside in my mind so as to not have to take sides.

But let’s look at an early example of the dilemma this has caused me. Van Halen was the group that saved me from the sugary emptiness of pop music. Until I heard Eddie’s guitar I was on my way to life in Hell listening to Michael Jackson and Duran Duran. BUt shortly after this all started out came Jump. Jump is of course all about Eddie dropping the guitar and pressing a lot of buttons on a machine. And David Lee Roth jumping low budgetly.

One could say by softening the sound at that early stage of my development it made a transition from gay music to grown up music more palatable. Sort of gateway keyboards if you will. But there has always been a part of me that can dig a good synth sound. Provided it’s timely. I dig The Cars. I love their sound. But are they the kind of band where synth judgements lose meaning. Dismissing them for their usage is like instantly dismissing Slayer because their lyrics can’t be understood.

It’s who they are. You either like that or not.

On the other hand, though it was who they were there can be little doubt that Europe (think heavy keyboards on FInal Countdown) were deserving of mocking. THeir music might even be said to be gay.

Now by gay I don’t mean for homosexuals or made by homosexuals. Gayness in the pop cultural sense  has other far deeper connotations. Sexual gayness is swell. A benefit to me even. Gayness in music, movies etc is another matter. That leads me to a subquestion of this debate. Does the use of keyboards in rock genres mean a song is gay.

Now I’m not inferring these are the most important questions of our time.

I’m saying it.

THese are the most important questions of our time.

Until we have fully dealt with this it will continue to haunt the national psyche as it has since the 80′s made gayness in music such a cliche we stopped even being able to recognize ironic gayness or full on gayness in music.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I have many gay friends and this is an issue for them as well. No American is left behind when it comes to the effects of keyboards in a rock song. THis is a topic worthy of fuller flushing out but I have to go to work now. Sometime in the next few minutes I will have to make a personal choice:

To listen to a ballad, straight on rock song, or a hybrid along the lines of Journey whose use of keyboards can be viewed as either groundbreaking or society destroying depending on your point of view. But I will deal with this choice head on.

Will you?

The Daily Blog (more or less)

Published on March 22, 2009 in ..The Dude. 0 Comments

Going to try and do a mostly daily update for once though no one is reading this. Just to get some writing chops together. or see if they are still there. By using the form of a daily accounting of my own and the cultures odds and ends hopefully it won’t be a strain to have a few things to say at least almost every day. THe big test will be if I can get to here on my cell (I haven’t been able to so far), because that will allow for posts from work or other locations since I don’t always have the opportunity after work and at home if I want to get some other things done.

So here goes:

We are two weeks from Baseball starting for real and I feel the usual sense of anticipation though mixed with dread. I truly think the Mets will suck, the Red Sox be mediocre and the Yankees run away with things. And I’m usually pretty good with this stuff. But not perfect so i hold out hope for my imperfections to do me some good for once. I have tickets for my first Citifield game May 29th. Looking forward to scoping out the new digs. Hope to get there early and just explore the structure, the stores, and the eateries. I’ll see if there’s any truth to the rumor the Mets will feature The Heimlich Club, as the parks spotlight new Mets themed restaurant.

Actually I started the rumor so it’s unlikely unless I can project things like a Cylon.

__________________

Speaking of which, Battlestar Galactica is gone. sad to see the show go. THe finale will need time to formulate itself into something worthy of a more coherent judgement. Right now my feelings towards it are vague. ANd the show is at least partially to blame because they were vague in their denoument. Looks like ROn Moore and Dave Eick tried to please everyone from the ultra religious to atheists and all the majority of tweeners. Judging from internet reactions they didn’t do a great job of this though there are plenty of opinions covering the spectrum.

One thing I think they are all missing was the religious sentiment or lack thereof. Everyone seems to think it posed a clear god figure who is the Oz behind the curtain of the shows events. While I agree with those that say this was a cop out and the ultimate deux ex machina to explain so much by not explaining and instead attributing so much to some invisible being who sent us post death Starbuck and In-Head Baltar and Six, as well as sending Hera and all the coordinates to a new home through the gift of song.

When i look at it this way, well, it makes me want to unwatch 4 years of BSG. But as Futurama tells us, “you’ve watched it! You can’t unwatch it!”

But there is another angle not many are looking at. One that gives that vagueness for even those not into the religious p.o.v., which seems to be the greater part of BSG’s internet community who are not happy about resolving a science fiction show with religious constructs.

But at the end, in Times Square, Baltar does tell 6 (In Heads) that IT doesn’t like being called God. Six also makes a face clearly showing her somewhat at odds with the being, entity, or what have you, that Baltar is referring to. Considering her monotheistic background these two moments at the end seem to point to something else being Oz besides any normal views of God. So once you go there you’re back to enough vagueness for everyone to come away with a happy feeling unless they, you know, wanted some clear answers for their hours of viewership invested over 4 years.

For me, that vagueness allows me to wonder if Head Baltar’s God is a machine. Remember this has happened before and will happen again. It happened even before the BSG universe we know of. Maybe before the Final Five. What if we go back far enough and think they were seeded by a species just as our Earth was by Hera and hers? ANd so on and so on. THrow in Six’s speech about complex systems and all the technology warnings, and consider the idea of In-Head Angels, demons, ghosts, or whatever we think of them as within the context of a universe where that technology and complexity has led to uploading and downloading of consciousness into brand new bodies, and I start to wonder if these projections sent to aid some of the Fleet (or all of it in Starbucks case) are possible due to a shared wiring that humans and Cylons have going back hundreds of thousands or even millions of years with these other progenitors. And if at some point in all this evolution of technology and the working of complex systems the system that put it into being and stands behind the curtain on BSG’s journey, is an actual machine.

Call it the machine in the ghost of Jung’s collective consciousness.

Maybe a stretch, but I bet when Moore and Eik come out with their podcasts and interviews they will not explicitly state that God is behind it all. As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure I read one of them, Moore I think, say they were an atheist in an interview a couple of years ago.

Anyway, the finale could have been more clear, more bold in its assertions, braver in its resolutions, and provided closure that felt more organic to what has come before. I think there is little doubt they’ve made mistakes and had to juggle things down the stretch. Some things felt forced, other things, as I’ve said, were just left to imagination. I think at least part of this was because they could offer no satisfying answers themselves. But I’m certainly not opposed to having to ponder intent in fiction and discuss alternative explanations. It’s one of the things that make it fun. Sometimes it’s a quality that makes it great. I don’t think that was the case here because there is too much of a sense of much unresolved and deliberately avoided.

