I don’t know that my dreams, wants, wishes or aspirations are any different than anyone else’s.  I don’t know that anything I aspire to is what you would call outlandish in any way.  A job that has insurance, so I can go to a doctor if i get ill, or more importantly, so my wife can go to a doctor if she gets ill.  A chance at a better life, a real chance at building something of a future for myself.  A few extra bucks in my pocket, so I can take my wife out someplace nice once in a while.  I think she deserves it, after all she puts up with me, she must be a saint.  A way to pay for things in this system is important, it makes the making of money the most important thing a person can do.

     So when jobs disappear, when unemployment is as high as it is, nearly 1 in 5, all of that goes out the window. That’s why I couched the statement above i the way I did.   I am not asking anything outlandish or insane, and I am no different than millions of other people who are unemployed.  So when companies don’t, won’t, or can’t hire people to help them do those small things they want, it hurts the American dream, it hurts everyone.  It makes it impossible to look after those you love, makes it impossible to pay for all of life’s necessities for any length of time without a handout from someone else.

    No one wants to get used to getting handouts.   No one wants to be a burden on anyone else, but things going as they are make it difficult if not impossible to do anything but have to lean on others and get by on the efforts of those who have.  Which makes those of us who are out of work have nots, and we were made have nots by the companies that we hope will bring us back to the land of the living, and we are depending on those who are the haves here.  Dependent on their tax money to pay our unemployment, which we would rather not have to use.  Dependent on food stamps and cobra, and a score of other programs that are paid for by the haves.

     Dependence is a terrible thing.  I want independence, but with things as they are, even if I get a job tomorrow, I won’t have it. The haves and have nots here are separated by a thin string, and that puppet string is pulled by forces outside of our control. The haves dance on that string, those of us out on our asses are lifeless puppets, strings cut, face down, ass out, yet still alive, hoping someone will retie our strings so we can dance again.  The entire system we live in is built around dependence in one form or another.

    Independence is, in a very important way, control.  Capital C Control.  The more control you have, the more power you have to do the things you want in your life.  Those of us who are unemployed have no power, no control.  We understand our position, though. We don’t want to run the world, we just want to have control of our world, and we don’t have that. And it feels endless.

    What this all boils down to is that I feel helpless, I just want to feel like a productive member of society again, and having that taken away is a real crime.  But I was fired. Regardless of why, does that mean I committed a crime against myself? Against my family? Or should I externalize it, blame the fat bastard who fired me? I can’t do either.  I did what I thought right, regardless of the outcome, foolish though that may have been, and him?  He’s as much a puppet as I was, all puppets do is the bidding of their masters, they are blameless. Stupid? Clearly.  Pawn? Absolutely.  Fool? Without a doubt.  Culpable? No. He was and is a slave, doing his masters bidding.

    That is all.

Today’s Nuggets, by George Orwell, Via wikiquote:   If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.   from “Animal Farm”

So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

     I’m in the mood to rant tonight.  Just wanna yell at the world.  So I’m gonna have some fun with it.  Things that piss me off, in no particular order:

1 ) The New York Rangers lost…again.  To a crappy team… again.

2 ) Bills

3 )  Douglas Adams is dead, Dick Cheney is not.

4 ) Ads on Youtube

5 ) Commercials (I’ll pick up that thread later)

6 ) Facebook’s new Privacy settings

7 ) I’m still out of work, and there are plenty of lazy bastards out there that still have their jobs.

8 ) Joe Lieberman

9 ) Health care legislation seems dead, yet Sarah Palin’s career is still rolling along. 

10 ) Umm…..err……uhhhh….. I’m only pissed off about 9 things? And THOSE nine things? Most of that crap is stupid fiddlin bullshit!!  GRRRRR THAT PISSES ME OFF! 

  lulz

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     Time to really let fly. 

     Commercials annoy me.  Seriously.  

     Commercials are the most annoying things on earth.  Advertisers SUCK.   Capital one, What’s in your wallet? Not your money, you gave it all to us, remember?  Those bunch of thieves makes me want to kick strangers in the face.   Coors, the cans turn blue to let you know they are cold because the nerve endings in your hands don’t work because you’ve been drunk since you were 6 and you have all the advanced motor functions of a turnip.   

   Billy Mays is dead and he’s STILL selling me shit.  Leave me the f*** alone! Go, GET OUT! Leave us in peace, I don’t need a…whatthehellever it is that your smelly dead ass is selling!  Go enjoy the great beyond!  The choir triumphant beckons! God needs to buy some stuff! Sell it to HIM!!!  

