What’s the phrase? Nothing’s guaranteed in this life but death and taxes. Something like that. I haven’t done the taxes yet this year, but I know people who met death. And not in one of those Oscar/Emmy/Grammy award show ways where you’re sitting there and say to yourself “oh my, *insert dead person’s name here* died.” Or “I remember that guy/gal” but it really doesn’t strike you like someone that you know personally or whose life you have intersected with. I received a message from one of my cousins in Connecticut. She informed me of the passing of a dear family friend this past Wednesday. He was old, but then again, he was old to me since he and his wife knew me before I was ever born (which is to say they knew my folks in their childless years). His name is Lew. His wife is Evelyn. These people have been involved in my family’s life in one way or another for years. Friends, encouragers, visitors, parishioners. They would baby-sit me when I was a little guy (which you know …was a loooooong time ago). They allowed us to stay with them on occasion when we visited CT from Colorado Springs. And Lew was just a pleasant guy. Friendly, lovable and kind.
When I was last in CT on my way back from Christmas in Maine, my fam and I stopped overnight and went to the church I was born into. After the service, we ran into Evelyn, and she talked about Lew and how he was doing better after spending some time in the hospital. It was nice to see her and hear how he was doing. In those brief moments when I run into people I’ve not see in some time, I often in a split second go over notable events in my mind in which I was involved with them. And on that day, it was no different. I can’t for the life of me say what I was thinking of then, but as I read the note of his passing today, I think of several things. I think of the garden he had in the backyard of his house. It always had green leafy lettuce growing in it. There were the times where he and his wife would take me to the park. Center Park was really neat. It had some of the biggest see-saws I’d ever seen (mind you this was when I was a small child) and a great swing set. And it was a cool place to fly a kite if you couldn’t make it to Wickham Park. I suppose I’ll be having more of these moments in years to come. I’ll get an email from a friend or relation to tell me that so-and-so died. And I will most likely be genuinely sad for the loss of someone that I knew from my childhood or later in life or someplace in time where the strings that get attached to all the people I intersect with is snapped in two and I am holding a broken string and have a heart full of memories. I pray that they will be good ones.

And now for something completely different….

I was at an Oscar party on Sunday night. And being a fan of pop culture, I was interested in seeing who would show up and who would wear what and would they were demure clothing or really ostentatious outfits. No… that is not exactly true. I was really interested in seeing if anyone would speak out of the left side of their mouth when they got the opportunity, and how would the audience respond. It is funny to me how on a Saturday night is would be more acceptable to speak your mind and voice your approval against bush/war/bush, but on the very next night be booed off the stage. Now, I actually remember watching Michael Moore’s TV show back in the early 90’s called TV Nation. The point of the show was to take shots at big business and the terrible things they do. It was smart television. It was challenging television. It got cancelled. I don’t hate Moore, I just happen to disagree with him politically on most issues. Did he deserve to be booed off the stage on Sunday at the Oscars? You’re damn skippy he did. He didn’t say anything new, or challenging, or cutting edge, and it didn’t make for good TV. He didn’t change any minds that may have been teetering on the fence about supporting the war or President Bush and push them over the edge on one side or the other. You get 45 seconds on stage before the band plays on, and the pretty girl escorts you off stage. He blathered on about an election irregularity from 2 years ago.

Guess what?

It’s over jackass!!!

And making your voice heard on that topic is 2 years to late.

My biggest problem with what he said was not exactly the word he spoke but the message behind them. If I was a soldier in Kuwait/Iraq/Qatar/on a ship, I’d kick in my TV cuz he doesn’t seem to care that my ass is on the line to defend his freedoms and securities. He has more money than most people will ever see in their lives. He has a great job and is doing something he loves which is more than most people can say about their jobs. So what does he do??? He spat on the face of every US soldier standing post right now. I am sure some soldiers don’t want to be fighting in a war, but no one twisted their arm to join, nor did anyone put a gun to their head either. I believe that the government should be kept honest, and asked tough questions, but not at the expense of those who VOLUNTEER to defend her. I support his right to disagree with it, to protest it, to make a movie about it. But only as long as he realises that his freedom has been bought by the blood of those who died fighting for and defending this Republic. Your 45 seconds are up and as Steve Martin said: “the teamsters are helping him into the trunk of his limo.”