And man those sci fi cliches. THe bad technology allegory being the central one of course. Does anyone ever get tired of this or think its original? Even the idea of seeding Earth and we are all Cylons was both foreseeable 4 seasons ago and derivative. I hoped it wouldn’t be that obvious or silly but grew more accepting of the fact that we weren’t getting a tremendously breathtaking or original ending to all this.

But hey there is little new under the Sun, and maybe I need to reset expectations.

THere’s more to be said another time.  But I miss the show and shout a “So say we all!” to all its characters.

___________________

I have all but decided to get a new face. At least partly.  New lives are even harder to come by. If you know a good face store let me know. Or life store for that matter.

_________________

I really wonder what the hell I am doing living in Kingston NY.

So I’ll express it in Haiku:

kingston is not me                                                                                                                                                                                                    hive of scum and villiany                                                                                                                                                                                    these droids are not mine

____________________

I don’t get the NIT tournament. You have the 64 teams in the NCAA tourney culminating in the almost religiously thought of Final Four. And let me say that any final four without Cylon University is no final four. But then you have this NIT thing going on which ostensibly seems to me to be a competition with televised games, paid crowds, etc to determine the 65th best team in the country.

Am I wrong here?

How is this allowed to go on? Does Obama know? Because you know, he seems way too interested in the goings on of college Basketball.

_____________

Has he healed the economy yet? Because a lot of idiots seemed to think we’d see good things happening in the first 100 days.

We really are a stupid people.

________________

Are young women better looking today or am I just noticing more? I’m not the only one noticing this so I think something is up and I aim to get to the bottom of it. Right now I’m working on the hairstyle theory. i think throughout most of our history in which pictures and video are available women hadn’t yet figured out what I knew a long time ago: fancy hairstyles make them look crappy. Just long straight and framing the face is hot. Since Jennifer Aniston made that look of hers imitatable I think more women are going that way and it works for most.

Not sure yet. And that still doesn’t explain the way they look in jeans. But this could just be a wonder of modern engineering at its finest.

I’ll get back to you when I get more answers. If I suddenly disappear, well, you should look to the sexual-frustration- entertainment-cultural-genetics-industrial complex for answers.

Until then i soldier on for webslingers everywhere.

———————–

Miscellaneous Stuff

Published on March 9, 2009 in ..The Dude. 0 Comments

I don’t like this daylight savings thing. When I was young we had to circle the Earth at super speeds to effect time or alter it an hour. Now these hooligans can just press a button. Sometimes they don’t have to do even that. Cable boxes and cell phones change by themselves. It’s not right I tell you and it’s creating a generation of good for nothings who won’t be able to go back in time if we should ever have to go off the electronic grid.

SPeaking of cell phones I still don’t know why any of us need these things except Doctors. It’s such a huge affectation. We keep accumulating these shiny new baubles as we hang on to the hedonistic treadmill and it’s not making too many of us happy. Sure you can say you want to keep in touch with work or family for emergencies. And they can come in handy. But a simpler phone or pager with no elaborate gadgets would do just as well. Society got on pretty well without any of this stuff until recently and science has yet to detect the survival  gene for instant communication.

WHich is not meant as an anti-technology rant. I love technology and usually am bothered by the countless American movies and literature that demonizes it. I think tech and science for the most part have only improved life and will continue to only improve it.

On that subject I saw The Watchmen and it too has some of that anti-tech point of view. Not going to get off on a long review as I’d like to because I don’t have the patience for that kind of thing anymore and the hubris and delusion that anyone cares about my analysis is no longer a symptom I am suffering from. But I liked the movie. Some of the speeches and romantic scenes bought it screeching to an uncomfortable stop at times and it was too long. But overrall a good job despite reinforcing that wary of science belief system through the auspices of Dr Manhattan and Ozymandias.

Science may well separate us a bit from our humanity as it does the big blue guy but considering much of what our humanity consists of I don’t think that’s a bad thing. And though Ozy’s kind of dispassionate analysis of our all too human issues can lead to some destructive decisions I tend to think those decisions come more from ideology than intelligence. His is not unlike the rationalizations of the Dick Cheney’s of our history but do we really believe those decisions were made out of too much thought? Or not enough?

I keep liking Green Day more and am so looking forward to the new concept album in May I want to freeze myself until then like Eric Cartman waiting for the Nintendo Wii.

There’s a point in life where you start losing more things than you gain. This is not a good place to get to especially if you have little to lose. Maybe that’s why all this stuff, these gadgets excite me less. Bread and circuses while the Kingdom of self crumbles.

Bye web slingers.

My Thanksgiving (reprinted due to popular demand)

Published on November 28, 2008 in ..The Dude. 2 Comments

I plan on celebrating this holiday in as true a manner befitting those Puritans who gave it it’s name and began the idea that is America. But I don’t want to stop at just that day. I want to celebrate what it represents, what it meant, and where it led us as a nation in a time we think of as our glorious past.

To this end the festivities will start on Thanksgiving when I will be hunting down Native Americans and killing them and their families with all manner of weapons ranging from muskets to pox riddled blankets I’ll drop off in their conveniently always needy communities.

On Friday I’ll leer at some pretty young white women and when they show no interest I’ll accuse them of being witches and sorcerers and get my fellow participants to put them on trial, tie them to stakes, and burn them.

But the celebrating of our rich history that started with that merry band of repressed psychotics doesn’t end there. On Saturday I will plant a tobacco field in my backyard where I’ll force local Kingston black men and boys to work it at gunpoint. They will also be kept shackled to each other and guarded by others for long periods so I can have a go at their women folk who won’t be as resistive as the witches who we burned all that entitlement and haughtiness manifest in not having sex with me, right out of. So after we fornicate with the slaves wives and daughters they will be impregnated (these are all ritual acts of course-like a parade) and on Sunday I will club the newborn ritual infants with bibles until they cower in fear at the book which I will then have read to them everyday by their parents as both learn to accept this lifestyle and oppression and sublimate their hope and for freedom and self worth into a made up invisible world they can go to if they continue to act real meek and generally accept their material and Earthly lot.

What a weekend that will be I tell you.

On Monday, upon hearing that some of those blacks are starting to get uppity and are even forming alliances with some of the poorer and less fortunate local whites, I will get the whites of my stature together to drum up reasons to overthrow the government in a bloody revolution that will redirect the slaves and poor whites energies and hatred away from me and my kind. It will also conveniently kill many of them.