  GO!

     Political ads make me want to do away with all civilization as we know it.  If I see one more ad telling me how to think about health care, someone is gonna #$%^#$% need some reeeeeeeaallll soon.   Have a coke and kill yourself.  What can brown(stains in your underwear) do for you? Buy an IPOD, or else you can’t dance with the pretty kids. Maxwell house is fresh, I guess all the other f****** coffees have been sitting in a smelly armpit for 6 months and have that ”not so fresh” feeling.   

      To be serious for a minute, they really do drive me nuts.  It’s the slick, condescending pandering bullshit that seems to come from all of them.  All they are trying to do is entertain my dollars away, and they suck at it.  I have better things to do with my money than give it to someone who is trying to make me think the stuff they have is the stuff I need.  I really don’t need that pretty new bank card from that particular company, the one with those actors dressed as faux viking wannabe’s, just to get my picture on it.  Seriously, who buys this crap? Is anyone really moved by this loser horse manure?

   This, THIS is why the remote control was invented.  It keeps the people who write these commercials alive, because when this stupidity comes on, you can turn it the hell off. If I had to watch every commercial that came on, I’d already be in prison for killing some idiot because i heard some @$%^&$# try to sell me some useless stupid crap that niether I nor anyone else needs.  Doing away with all people who work in marketing departments around the world would make the world a MUCH better place, simply with their removal from it. 

      But I digress… All that really does is point in the direction of my heart, shows what is wrong with me.  I’m too judgmental, to quick to point the finger at people, and too eager to hate.  But… But…

    Ahhhh…who am I kiddin.  I have nothin tonight, I can’t sell this bullshit.  Sorry. I’ll try to write something worth reading tomorrow. 

    Later.

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Today’s nuggets, Via Wikiquote:  From any cross-section of ads, the general advertiser’s attitude would seem to be: if you are a lousy, smelly, idle, underpriveleged and oversexed status-seeking neurotic moron, give me your money.  Kenneth Bromfield

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.  George Santayana

I don’t have pet peeves, I have major psychotic fucking hatreds! And it makes the world a lot easier to sort out.  George Carlin

That’s what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: “Here’s your brain, here’s your brain on drugs”, “Just Say No”, “Why do you think they call it dope?” … And then the next commercial is [singing] “This Bud’s for yooouuuu.” C’mon, everybody, let’s be hypocritical bastards. It’s okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you.   Bill Hicks

    It looks, just by the words of by Sens. Nelson and Lieberman here from this morning on “Face the Nation” that  Health care reform, at least in it’s current form, is dead.  Nelson can’t abide a bill without strong abortion language, and Lieberman is a demanding lil S.O.B., and not only does he want the public option dead, he wants class act, a national insurance trust which would give a cash benefit for those who are “functionally disabled”, done away with, and he dislikes the medicare buy in. 

    Dammit, if this dumbass scuttles health care reform, he has to lose his job as head of the Senate homeland security committee, at the very least. THIS kind of thing would not happen if we only had a better handle on lobbyists and their money.  Lieberman, like is fairly well known, is in the tank for the pharmaceutical companies, he has, after all, taken millions of dollars from insurance companies and those who work with them.  Go to opensecrets.org and you’ll see who gives him the most money. Between lobbyists, health, and the insurance industry, he has gotten almost $16,000,000 in contributions over his career from these groups.

    Curiously, Sen Nelson, while not getting anything like the money that Sen. Lieberman has, has the same top 3 contributing sectors, who have given him over half of the money he has received over his career, over $5,000,000 in contributions.  They’ve been bought, regardless of how they vote, they’ve been bought.  Others have actually made money like Sen. Lieberman has and are on the other side of this debate, but all that means is that Joe is easily bought, more pliant for whatever reason.  And even if it isn’t true and his motives are entirely pure, the picture of impropriety that is created by the actions taken here makes a joke of everything we as a free people stand for.

    Judges have to recuse themselves when they have a vested interest in a case, when they have skin in the game, as the saying goes.  Where is the laws that puts the same level of necessity of responsibility on our legislators that is necessary of our judges? Why has there been no outcry for that?  All we really want is accountability from our duly elected representatives, and without some kind of protection from monied interests, we will never truly have that.

     Barring that, we the people have no way to buy votes like these industries can do ourselves, so where does that leave us?  Stuck adrift on a sea of lobbyist money, drowning or floating at their behest.