NP: Sam Shaber - All Right: "Eldorado"
- posted by TundraBoy @ 5:23 PM 0 comments

 
I’ll just keep it perspective here. Short an sweet. Open war is upon us all. What to do…question our leaders, question our motives, question our ability, question our allies, give the French the finger (and when I say “the French” I’m sure that there are some that are supportive of the effort that is about get underway, but I am referring to the pain in the ass ones that get face time on the TV), and support our troops. I want so much there to be another way, but 12 years of looking for another way got us bupkus. The UN has hamstrung the ideals of freedom with their “superior knowledge” of world affairs”. I say that the UN knows less than Squat about true freedom. Even better than that, the UN could be standing next to Squat, and Squat would be wearing an “I’m with stupid” T-shirt. Inept doesn’t begin to describe em. Self-serving, duplicitous and moronic may be better descriptors. My argument may not be the most persuasive, well thought out, or even strong, but then again, if you are reading this, it’s a one sided argument anyway.

The Rock ‘n Roll hall of fame induction ceremony was on last night on VH-1. I didn’t see the whole thing, but what I saw was not too bad. I was in Borders on Saturday morning to catch up on some free reading and when I was done I meandered over to the music section. I thought it strange at first all these re-issues of older albums, but realising that what was being hawked was albums from artist who were being inducted to the hall. Nothing really leapt out at me, but then again a lot of the bands being inducted I only really learned about after they broke up or weren’t popular anymore minus AC/DC. My fascination with this band is that they don’t care if reviewers like em or not or whether or not they get airplay, what matters to them is playing hard, rocking out, and giving the fans what they want. The show allowed Steven Tyler of Aerosmith to do the induction and then duet on a song. Lemme just say that there are some voices that just don’t go together, case in point Brian Johnson’s and Tyler’s on Shook Me All Night Long. I like both voices, but not together, oil and water. Some things were not meant to be meshed like that. That, and Tyler’s serpentine dance just doesn’t work with the AC/DC presentation. Then they let that dinosaur along with Gwen, and John the coffeehouse misanthrope sing with The Police on Every Breath You Take. Again the voices are good on their own, but that was all sorts of wrong. But I’m glad to see that Elvis Costello was big enough to stand on stage to accept his and the Attraction’s induction, but not big enough to play together as a whole unit. He could take some lessons on graciousness from Sting.

NP: Jimmie Vaughn – Out There: Can’t Say No

- posted by TundraBoy @ 5:06 PM 0 comments

 
Sometimes it happens and you don’t know it’s happening, other times you knowingly do it and know you shouldn’t (kinda like how Pippin chastises Merry for talking to Treebeard), and feel guilty when caught. That is right, you guessed it…the sing-a-long. Most of the time I don’t even realise that I am doing it until the song changes or I’m humming too loudly and somebody else looks at you strange. Blush or a big wide grin and an apology follows quickly enough. It’s not quite as dreadful as getting a song stuck in your head that you can’t get out quick enough, like “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone-Loc. This happened to me today as I was walking in one of our adjoining buildings at my job. I was walking thru the tunnel and wasn’t really paying attention to what was coming over the house speakers until I was literally singing “would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven”. There were not words in the music being played nor was it the original artist in any way shape or form. It was a muzak version of Slowhand. As I was walking I listened more intently to the musicianship. It wasn’t bad, but it sure wasn’t great. This was followed up with a version of “Mrs. Robinson” by the Napoleonic Egomaniac and his Hand Clapping Hanger-on.

BTW…did you see these guys on the Grammy’s this year? It was cool they played, and if I was a mark for these guys I prolly woulda done handsprings in the living room, but it certainly lacked passion. They could not have been more than a foot apart in distance, but worlds apart in spirit. Napoleon looked more pissed off than usual. And speaking of pissed, how drunk was Dustin Hoffman? Drunk or medicated. How do you mess up the Boss’s surname with teleprompters that big?

Back to the point…my workplace plays knock-offs of well-known radio hits and I found myself singing them. Department stores and malls are notorious for doing this. If it’s a small mall you’ll get this quite often, a bigger mall may actually play the real song itself. If you actually want to hear “real” music (and I put real in quotes for a reason) then you often have to go into a Wall/FYE/Virgin/Tower store. The quotes were used to point out that in most of the stores just listed the music is generally not good anyway, just some sampler of whatever product they want you to buy. Unless you go into one of those Spencer gifts or places that sells whips and chains for the middle class white kids to buy to show that they are so oppressed and misunderstood…just like everyone of their little punk friends that is into whatever happens to be hip at the moment, you hear top 40 tripe. And I’ve noticed that Spencer Gifts now has some sort of preprogrammed music to play (you figure these things out when you are looking for Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy and debating whether to get the refrigerator magnet or the iron on t-shirt patch).