It will also make me more money as I won’t have pay taxes and tithes on goods or to answer to anyone when it comes to making laws that do right by me. Of course I will say I hadn’t thought of that.

Really I hadn’t.

It’s just these damn British-Neoconservatives-Terorists, get me so mad I can notteth think straighteth!!

On Tuesday north and south Kingston will war over that whole slave issue. I will take the Northern abolitionist side despite my having owned slaves and profited from them. The Front St/Wall St area will be burned to the ground during this ceremony. I’m hoping serendipity will be on our side and the president will happen to get assassinated this week as well.

I will complete the week by moving west across my backyard setting up claims on holes there and quickly moving on after each spots resources have been exhausted. I will scam many people on fake claims in the process and just generally take advantage of the lawlessness and naivete this expansion and hope will breed in people desperate enough to want to spend their holidays in my backyard because they’re so fucked up. Due to this, rules and law will be made up as we go, always coming after I have gained as much power and wealth from the prior lawlessness as possible.

So there it is. Anyone who wants to celebrate a real American Thanksgiving with me is welcome to join in on the fun (African Americans will have no choice of course).

Wait till you see what I have planned for Christmas!

All Over But The Crying.

Published on November 4, 2008 in ..The Dude. 2 Comments

 

I am speechless.

I am without speech.

And in tears.

 Sometimes I love this fucking country.

Dead Diary

Published on October 29, 2008 in ..The Dude, Life and Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Ahh more stupid human titles.

Might be my autobiography title. Or more likely a gravestone epitaph. Stupid Human Titles. Or Dead Diary for that matter. But that too falls under the heading of stupid human titles. Truly tragic. Truly Tragic: A Life Not LIved! With the exclamation point. SO many possibilities. All of them stupid. On to business.

______

I’m just going to come right out and say this and damn what society may say about me. I like Vanilla Sky. Sure it’s a flawed film and it goes a bit crazy at the end but the thing is damn watchable to me. THis is possibly due to some of the very superficiality and gloss of the film that the movie itself is partly about.  I want the LE alternative. Fill my head with the imagery most evocative of happiness from my past, a missed opportunity girl recast in a form fitted psuedo reality playing to my needs, and frakking immortality to make up for a lot of lost time. Instead of starting from that rainy street pop me back in the 80′s somewhere and let’s do this thing again with all those tools at my disposal but in an imaginary virtual Dudescape meant to make with the happy and content.

I’d probably opt for a cloudy and rainy horizon overlaying my “lucid dream,” instead of Cruise’s Vanilla Sky. I always found those types of days more vivid and some of my best memories are from the types of days where the sky feels closer, the concrete cleaner, and the atmosphere charged with not only ions but the presence of fellow travelers who you know really want or need to be out wherever you are. It’s like all our actions are more shared for having braved the weather to execute them. There’s someting cozy about those types of days. Something safe and singular and slightly off skew like the view from a window pleasantly blurred and softened by rainwater running in streaks and odalisques. A malleable geometry cushioning the hard edges of a bleak the rain can’t make any bleaker.

I would probably keep much of the iconic pop cultural imagery and NY grandeur even recognizing how it all was conveying a sense of mass consumerism. One of images as well as goods. Since WWII we have been more consumer oriented, government and industry rebuilding our economy and laying the foundations for who we are and what we’ve become through driven propoganda campaigns to equate purchasing power with equality and happiness. It is not only our stuff but out favorites whether they be our music choices, TV, books, cell phones, entertainment systems or the paintings and posters we hang in our homes that define us and that we choose to alter our reality with. The LE experience takes that altering to the nth degree. But it is no less honest and just as much a product of our ego’s and psychological makeups.

I would enter readily. Hell I’d plug into the Matrix at this point. Just as long as I can change history a bit and be more than I was or am. I stand upon a giant skyscraper a disfigured outcast but instead of jumping I stand between the elements: either a noxious gas drifting out and upwards or if fiction can help me a virtual solid with metaphorical wings flying away from the bitter wellspring of all that toxicity.

Speaking of those things that define us I was reading that studies indicate our favorite things can really tell people about our personality. To an extent. Not a surprise but now there’s clinical evidence that we choose stuff we think makes a statement about us and or gravitate to stuff that does so. With that in mind as well as with a mind towards eliminating some time wasters in life i’ve discarded some tv shows. I’m watching stuff that rivets my attention and no less. So Heroes and Chuck are gone. So is Fringe. Pushing Daisies is getting close. Still on board are the shows I can’t tear my eyes away from and that are infinitely absorbing.

They are: Mad Men, Lost, 24, BSG, South Park, The Office, and on DVD The Wire and Six Feet Under which I’m a season through on DVD in both cases. Some other shows that are more of a newsy oriented type remain in rotation such as The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and some occasional CNBC watching and assorted sports, movies and specials. These are all the shows you need for a happy life. They will have a place within the LE experience along with that missed opportunity, let’s go with Jennifer for the moment, the two of us walking through the cover of Master Of Puppets instead of Freewheelin Dylan. Ok maybe MOP is too far and surreal even for lucid dreaming. How about Jen and I driving through the highway cover of P.J.’s Yield? Yeah I like it. Feels right.

_______

One week to election day. Polls are good. I don’t trust them yet. I don’t want think it before it’s real. The latest desperation campaign from McCain-Palin is throwing out all this Socialist nonsense. And clearly that’s to be read as Communist. Can you frakking imagine that they are resorting to Cold War paranoia now? A little touch of McCarthyism in 2008. Wow. Absolutely wow. And to borrow from the era and the hearings instigated by that legendary piece of shit, have you no shame Senator, have you no shame?

Never mind that this country has always been a little socialist and just enacted major socialist policies to bail out the economy. McCain’s not talking to anyone who really pays attention anyway. Republicans know full well who their audience is. Oh the irony of that support and loyalty they show them when every strategy is predicated on those people’s stupidity, hatred, and ignorance. Historians are going to get such a kick out of us I tell you.

__________

George RR MArtin’s Songs Of FIre And Ice series is kind of cool 500 pages into it. Pure escapsist stuff of a Tolkien mixed with T.H. White type stuff. I’m not ready to start Neal Stephenson’s new book Anathem yet. I’m not worthy at this timeand need to get my house in order. Or quite possibly I’m trying to keep something to look forward to since there’s precious little of that going around.