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   Larry Summers says the recession is over.  Nice.  I think we should wait to see the numbers get better, for companies to start hiring again before we start to make statements like that.  There is a difference between only losing 11,000 jobs in a  month, and gaining thousands of jobs. 

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     A C-span viddy from Thursday with Elizabeth Warren.  I like Liz, she’s good people.  She needs to find a more prominent role in the Obama Administration.  Like maybe Larry Sanders job. 

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   That’s about it from here.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, By Peter Drucker, via Wikiquote:  what’s absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.

Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions–as in moral truth and accountability they are.

The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make–for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.

Minor error and single sentence re-write 12:30 pm 12/14/09

    I’ve had a pretty long day.  A good one but a long one.   I got back from the Family Christmas party a while ago, and I tell ya, it took a lot out of me.  And I wasn’t playing around with the kids as much as I usually do, so I don’t have that as an excuse.  I did hurl my little brothers son around the place a few times…well, not hurl per se, more hold the boy and run back and forth with him pretending like he was flying.  Flying into walls, well almost into walls, as well as flying into other people, and generally tossing the boy around like a sack of potatoes.  He was a giggling mess, I was as well, twas cool.

    To go back in time a bit, I woke up early, before 9,  after getting to sleep late, after 3.  I was up making chili, helping my wife make “Italian cookies”, ya know, breaking eggs on my forehead, punching the dough for the cookies so you could see a clear fist print in it, while making with the Bruce Lee sound effects (and yes my hands were clean, I may be a nut, but I’m not a dirt-bag) and other such joyfully weird things. 

     The chili I made was not very hot this year, not the 5 alarm, nasal passage clearing, taste bud destroying, hemorrhoid inducing psycho death chili that I normally make.  It was actually almost exactly Wendy’s knock off chili.  Ya know, 2 meats, pinto beans (which is where much of the flavor comes from), a few tomatoes, a few onions and some garlic, some jalapenos.  Brown the meat, drain, add the other ingredients + one cup of water, simmer for 45 minutes and yer done.  Easy. 

    The cookies took longer to make, just because we made 8 cookie sheets worth, and it takes ten minutes per sheet + prep time.  But it’s worth it, those f****** cookies are delicious.

    Like I said, doing all that took til 3 am. Set the alarm for 9.  Woke up a few times during the night, thanks to cats taking covers and space.  Woke up groggy, made the coffee, fed the cats, turned on the computer, looked for a job for a few minutes, played a few games, woke up the wife, and headed out to help prep the hall.

   Woke her up too late because I got caught up playing games on the computer.  Didn’t realize I had let that much time slip.  Silly husband, games are for kids.  Read some news next time, jackass.  LOL

    I walked down, carrying my chili.  It’s maybe a half a mile, and only takes a few minutes to walk, and it wasn’t too bad out.  When I got there, I was surprised to find that no one else from the family was there.  I had beaten everyone there.  Kewl.  Waited a few minutes, and My mom and dad showed up followed shortly after that by my younger brother and his wife. We put down table cloths, put out dip, blew up balloons, gave food, sterno, utensils, plates and other such amenities to the guys at the hall, ya know, set-up.  Blowing up the balloons actually took up the most time.   I am apparently slow at this, and it was my job to blow up, tie, then attach to string the balloons.  Everyone ended up pitching in, and everything got done relatively quick. 

    At about this point in the proceedings I got an offer to go to a skate with the Rangers for tomorrow, a meet and greet kinda thing and I turned it down. I should have said yes.  I didn’t.  I have clothes to wash tomorrow.  Not a real reason, you say?  I need to wash my best work clothes, which I wore this week to two interviews, and want clean just in case more interviews come my way this week.  Job stuff comes first.  Work before pleasure, first, last and always.

     Plus, my skating skills are nearly nil, and I would be hella embarrassed to have to have my wife pull my stupid ass off of the stupid ice every other minute with every single New F****** York Ranger on the team watching me fall on my ass and giggling at my stupid ass. 

   If I want strangers to laugh at me in public, I’ll go on a f****** reality TV show.  But I digress…

    After this, I picked up the wife, with cookies and XM receiver in tow, and got down to the serious business of relaxing with family. Relaxed and social. Me.  No, really, me.  Serious!  Twas fun, truly.   A ton of different conversations that I will not repeat here. If your family you know what happened, if your not, you don’t need to know.  ‘Nuff said.