So work threw me for a loop today with the muzak they were playing. Not that alone was strange enough, but as I was leaving to punch out. Where I happened to be working today, strange thing can occur daily (you will get this is a pre-dementia/pre-Alzheimer floor) and are really not noticed most of the time. Yesterday this guy whose job is a “singer/dj” was booked for a program. He’s been in before and I have seen him setting up before. When he comes to the Vil, most of the time he does sing-a-longs with residents of old songs like “Bye Bye Blackbird” “Roll out the Barrel” and other standards of popular music (and by popular music, I refer to music from 30’s to the 50’s that you would listen to on an old radio in your living room before Amos and Andy between The Shadow and the Adventures of Sam Spade and after Burns and Allen.) Often when this guy comes around he mixes in holiday songs (so this month would include “My Wild Irish Rose” and “Danny Boy”) for the residents.

So, on my way to the punch clock, I hear a very familiar acoustic guitar riff and as quickly as I hear it I dismiss it. There is no way that song is on the overhead system. It wasn’t. I couldn’t be sure, but maybe someone was playing it live. I walk down the hall 25 feet and see the residents gathered for a programme and two chicks crooning. I swear if I had a lighter I would have held it up and swayed. The one chick was doing her best impression of Nuno Bettencourt the other doing her Gary Cherone. The song goes something like this:

Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It's not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me
Cos I'd already know

I must have missed the memo, but when did early power ballads from the 90’s make into music to be played and sung for residents in a nursing/assisted living facility. That seems a bit Extreme to me. Can Nelson’s “Love and Affection” be intertwined with Firehouse’s “Love of a Lifetime”? Next thing they will move onto the next genre of popular music for residents “hits from the grunge era” featuring Nirvana’s Come as you are, Pearl Jam’s Jeremy and a special rendition of Alice in Chains’ Rooster for all the veterans in the house. A truly surreal thought of residents singing a refrain:

Here They Come To Snuff The Rooster
Yeah Here Come The Rooster
You Know He Ain't Gonna Die

All they’d need is a gun and a good smack habit to boot. Actually I’m thinking of the appropriateness of the song that the two chick were singing… then again…if I only had my lighter…

On a side note or two:

HHJ: I do remember that night, and no you aren’t a loser. A better tribute to a man than I could have ever come up with.

Don’t Hurry: I am almost embarrassed you linked me…. almost

NP: Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow

- posted by TundraBoy @ 7:46 PM 0 comments

 
I don’t really know how to put into words all that I am thinking about right now, but sometimes my most introspective moments come in the short time it takes me to drive home from work. A simple glimpse into a future event or possibility can be rolled around quickly in my head and just as quickly forgotten or pushed aside, if it is particularly unpleasant. So, how is today different than other days? Maybe it just took a couple of days to sink in. I watched a DVD of a Henry Rollins spoken word/talking show on Friday called Up For It. He is a minor hero of mine in that he lives his life with few apologies and just as few regrets. He’s a guy who embodied quite a bit of my youthful angst/anger and put it into lyric that I could identify with in my teenage years. And to a degree I’ve mellowed in the music I listen to and purchase, but the Rollins Band is one of these scream/growl at the top of you lungs bands in which you hope not to pop an artery whilst listening/rocking out. His spoken word projects have grown up as he has and perhaps he’s mellowed out a bit as well. He recognizes himself as “the ageing alternative icon” that may be getting soft in the head. During the Up For It viewing on Friday he talked about growing older and the position you come to be in when you hit the age of 40. Talked quite a bit about not fitting a particular demographic except to buy more life insurance. Talked about the belief that you must become a man and retire the boy. Retiring your dreams to be a drone.

Wham!!! Right between the eyes. Totally blindsided me there.

Have I unwittingly become a cog in the machine of the status quo? I get up in the morning, go to work, come home, have dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. Tuesday, get up in the morning, go to work…. you get the idea. I get in the rut. And I also get out of the rut. I know that I have something special to offer the world, or so I’ve been told since I was a child, and I suppose other parents told their kids that too. When do you realize that you are “special” just like everyone else? And you go to the same bullshit job that everyone else goes to. Sure the buildings may be different, and the tasks performed at each will vary, but when did you, when did I, sacrifice being “different” and “special” to a savings account, equity, stability, benefits and a retirement package. Not that I thought that I was gonna/am going to change the world, but I had/have dreams and/or illusions of what may or might have been.
What is it that is holding me back? What is it that forces me to get up in the morning and go to work? Is it fear of a guy named Vito that is gonna come and break my legs cuz I didn’t pay my credit card bill on time? Or is it because I just want to earn money to buy stuff I really don’t need (even though I am being marketed to/ or I fit the demographic) so I’ll feel better about myself? Or is it that I am truly limited in my capacity to do anything else and have resigned myself to this thing I call a job. Maybe it’s pressure to be a stable guy and that will somehow woo a woman into marriage, and thus please my parents and I’ll be able to shed the stigma of “single guy getting older times running out when am I gonna have grandkids and you can come to the couples dinner at church and not feel like a third wheel but you are welcome to tag along cuz there may be some other nice single girls divorced recovery codependent gonna find a guy and cling onto him like there is no tomorrow” and thus live a happy life.
I so want to be THAT guy!!!

Actually what probably keeps me going to my job is the knowledge that it does mean something to someone where I work. I (in theory) am vital to the operation of the company. Not that I cannot be replaced, but I know that I would be missed if I didn’t show up. And not that the place would fall apart without me, but I have invested part of me into the job. So in that regard, maybe I have given up on my dreams of airways infamy. Maybe I have given up the dream of just quitting a job cuz I’m young and educated and I could just pick up and leave. I guess responsibility can be an anchor. And it is not always bad to be responsible, despite what Henry Rollins says. I wouldn’t want to have a family of my own and not put food on the table and a roof over their heads. I would sacrifice personal dreams to for the betterment of my wife and children (if I had said wife/children). I certainly wouldn’t want them to end up on Springer or Maury, or some other “blame it on parents/ society screwed me over so screw you and your lesbian psychic republican or whatever I don’t want to take responsibility for” type show. I do have real responsibilities and cares that matter.
So perhaps I’ll never be as cool or rebellious or lonely as Hank, but then again, I really never was “cool”.

Where does that leave me then? Going to my job as a faceless cog in the Matrix? Sacrificing my “special” dreams for socio-economic stability? I suppose for now, yeah. I sure don’t want it to take 10 years for me to figure out that I’ve wasted my time and life.

np:Indigenous - Red House

- posted by TundraBoy @ 4:14 PM 0 comments

 
I can't imagine a more distasteful thought than having to sell yourself to a prospective employer. Thankfully, I am just hoping for a promotion. But you still need to dust off ye olde resume` and polish up and add to what the interviewer will see and downplay any inadequacies/deficiencies you have. I think that is inherently deceptive. What should occur is that an interviewer should be able to crawl into your head and understand why you deserve a job or do not. You wouldn't be able hide anything, and they would maybe have a more complete understanding of who you are. Of course, the reciprocal would have to occur, and the expectations of what the interviewer is looking for, would then be clear to you. Or you can take the blue pill and forget all about it and the story will end. So, all that typed to say, I hope to get a new job at the company I already work for and I hope they will understand why I am qualified for it, over someone outside the organization.

Allison, my sister was in the ER last Friday. When the phone rang last Friday evening, and my mom told me of her day spent in the ER with Allison, I felt as if someone had stomped on my stomach. That prolly would have felt much better than how my sis was feeling at the moment, but I digress. Apparently Allison had a cyst burst. Now I was unaware of the "common" nature of cysts and how they attach themselves to ovaries. Much less that if they burst, how painful it must be. My concern existed and still exists on several levels. 1. Why does she have cysts in the first place. 2. Why did the cyst burst. 3. Will there be more cysts and will they also burst. 4. What is the danger of cysts when they burst. 5. Will this affect her ability to have children. 6. Do these cysts pose a cancer threat. 7. What are the next steps to be taken. I have no definitive answers to these concerns, outside of their "common" nature to occur. I love my sister and do not want her in pain, so I like some friggin answers. If these things are so bloody common, then why can't doctors come up with any better answers?

np: Rick Holmstrom - Hydraulic Groove: My Maria


Happy Birthday Lyanne!!!
- posted by TundraBoy @ 10:12 PM 0 comments