_________

I’m a New York Giants fan.

I just wanted to say that because it’s rare I feel proud of a team of mine.

But something needs to be done about Plax.

__________

It’s time to start writing something bigger. Too many ideas are scrambled up in my head with too little time to sort them out and apply them. I’m on vacation another 5 days but it’s not enough time. I’m only just starting to decompress and think on a higher level after the first 5 days. I know when I go back the distractions, pressures, obligations, responsibilities, and agitations will commence. And stuff like that dumbs me down. Noggin’s only so big and I can’t seem to focus enough attention in multiple areas. I got to try and get a system. Yeah a system! Otherwise, poof! I completely disappear in my Faded Glory underwear.

___________

I hope this half hour multiple network Obama commercial tomorrow night doesn’t rub people the wrong way. Seems kind, you know, uppity.

To some people it might. Although they’ll say elitist. If he’s really ahead now why take the chance people will get turned off by wall to wall station to station Obamaness? It’s like Big Brother or that English dude in V For Vendetta. You know someone’s going to spin it like that. Like it shows how big his ego is and he’s all about the grandeur of Barack.

Hoepfully it’ll be no worse than a benign moment though it’s hard to imagine how it’s really going to make things any better for him at the moment.

________________

But when you look at the list of Presidential first names and all the George’s, William’s, and John’s, how cool would it be to suddenly chuck a Barack onto that list?

Because if we’re seriously ever going to get right with the actual world and not the repressed and ignorant one large pockets of this country live in, we’re going to need more names and faces better representative of it. I like that Obama can do that both for this country and abroad.

__________

I have a new cell phone. IT can do lots of things. Navigate the internet tubes, mobile tv and e mail, core an apple and all the normal futuristic cell phone stuff none of us really needs. It’s the LG Voyager though I have 30 days to take it back and exchange if for the Dare which I’m considering doing since the latter is a bit thinner and lighter but virtual keyboard instead of the flip open Qwerty.

Qwerty is fun to type by the way. I just found that out. I guess that’s why they’re called Qwerty what with all those letters right next to each other at the beginning. In honor of Jimmy Qwerty who invented typing. He’s actually a cousin of Steve Internet who invented tubing.

__________

i’m going to bet on it this time. Chinese Democracy is supposed to be out on November 23rd. I think it’s real. Of course November 23rd is also a Sunday and new stuff never comes out on a Sunday. But supposedly it’s some Best Buy thing where they will have some kind of exclusive rights to sell the album. I don’t get how it helps an artist to limit himself to one retailer. i know it’s been happening with others at places like Wal-Mart. I guess it’s not surprising in this corporate sponsored society. Soon whole lives will be brought to us by Kool-Aid the official sponsor of Joe Sixpack’s life 2012-2101.

Oh Yeah!

Blurbtacular Saturday!

Published on October 11, 2008 in ..The Dude, Music, Sports and Television. 1 Comment

Random thoughts for a random Saturday in a random October of a random life.

Went to Bardovan in Poughkeepsie last night and was struck by the people sitting there listening to live guitar driven music like it was performance art. A packed house full of people sat there for 2 hours not reacting to music they paid a decent amount to hear live. No bobbing their head to the beat. no foot tapping. Nothing. But after each song they erupted into raucus applause and cheering. Now I didn’t like the music at all and even I was bouncing my leg a bit. Mostly I wanted to nap or run from how obnoxiously loud the music was.

And that’s another issue I have: The idea that louder = better. Screw nuance or subtlety. Just blow their ears out and they’ll think they’re hearing some good shit. Dazzle them with a sound system and they wont notice how mediocre the music is. THis is a widespread issue even on CD’s which are being produced to play louder. IT’s some of the stupidest shite to happen to music since people started treating Country music as a legitimite art form worthy of a separate awards show.

The performer in question was Susan Tedeschi and her band. Sort of a blues-Bonnie Raitt type of sound. Raitt is perhaps not coincidentally playing the same venue this Sunday night. Thank god I won’t have to sit through that overrated crap. I want twang in my lemonade not my music. But the impression I got from the room last night was of a bunch of uptight elitist hippies wanting to be seen out and about doing cultural things and pretending to like a marginal talent because its Woodstock hippie cool to take notice and support fringe stuff. That’s fine if you really like it. But if you really it like shouldn’t you move to the music instead of sitting there studying the stage like you’re watching a Fellini movie?

I even smelled a few people with Patchuli on them. Most of them men I think. Now as much as I find aspects of the Patchuli smelling experience deplorable and everything it stands for dubious I am prone to want to have sex with a woman wearing it. THis is one of my burdens and or fetishes. Due to a couple of women in my past I want to both vomit at the smell and fornicate. Perhaps simultaneously. Judge me if you must. But a man wearing it just makes me want to beat the living crap out of him until the coppery silver smell of his own blood overwhelms and purifies the stench he has so liberally applied to his flesh. And I do mean liberal in a couple of ways here.

_____

mOre on music: I think Metallica putting out a decent new album is making me revert to an 80′s-early 90′s version of myself. I’m dressing in black, being angry more, wanting to be unemployed just hanging out improving my body and mind on my own time, and am less attractive to women then ever.

See now that I think about it whatever fortune I had with women (and I did have some surprisingly pretty attractive women’s attentions considering my lack of looks, physical prowess or money for a bit from my late 20′s to mid to late 30′s) seems to have coincided with Metallica sucking somewhat. Now just in time for me being ignored and shunned all over again Metallica is back with a pretty good album. In my opinion their first of that decade to 12 year period in question where pretty girls occasionally talked to me rather than spit upon me.

Problem is I doubt they’ll make good albums until I’m 80 or whatever.

But Death magnetic is good. It’s not AJFA or MOP good. Or even Black Album. But it kicks some ass and has some riffage that grabs you by the throat and chokes you refusing to let go until you change your evil ways. THere’s some decent impotent middle class white boy rage venting possibilities on it and perhaps that’s why I’m wanting to revert to the impotent middle class white boy of my misspent youth.

_________

Red Sox take game 1 in Tampa. Still think Rays have an edge if it’s a long series. I think if it goes 6-7 they win. If the Sox are going to win this thing I think it has to happen in 4-5 and end at Fenway. THat remains highly unlikely. But sweet babseball jesus do I enjoy watching Boston play. Thank mythology there’s an American League with a team I’ve always dug and does everything a large market team should do for me to hide out from the Mets in and around.

And speaking of the Mutts no one should be untouchable. I wold trade anyone in the right deal. I would start with Jose Reyes the most overrated player in the game. I’ve never taken to him and his clownish antics. i think he’s a stupid player, incapable of learning, and a showboating loser. If I could get a top line arm for him I’m there. I’ll drive the punk to his new city.

________

Giants looking good but not really tested yet. Even if they take that step back I thought they would and still think will get exposed later this season due to the losses they’ve sustained this is a solid bunch with decent youth and this could be fun to be around for a few years. And they already stole a Super Bowl championship early in the game.

Good times.

________

THis just in: Sarah Palin vomited about a quart of semen since identified as belonging to long dead Pilgrims.

______

Some of McCain’s decent side finally came out Friday when he tried putting an end to his supporters hate filled and ignorant ramblings about Obama. I almost felt sorry for JM when he had to cut off this illiterate white woman that could barely form a sentence about being scared of an Arab President. You know deep down he hates these people as much as he ever did. But he sold his soul to them and has had to live with the legacy of a dumbed down electorate and the fear mongering tactics of his party. He’s in league with the devil and he knows it. That’s worse than Bush who really has no fucking clue.

_______

SPeaking of which I want to see W. I’m not a huge Oliver Stone fan. He’s an ok director who takes things too far quite often. BUt I want to sit in a theater with liberals and watch as they get as tribal as right wingers at a church rally pretending what they’re watching is reality instead of just something that makes them comfortable. It’s stupid shit but it may be fun stupid shit and it’s always good to remind myself of how liberals are just as full of it at times.

Though far less judging from the evidence.

I don’t like the fact that Stone apparently puts a lot of Iraq on Bush’s daddy issues. i think that minimilizes the conspiracy and long standing ideological agenda that was at play there and Dick Cheney’s part in it. One only has to read the PNAC policy paper from the 90′s of which Cheney was an author to know why Iraq happened.

________________

And if it weren’t for Iraq maybe we could use some of that uncountable money to help out the economic crisis. I’ve myself lost 2-3 thousand so far. THis is partly my fault for letting my money sit in a system I didn’t believe in. I’ve wondered aloud how we could sustain our economy when it’s built on invisible money and credit. Debt being the number one industry in America couldn’t be a good thing could it? People buying shit they can’t afford can’t be smart can it? It’s got to blow doesn’t it? And yet I left it in there hoping I was just ignorant about economics. Which I am. So maybe the experts really know something I don’t and that’s why they trust the system.

Well they did know more. But it’s not why they trusted the system. THey were towing a party line and burying their heads in the sand.

But this isn’t all about Republicans and Democrats or Wall Street corruption. I wish Obama had the guts to put some of the blame where it belongs. And that’s on the spoiled brats making up the American people. We have a sense of entitlement here. Americans believe they deserve it all and deserve it now. Whether they can afford it or not. So just charge it. Buy a house because you deserve it and its an american birthright to own a home. Someone will will give you a loan and then you’ll win the lottery or god will provide or whatever.

Didn’t work. All debts come due and if you don’t do the math and show your work you’re going to fail. That’s why I haven’t brought a house these past years when everyone was buying and telling me I had to because it’s a great investment. THose numbers never added up. Equity never added up. now many of those popel are facing foreclosure or are going to get bailed out by my losses and future tax dollars. They’re just as much to blame as the CEO’s and predatory lenders.

But entitlement means never having to say you’re sorry.

________________

Come on admit it. No matter what the polls say part of you thinks the Republicans will fix the election and steal it again.

Not that I trust polling at this time of the election year. How much of a cross representation are they? And do they really take into account electoral college votes rather than popular votes. A broad survey of American might just say a certain percentage of idiots is favoring one idiot over another idiot by whatever percentage points. But if those percentages are not affixed to individual states electoral counts what does it matter?

And didn’t Kerry and Gore lead at this time also?

PLease Barack stop telling me this is the most important election of our time. You guys said that in 04 and choked on it like the Mets in September. 04 was bigger. Much bigger. Just deal with it America. Retrospectively 2000 was bigger than both 04 and 08 combined though we couldn’t know just how much at the time. But 04 was bigger at the time and retrospectively. I wanted that one so bad I could taste it. I know Kerry would lose despite the polling but it was close enough I allowed myself to hope. And i wanted it bad and was commensurately disappointed when it didn’t happen.

I’m not going there now. McCain would not be as bad as Bush. That’s more bullshit Obama rhetoric and he knows it. He is far less full of it than McCain but let’s stop making him out to be Truth & Justice incarnate. The scary thing is a potential Palin presidency if McCain can’t make it through 4-8 years. That could be a catastrophe. That’s what Democrats should be talking about because it remains the single biggest difference between two candidates that aren’t half as different as they are making themselves out to be.

________

And pragmatism.

Look it up. Read your history.

________

A guy who actually writes for the Wall Street Journal actually said taxes are un-american and that the country was built on not paying them. He mentioned the Boston Tea PArty. The Wall Street Journal!

Dude, the slogan was not “No taxation!” It was “No taxation without representation!” THey didn’t have an issue with being taxed. They had an issue with being taxed by a sovereign across an ocean without and say or freedoms. Once we formed our own nation the founding dudes installed taxes. Washington even killed some americans for not wanting to pay them.

Seriously someone who writes for the WSJ should know this shit. BUt right wing ideology real does seem to make people stupid and put some amazing ass big blinders on.

________________

TV:

I loved Pushing Daisies last year but it’s kind of boring me now. It hurts me to say this. THe show needs an arc. Some internal mythology beyond the one note touch the dead thing. Bring back Pee Wee Herman.

Heroes is some of the stupidest stuff on the tv. Show makes no sense. Just from an internal logic angle. None. I can’t watch it anymore. I wish people would watch Mad Men more so I can talk about it.

Jack Bauer is coming. Look busy.

I think Galactica airs the next minute of their final season this week. I hear next weeks minute really rocks! I can’t wait until 2034 when all the minutes have aired.

Did I mention sci fi channel sucks?

MSNBC is sometimes like Fox Left OF The Dial. Can’t someone on tv let people form their own opinions? I like having an outlet like them sometimes but I hate seeing some good folks there like Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow carry on like ideology is strictly a GOP invention and that having the same stable of cheerleaders on board constitutes a broad spectrum or reportage.

_______________

I want a t shirt that says I’m voting for “That one,” with a picture of Obama.

____________

Seriously, how may Republicans do you think have masturbated over shagging Palin? She is literally their wet dream come true. Surface gloss, dirty underneath the librarian cover with a the all-off stain remover of Jesus to make it ok, stupid enough to believe whatever they suggest, would probably let them call her, “mommy,” nice boobies, and a predilection for skull fucking.

Ok I sort of made up that last one. As far as I know. But the rest rings too true and I’m sure many a GOP bedsheet has needed extra laundering the past 6 weeks.

________________

Republican’s Are Stupid And Ugly And So Can You!

Published on September 5, 2008 in ..The Dude and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: .

The conventions are done. The Republicans Grand Poobah just got off stage. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch. I chose Giants post game stuff over another ideological speech with no connection to reality. I watched Palin and Guliani the night before and was just aghast at how stupid and ugly Republicans are. Seriously, have you ever heard a Republican Party member say anything witty? THey always go on about how Hollywood is full of liberals but I don’t think that it’s Hollywood itself that pushes people away from the Republican party or draws liberal mindsets. Actors and actresses are necessarily, and almost exclusively attractive people and good looking people are repelled by the Republicans.

Simultaneously, ugly people are drawn to them. Something about the ugliness outside breeding an ugliness within possibly? Have you ever seen an uglier and more un-self aware group of people as these pigs chanted for more oil drilling? Pure greed and destructive impulses for their own sake because it’s not liberal. That’s what it amounted to. LAughing at Obama for doing community service? Really? Because helping people is liberal? Is that the point? Trying to make the lives of people who make less than 6 digits a year is foolish and somehow linked to every other exaggerated liberal trait like loving terrorists and pedophiles?

And I really couldn’t find a good looking one in the bunch exept a couple of token young hotties brought in for the occasion.

And that Sarah Palin. Man I wouldn’t toss her out of bed for opposing abortion.

She’s just going to have to raise the kid herself that’s all. Or I guess if it’s cute I’ll take it. I’m just not raising any future Republicans.

THe one good thing about last night was that I was watching it at work and damned if those good ole boys and overly made up women in Minnesota didn’t give me a ton of set ups for one liners and rebuttals that impressed my coworker. You see I try to keep my politics and religion outside the work place since I became management. BUt I’ve been in fuck it all I just don’t really care mode lately and I let it fly. Even led to some religious debating with 2 coworkers once one joined us when he came in for the overnight. It felt good to release some of that pent up stuff since I don’t get many chances anymore and was starting to feel stupid and worry that I must seem stupid to people at work. A management drone with no personality outside of the job. I may still be becoming that but there’s a shred of fun in the old boy yet.

Anyway, I don’t have the energy to go over the details of what Guliani and Palin said. But for anyone who say any of it, are you not struck by the clear difference between Republican convention speeches as compared to those at the Democratic convention? Just on an intellectual level it’s like the difference between a 6th grade speech and one you might make in college. The simplicity, never mind the lack of facts, was just mind boggling to me. Now you might say, well you’re a Democrat and you see what you want just like McCain supporters.

Well I’m not a Democrat. I don’t affiliate or burn an ideology into my brain and let it dictate everything I think subsequently. I like taking the facts at hand and making a decision based upon that hard evidence. Statistics, sociology, science, history, results, these are the platforms of my political party and it is a party of one. Hell I’m not even pretty so I can’t be a true Democrat. I may even be ugly enough to pass for a Republican. And even I can see how stupid and backwards these people are.

They’re a scary bunch. Watching that crowd and their reactions last night felt like traversing some dante-esque circle where ugly white people are eternally damned to wander around clueless and have no capacity to change their minds, do anything differently, or think other than the way they thought coming out of high school.

And all the flag waving and U.S.A. chanting as if closed mindedness and patriotism are mutually inclusive and something to be proud of, combined with the absolute devotion to proven policy failures and almost willful arrogance of that devotion as a big “fuck you,” to liberals who they seem to hate with the passion of true Christians, made me wonder where all the white sheets in the crowd were or when they’d start referring to a final solution for the liberal problem.

But seriously, I’d tap Palin. I’d just want her to keep her mouth shut.

Sounds harsh but conservative women like that. THey want a dominant male who doesn’t respect them. And damn it Sarah, I don’t respect you! So let’s make this happen baby!

Listening to her last night really upped the ante on this election though. YOu see I’m not quite buying all this bullshit rhetoric from team Obama about how McCain would be more of the same. How he was lockstep with the Bush administration. THis election doesn’t have the power and importance of 2000 or 04. I knew back in both those elections we were dealing with vicious, nasty ideologues with no character. McCain isn’t as bad despite the recent voting record or pandering of the past few years. And though I’ve been an ardent Obama supporter I wasn’t going to be crushed by a McCain victory as I was 4 and 8 years ago by Bush’s one election victory (which may even be debatable).

But this woman is so out of her league, so simple, and has such a large and mostly retarded family, that the thought of her being President is now getting pretty scary. And let’s face it: McCain could go within a term, certainly within 8 years when he’d be in his mid 80′s. And then we’d be left with a woman who thinks being a soccer mom is cool and a badge of something besides mediocrity.

And resource waste.

And though only one of her kids is technically retarded, or “special needs,” as appears to be the fashionable moniker amongst a group of people who don’t mind saying 9-11 was a punishment for all the faggots, another could be seen last night treating said baby like a doll while wiping her spit all over him and another apparently has no idea how to use a frakking condom.

But this could work for them. There’s a lot of stupid white trash that’s going to find her identifiable. “Lookie here, they’s just like us pa. She understands what it’s like to be uneducated and unable to keep male genitals outside of her vagina. They’s slippery pa!”

Ok I’m over generalizing. But I really do feel like a lot of people are going to relate and vote her way now. Whether HIllary supporters will be amongst them I’m not sure. Obviously, and it is as obvious as any V.P. choice ever, Palin is a token chosen to lure the Hillary base away from Obama. THat base has some weird bug up their ass and is resentful of the guy who beat their girl even though he ran the far more civil campaign and she resorted to Rovian type tactics. But they think they’re being disrespected. I guess the rules not being changed for these women constitutes disrespect. Kind of sound like many modern athletes. Wonder if they refer to themselves in the third person too? But they certainly have carried on like prima donnas lately.

But will they be stupid enough to be lured over by the simple power of another vagina?

I’m not sure on this one. MAny pundits think not and give them credit for seeing through the transparency of the move and that Palin isn’t exactly on the same page with them. That may well be. I want to believe they’re smarter than most men and the common electorate of the past eight years. Hopefully they will. But they’re still human and they’re still voters, and these are two charactersistics that seem to come with a lot of gullibility, selfishness, and stupidity. But it’s to their credit that I have some hope in them that I don’t feel for white trash or religious voters.

I’ve called the last two elections right, well actually more than that though the Clinton 2 and H.W. Bush’s were no-brainers, well before election day and I can’t do that here. That’s hopeful I guess. But if I had to pick it now I’d say McCain wins. Though Republicans are book stupid, Democrats are life stupid and don’t know how to win an election. And don’t underestimate the white trash trailer vote no one is talking about yet. As well as the general stupidity of Americans. And their racism. I argued with people a year or two ago that Obama would beat Hillary and a black man would get the Pres nod before a white female. But a white female as V.P. with an old white man could be just the ticket to beat this “uppity,” black family as one Republican recently put it. On the surface Palin appears an embarrasing choice and the McCain campaign a mess grasping at straws. But fuck me, both Bush campaigns kind of looked like that too. To me anyway.

Difference is the media is actually calling it to. Which is why the publicans have started the whole “the media hates us,” talking point which we’ve heard mentioned in quite a few speeches this week. Media is made up of liberal elites and liberal elites want to get rid of good, god fearing folk so they can fornicate with farm animals and find new places a man can put his penis in and on another man. And surrender to terrorists of course. That’s the brainwashing mechanism used on pub voters. THe fact that the media was a lapdog for Bush for 4 years and just followed the general public move away from him, is of course lost amongst the rest of the bullshit they wallow in like pigs.

See I’m off on tangents I didn’t want to go on. So much more to write on this but I wanted to jot out a quickie and get back to watching my tv and here I’ve wasted the better part of an hour venting to no one I know or maybe no one at all. I’d like to go on but I imagine the internet gods have already passed their judgment on the validity and interest of anything I have to write and I really want to watch last Sunday’s Mad Men and maybe some Arrested Development. Both titles that could have easily been used to label the Republican Convention.

Hard Harry Is In

Published on September 1, 2008 in ..The Dude, Comics and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Hello my Kantian Kitties, come and let me stroke the soft fur of your moral absolutism as you snuggle on my lap and wait for me to Vito up by telling you all the things I can not do. Oh Kittie don’t be afraid. I know it’s a mess in here, a tragic wasteland where a good Kittie could get lost in the rubbish. But I’ve been too busy to clean. Busy keep my friends close but my enemies closer so don’t disrespect me Kitties, Buena Serra, Buena Serra why do you disrespect me like this?  You come here wanting me to do murder but you can’t fix all the holes in my mind so run along undertaker, go and bury me softly in this world.

I wonder if Vito’s boy abhorred what he had become even as he embraced it’s imperatives? I wonder this as I too walk my monkey strut across my driveway after I’ve had a brother in law named Hope strangled by a henchman I call Regret. And still you purr sweet pretty Kantian Kitty because you don’t believe in their god. You still believe in your Kitty god because he’s yours and everybody loves to stroke a good kitties sweet spot and call it god.

Oh listen Kitty there’s a storm brewing outside my window and it’s not just in my head anymore. Clouds are amassing, thunder rattling the horizon, the only thing rattling my horizon Kitty, bad kitty don’t get your hackles up, you’re safe inside and there’s a big bowl of comfort in the corner and it’s made of the atoms between you and I so take comfort in being you and not I and if I talk too hard I know you’ll claw your way to freedom ’cause you’re a good kitty and the excavation has begun. See I have the claw marks on me fresh and vivid, unlike the past, which is blurry and faint giving way to this meandering wait for an ignored obituary I won’t read either.

Good Kantian Kitty, good for you for all the right reasons, not fear or hope which keeps you from scratching each others eyes out is it? You’ve been given your shots full of Categorical Imperative; only for some reason I don’t trust all you good kitties and wonder if you’re still rabid with survival, kept tame by an idea as fragile as the law.

But shhhh, shhh I shouldn’t talk too hard: I’m obtuse like a crazy prophet, obdurate like a bad idea grown big with time. My Cultural Revolution has begun and you’re a Maoist pig Kittie, a Kittie contradiction since you’re also a bourgeois son of a bitch landlord. But if I stay homeless long enough you’ll have nothing on me. My head is naked and cold, Winter’s coming and the warmth of flesh is denied; but one gets used to being cold and alone. There are places to hide in the dark which has no morality except for what we bring into it so there’s always our human confort in our ideas even if my ideas and yours go separate ways. THere’s no Kittie god in the darkness of the hollow tree so I’m leaving my light saber outside to rot away in the storm with all the other Kittie god keepsakes. Maybe that’s just because we need two to joust and the hollow tree admits but one just as the hollow man admits but none.

Oooh I see judgment in you eyes again Kitties; that’s not fair, you’ve been indocrintaed and don’t even know it. We’re all so immune to this disease as long as we don’t eat the apples hanging from the hollow tree. But I have Kittie. I had to and even if it was my loneliness which brought me to the tree it doesn’t make the tree any less real. THe apple still gleams red and apples can get harder to eat the older you get. An old man’s teeth are no weapon for the truth. And perhaps I’d have been better fiding the tree later and take in its fruit in bits and pieces with a carving knife to assist the slow deliberation of the wasteland behind me. But even good Kitties have to find a place to be snug and warm and that was mine even before I knew the tree was hollow and I could go inside and play Space Invaders on a radio tuned to 1983.

THat doesn’t make sense but neither do all good kitties hanging idols on their collars and calling it home. A good tree can still come with cable and as long as we have that we’ll always have each other because in the end we’re both good kitties. Your shots are just obscured because you didn’t get them in the head and a cold and naked head reveals all. But the Dr’s don’t tell us the truth: the shots don’t last forever kitties. Disease will claim us yet and at best all we can really hope for is to become someone elses hollow tree, one grown out of our scattered seed, one in which a memory will pour like water onto the future and a molecule of matter or a meme of idea will speed branches towards the empty sky.

Just don’t go inside your own tree yet kittie. It’s dark in here. Now run along. Go play with the other kitties. I have a wasteland to contemplate before it gets too dark.

The Dude Finds Himself Disrespected At Work And Has Had Enough.

Published on August 24, 2008 in ..The Dude and Life. 0 Comments Tags: .

  So I’m not much for carrying on about work to people in print or by spoken word.

 I prefer to make my feelings known through the medium of claymation when it comes to work and home problems. Of course you all remember my memorable exhibition titled A Puppet’s Reverie On TIme And Attendence.

  But I return from work a short time ago after a few hours of paperwork and supply shopping in advance of my having off most of the rest of the week other than an overnight Monday and a few hours Thursday afternoon.  THis is to compensate me for the bucket of hours I’ve been doing without the solace of overtime the past 2 work weeks. These hours happened due to out anual hell week at work when everyone who lives in the facility I manage takes off from work and does vacation. I won’t go too into details but trust me it’s an unfair week and I’ve done tings very few people much less managers would do.

But do I get the promised relief that kept me going? No. Does anyone show any frakking appreciation for working multiple double shifts including being on my own on a trip to Brooklyn Friday? Uh uh. Do I get any love for handling an impossible scheduling nightmare for the week down 3 staff? Course not. How about a nod to the fact that my ideas for the way such a week should work were ignored yet another year and still I was the one having to deal with the untenability of the situation others created?

  Fuck no.

  Instead I go in today and find a memo to all staff that the other manager wrote. Probably in cahoots with our IRA Coordinator. It said that he will be doing all scheduling now and that all requests for time off, adjustments etc will go through him.

  Now understand that I’ve been doing most of this for the better part of 2 years without issue. All these type schedule related issues are handled by both of us but I’ve been doing more and more of it. Without a problem. People have noted how good of a job we do in staving off OT and not leaving staff in rough scheduling binds as many managers do.

  So one week where I had to wait and send in schedule to the agency’s scheduling coordinator late happens and I walk into this after spending 19 hours starting Friday morning at 7 driving to and in and driving back from Coney Island.

  19 fucking hours!

  And yet the night before, on a day I was supposed to be resting after two previous double shifts while everyone went to the Bronx Zoo, I was expected to be there to babysit and clean up when some guys were brought back early.

  But I wasn’t there.

  Now bear in mind that trip was my idea. THis was the glamour trip on which some administrative people tagged along and the one I had been looking forward to the most. But I had to remove myself because we needed my coverage in other places and the way everything had been put together by Jarmar, the other manager, it was my only opportunity for a breather. So I bowed out and let everyone including your fancy ass Social Worker, NUrsing head, and team Psychologists enjoy the day.

  So these latter people bring a few guys back early because they didn’t want to deal with working past 6 or 7 and expected me to be there waiting. Now why would I sit there doing an evening shift with no one there? Yet I did go in at 1 anyway to tidy up receipts and finalize some Brooklyn tickets stuff. Then of course things piled up and I end up there for 5 plus hours attending to other things there and at one of their programs  because no one else would. Then I go home to try and get some rest knowing I have to back at 7 for big solo staffed day Friday.

  And yet these fuckers expected me to hang out and babysit. I get the call just as I’m falling asleep for a pre dinner nap and am pushed into going over until 11 when everyone else returned and nightshift came in almost simultaneously. So the nursing head, psyche, and social worker can get home in time to catch Office repeats or whatever. And get rested for their Fridays. So I get no nap. No dinner. One of many days I had to eat crap at work because I don’t have the time or money to eat normally. So that’s taking a toll on my health as I feel like crap and I’ve had no more than 4 or so hours sleep in any night for about a week and I do mother fucking yeoman’s duty with this thing Friday.

  Yet because they were inconvienenced and because Jarmar, the other manager neglected to tell me they were bringing anyone back early, I get embarrassed by a fucking memo? I get scapegoated because of others bad ideas and intransigence when it comes to looking at other ways to handle the situation. People are going to think I was neglectful and untrustworthy on the admin level and people in our program are all signing this memo that seems a clear shot at me.

  I actually almost passed out at the wheel Friday, spent over an hour lost in Brooklyn and on the way back had some kind of eye attack in rushing Manhattan-GW bound traffic up the West Side and Henry HUdson. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. Felt like hot needles were being stuck in them and there was nowhere to pull over and I’m in the middle lane with no letup to my sides. So my eyes are blinking like mad and tears start streaming down my face and I’m thinking “it’s fucking friday and that’s one of my days off so I’m not even supposed to be here today,” yet I’m in the midst of 19 straight hours and about to get us killed in the City or at best stranded with a wrecked vehicle and it’s after 11 and I still have 2 hours of driving ahead even if I get out of this.

  WHich i did. And I go in there today to find this fucking memo which I’m sure was a response to those aforementioned fancy asses whining about no staff there Thursday when they got back from the zoo and possibly me sending schedule in late for the first time ever. All of which I gave heads up on but no one listened or bothered to take a closer look at.

  And yet it still would have worked down 3 staff and with all the doubles and no OT allowed. It mostly did work. THanks to me mostly and among other things my flexibility and willingness to take on Friday alone and for that long under some seriously crappy stress and lack of sleep.

  And I get fucking slighted like this?

  So what to do now?

  I want to quit. Can’t do that. Could resign my position and demote myself. Definite possiblity right now. Between this and my screwed up home life I am way too stressed and unhappy and I know things on the latter front can only get worse. I’ve got no respite anywhere, no place to escape or get some sense of rejuvenation or counter balancing softness amidst all the hardness. So why kill myself at work? I think I may have to finally put an end to this current run because it’s too much alone and I can’t get rid of the non work stuff.

  I’m still reluctant to go back to working the old shifts though. THey’re limiting and I like the flexibility of my schedule. Ironically it’s a schedule that would have made my life a lot better a couple of years ago and further back. Now though the sweeter things in life seem mainly moved on and having reasonable hours that allow for more time for those things seems  a cruel twist only slightly less predictable and badly conceived than the endings M Knight Shamalan’s last few movies.   

  But you know, I don’t want to swallow what’s left of my pride. I deserve better than shit. I work my frakking ass off and do so without a shred of asssistance in any area of my life.

  But a demotion, even a self imposed one, would also be a swallowing of pride as well. And most of the time we get along well at work and things are ok. But if feels like time for change is coming. Want to go forward and there only seems to be movement available backwards.

  So that’s my public whine. I drink it down and swill it around in my mouth. Now I spit it out into yours and don’t even care that it’s dead air out there and nothing else. Everyone knows a fine whine can still be enjoyed alone without being a lush.