    We sang Christmas carols, badly, especially me.  I was loud, happily loud, off key, and generally just slightly off time.   Loud is just what I do, loud worked there so I go with it, off key isn’t what I aim for, but with my voice too deep for the highs and not deep enough for the lows kinda gives me no choice in the matter there.  The timing i do on purpose, I time it the way i think it’s supposed to sound, with the proper syncopation, at least what I think is proper syncopation, not just singing with the crowd of family who are always metronome steady.  That’s just me. 

    The twelve days of Christmas is just us Jumping around screaming like banshees and generally having a fun.  A big fun. 

    One disappointment for me this year.  Every year, until this year, we’ve sung “O Come All Ye Faithful” Including the Latin versus (adeste fideles)  I am about the only person who knows the Latin on this one, me and a few aunts and uncles.  I was ready to go.  No go this year though. 

    Ah well.  No worries, I can sing it here to my wife.  I think the marriage will survive it. 

    Had the annual guess, in which one aunt, the same aunt every year (she’s cool, we’re cool, it’s cool, just not naming names) buys something, writes out a few hints as to what it might be and then we have to try to guess what it is.  If several people guess, those names are put in a hat and one winner is drawn (been a while since that happened) If no one guesses all the adults pay and a name is pulled at random and random drawn name wins (as I recall) Rarely is there one winner, when there is one (again, as I recall).   This year, I had no idea, not an original one, so i put down one that I knew was wrong, just to have my name in the hat.  I believe it was  “A festive assortment of holiday cheeses and meats.”

   No one gets my crappy jokes… which is why i rarely tell them. 

Santa invades Japan

    ANYWAY… to make a long story even longer, there aren’t too many people who have pulled off more than one win.  I have won once, in a family tradition that spans the length of my entire life, where I have been guessing at this since 1985.  My wife won the first year she did it, she won a bike. She couldn’t use it, because she was living in Boston at the time and we couldn’t ship it, too expensive so we kept it here.  Guess who won this year.

    My wife.   And what is the gift? A nativity scene, an actual, large outdoor nativity scene.  Too bad we live in an apartment.  What we are doing with it is this.  This year my younger brother is going to have it on his front lawn.  I floated the idea, and my wife accepted, that we can do a draw to see who gets to have it on their lawn next year.

     There was a moment of stupid from me regarding this happy nativity scene, but i will not tell that story here. 

    Food we ate early, and I ate as much as I could(didn’t write about it because me getting fat seems uneventful).  Had about 2345987324 pounds of food. Chili.  Pasta.  Meatballs.  Turkey. Stuffing.  Potatoes.  NOMS, MANY NOMS!   Big FAT rhino now! FAT! Happily fat!  Gonna have to start running again soon, or else there gonna have to roll me to the f****** park.  LOL.   But i digress…

  We had coffee.  We had cookies and other assorted pastries.  We packed up and we left, fat and happy after the annual Christmas party.

   A long, but happy day.  Hope, you all had fun, I did.

      Enjoy a little Christmas music, courtesy of the old WPIX yule log.  Man I can’t get enough of this.

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     I’m sitting here with a keyboard on my lap typing, after putting down my guitar for a few minutes.  Not much in the way of musical exercises, just playing around, simple stuff, keeping my fingers moving, keeping them acquainted with the fretboard, with a greater than normal emphasis on harmony and some chord melody work in there as well.

    After putting down the guitar, I turned off the television that was blaring the usual stupid crap at no one in particular, and decided to turn on some Christmas music.  Classical Christmas music.  This stuff is for me a mood enhancer, it picks me up when I’m feeling down, and reminds me very much of the magical feeling this season is supposed to engender, both in me and my fellow man.

       The harmonies are out of this world. There is true beauty in the human voice, particularly when the singing is plainsong, and the songs themselves are familiar, it feels like…home.

      A little “Riu, Riu” would be nice right about now.  Maybe a little “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel”.   Fantasia on Greensleeves just came on.  Not plainsong, but beautiful nonetheless.  Good enough for me.  More than good enough.

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    And a little Charlie Brown Christmas goodness for everyone, even the crazy people who think that The President was trying to take it away from them when he spoke about Afghanistan when the Charlie Brown Christmas was supposed to be on. 

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    This one is a shorty folks. Your favorite rhino has a headache, so I’m done.  Have a good’un.

Today’s nugget, via wikiquote:  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol