Halloween

Again this year, we will not go to any trouble to decorate since the neighborhood kids already think of our place as "The Haunted House."  
Reportedly, the previous owners were slain in their beds by an escaped homicidal lunatic with a hook for a hand.  Parents and kids, hooked to death.   The crime scene was so gory that the county coroner resigned the next day.  

Sometimes at night when I get up to go to the bathroom I see dead people - the ghosts of the kids with bloody hook marks... well, you don't really want to know the details.  

But the ghosts really spook the cats sometimes.  Cats have a special connection with the spirit world.  Come to think of it, the tragedy happened around Halloween back in 1995.  The murderer was never caught and some people think it might have been a vampire.

Hey what's that?   Something seems to be scratching at the door... Oh no.  Its a daemon or something.  Smells like rotting flesh.  Big teeth.  Wants to drink my blood.  I know, silver bullets in gun.  Load.  Cock.  Fire.  Bang, Bang ..Eek,   Argh,  (silence).

Hi.  this is the vampire, the poor pale shmuck is lying, drained and lifeless, on the rug.  Just for the record, silver bullets only kill werewolves.   Hahahahahahahahaahahaha! 

Carpe Autumn

There is nothing as magic as an early morning stroll under a bright New England sky in October. The crisp, moist air hangs like golden wisps of smoke, whispering ripe apples and pumpkins.

Emily Dickinson found the slant of light on winter afternoons to be oppressive, but for me the hue and angle of the light in autumn is a tonic for the soul.

Yes, you can feel the promise of frost in the damp air and the dew glistening on the grass. One night, very soon, the tomato vines and marigold leaves will turn black. We will pull them up and toss them on the compost pile.

Though we will sorely miss the freshly picked tomatoes for our salads and homemade salsa, and we will long for the luxury of golden pungent marigolds in vases, we will not mourn their passing.   We are already thinking of the spring planting and renewal.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that we only have a few precious weeks to savor the fruits of our cultivation makes us appreciate them more. And we dare to look ahead with hope to the inevitable Spring

We who love the change of seasons welcome Autumn, and in turn, Winter. We do not carp about weather. We celebrate the changes in the skies.  We carpe the diem.

You will not hear us complaining about the rain or the heat or even the hurricane. We take what comes, knowing that, if there is a God, then it is His will.  Despite our prayers or wishes or puny technology we have no power over weather – we can only try to endure.

You may hear us remark that the lawn is brown or the snow is too deep to go to work.  These are not complaints they are merely observations.  We are Buddhists.  We cannot make the weather happen.  We can only sit and hunker down when the winds blow, and wait for the lovely days.

This is life.  Because the earth is off-kilter, we have seasons.  They say the earth has a constant temperature at the depth six feet.  Lord knows we will have plenty of time for that.

Labor Day 2018

 Although I am no longer a member of the paid workforce, I welcome the long Labor Day holiday as the unofficial end of summer.   The mere act of flipping the page in my calendar to September evokes the hope of fall harvest, football, apples, vibrant colors.

The nights are already getting cooler.  Acorns hang in fat clusters on my neighbor's oak trees.  In my side yard, a red-tailed hawk  can't get off the ground with the fat carcass of the rabbit it just killed.  As the hawk sullenly pecks at the carcass.  I silently cheer -- one less rabbit gnawing on the hostas.  I hope the hawk returns to feast on other fat rabbits, tasty squirrels and chunky chipmunks that have menaced my garden all summer.  

It has been a long hot, dry summer.    

Repost of a remembrance - 11 years later

Remembering Woodstock 1969

Note This was previously posted 8/14/2009

Man, who could forget that moment in history, forty years ago, when we gathered, half a million strong, for those few days of Peace, Love and Music? 

OK, so maybe I was not there, but I heard about it on the radio. Hey, my wife and I had jobs in those days; responsibilities - rent, careers, and a baby on-the-way.

It was actually a memorable summer for us - but, not because of any music concert. In July we had taken a cruise to Bermuda as a sort of delayed honeymoon. We were young, clean cut, and had never heard of Jimmi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. We were still under the musical influence of Bobby Darren and The Kingston Trio. 

The gathering at Woodstock would never have appeared on our radar. We were trying to break-in, not drop-out. We did not even know anyone that did drugs or practiced free love.

One of my musical memories of that summer was driving through the Sumner Tunnel in Boston and hearing an unfamiliar but haunting song that was playing loudly on someone's 8-track tape. (In those days there was no radio reception in the tunnels). The vocal harmony was magnetic and thrilling to me, but I did not recognize the artists. 

It was only when the Woodstock movie came out, I was able to identify the group and the song - "Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Ok, I know what you are thinking, I was out of touch. So sue me.

When the story came out about Woodstock - 3 days of sharing close proximity with masses of drugged out hippies who had not bathed recently, dancing in the mud and blocking other people's view of the stage, standing in line for the few porta-potties with 399,000 other bursting bladders, I was secretly glad that I was not there. 

I say 'secretly', because as I later discovered everyone thought you were cool if you could claim to have been there. Only a clueless dolt would admit that a) he didn't go and b) did not regret missing it.

Most of the performers at Woodstock are probably dead by now, if not forgotten. And, most of the attendees who survived the drugs and free love would be at the age where they are in or close to retirement. For me, it is hard to believe that forty years have passed like an express train in the night.

Let's Talk About Free Speech

If I was the Emperor, I would prohibit demonstrations that inconvenience innocent people.

The right of Free speech does not mean freedom to impede the movement of others.  People who protest by blocking traffic are wrong-headed.  They may get attention, but I submit that most of the attention is anger, not support for their cause.

Sit-ins may galvanize the choir but I don't believe such actions will change anyone's mind.  My personal research indicates that just the opposite effect occurs.  People who are inconvenienced harden their opposition to the cause and the group that created the inconvenience.

I see blocking traffic as a form of terrorism.  Just like when a bomb explodes in a pizza joint or speeding truck intentionally running into holiday shoppers in a crowded square, the ones who are most harmed are innocent of the injuries that are supposed by the terrorist group..   Instead of having the guts to confront the real object of the anguish, the protester takes his anger out on anyone who happens to be in the wrong place. These "soft targets" are attractive to cowards who lack the guts to face their real oppressors.

Darwin tells us that a person whose calculus is to inconvenience others to get attention for his cause will likely pass these traits along to subsequent offspring.  In a few generations we will have nothing but chaos. 

Thus we need to nip the problem in the bud. Therefore, a modest proposal:  Shoot the protesters in the groin, arrest the survivors and remove their reproductive organs..


What do you Think?

Peevish

I'm feeling a bit peevish this morning.

#1  In Massachusetts, the law states that pedestrians in a crosswalk have the right of way, and autos must stop to let the walkers finish crossing.  I do not have any problem with this law.

The right of way does not apply to people standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross.  And it does not empower idiots to step into a crosswalk when there is a car approaching at 35 miles per hour, forcing the driver of said car to jam on the brakes.  

#2 Breakdown Lane Travel.  On many roads in this state, travel is allowed in the breakdown lane during certain periods.  I'm not sure what the poor souls who actually have broken-down are supposed to do, but there have been cases where they have been killed by motorists tearing down the breakdown lane at 60 or 70 mph.

  I have a simple solution to this problem.  Amend the law to limit the speed in the breakdown lane to not exceed 30 mph.  That would alleviate the bottleneck situation, would keep cars from speeding past you in the right-most lane, not to mention that it would diminish the likelihood of a crash with a disabled vehicle legitimately occupying the breakdown lane.

#3 Why am I paying for a land line?   20 times a day the phone rings and caller id says "Unavailable" or some other label that does not identify the caller.  If I don't recognize the name, I do not pick up. but it is still annoying.  Many are robocalls that leave a message on the answering machine, and I have to delete them.  Verizon should offer an option to block calls from going to the answering machine, also I am the do-not-call list, which seems to be a joke as I am getting calls from known scammers and spammers.  Verizon is not looking out for me, and I resent it.

#4  I have a big screen TV.  Why do Netflix disks insist on showing movies in letterbox format ( the previews are full-screen, so don't tell me that it's the TV's fault.  I hate when I see the message that "That option is not available" when I want to skip ahead so I don't need to view the anti piracy messages in six languages.

Notes from God's Diary

Creating a universe is pretty easy if you know what you’re doing.

Despite what they say, I am not going to raise dead bodies; (what would be the point of that?)

I do not like burnt offerings.

People are like ants; they have a spirit but do not possess a soul.

The main reason I created humans is to watch them fight.

There is no heaven, but Hell is real.

All evangelists are going to hell. 

Monday Morning Quarterback

More than a year has now passed since the unfortunate election of Donald Trump.  I was a Bernie fan, and not enamored with Hillary. I believe the outcome of the November 2016 election would have been different if Bernie had been The Democratic candidate.   I, along with most pundits, was expecting someone other than Trump to be the Republican nominee. 

I think I could have voted for someone like Ohio Governor John Kasich instead of Hillary. But, as it turned-out, I was stuck with a choice between two candidates, neither of whom had my trust or admiration.  One was a self-promoting reality show producer with a checkered history.  The other was a political insider with a considerable albatross factor. 

I voted for the second worst candidate. But the worst one won. 

In hindsight, I think Trump got nominated and elected for the simple reason that he was the least boring of the presidential hopefuls. And, he has not been boring in office.   He has been the most un-presidential of presidents.  (I don't think I need to expand on this point.)

And here we are March 2018 – more divided than ever.  

Somehow, the major political parties have convinced the public -- and especially the media -- that we are concerned with the same tired topics:  Abortion, Gun rights, Immigration.

In fact, most of us are not lying awake at night worrying about access to abortion, or whether we have the right to shoot at the squirrels in our back yards, or whether every fruit picker is a citizen.

We are more worried about corrupt politicians, crime, id theft and illness. We are afraid that if we (god forbid) have to go to the hospital we might end up sicker than when we went in.  We hate the traffic that clogs our highways and the inhuman conditions of air travel.  

We are awakened at ungodly hours by honking horns, barking dogs, gas-powered leaf-blowers and idling diesel truck engines.  Our quality of life is assailed by commercial interests and thoughtless neighbors.

We are saddened that so many of our elected officials are bought-and-paid-for by special interests, that they remain in office mainly to enrich themselves, leaving our most needy of our citizens to live in squalor.

Our food is prepared by the least-educated, least-hygienic people the restaurant can hire.  We can’t buy cigarettes, but Wendy’s can sell a two-pound hamburger.

Everything that we want to have or do is taxed.  Companies can lie about the price of their product with an asterisk (because that is the “base” price that does not include fees, taxes, usage charges, royalties, and all manner of additional add-ons that can double the cost of the thing.)

President Trump still acts like he is running a reality show. America is not greater, and we are annoyed.

Yes I quit Facebook and Twitter

Am I a Trend setter?

Not to brag, but I have always been a stalwart defender of truth, justice and the American way. No wait., that was Superman.  Not me.  

Well, it's been said that I march to the beat of my own drum, but I'll have to admit that this is not necessarily a choice, but more likely because I am rhythmically retarded.  I am fated to be out of step with my fellow marchers. I can't help it.  At least I can sing on key.

My decision to shut-off Facebook and Twitter has been percolating for some time.  Most intelligent folks would agree that Social Media is in general a huge, but benevolent, waste of time.  But, most regular users concede that it is also a convenient medium for exchanging photos and items of interest among family members and real friends.  The really smart users probably limit their exposure to a few chosen individuals.  

But most of us, seeking 'free' entertainment are seduced into expanding our 'friends' circle to include friends-of-friends and even the dreaded 'public' (ie, anyone).   As time goes by, we are drawn into seemingly innocent exchanges of information - fun surveys, tests, startling videos, cute pet photos, petition drives, affinity groups, you name it.  What we haven't really given much thought to is how much information we are giving away through seemingly harmless participation.

Recent revelations have made it clear that Social Media is far from a benevolent waste of time.  Rather it has become an industry that crawls up your ass and into your brain and shares all the information it learned about you along the way -- with total strangers, and without your knowledge.  (You consented by agreeing to the fine print in their terms and conditions of use).   So, when you were answering the questions to determine your Leprechaun name, or answering the Mensa quiz or clicking on the discount K-Y Jelly ad, they were gathering information about your preferences, your education level, your political ideology, etc.

We are not just talking about Facebook.  There are many other sites that do the same thing.  And the big search engines (Google, Microsoft, AOL) collude to sell data about what you have searched for -- refrigerators, hats, male enhancement products, medicines, cat litter...  

I have been feeling a growing discontent with the silliness of much of the content that was being presented to me. Frankly, I don't care about where you went for lunch or what it looked like, or 10 photos of you standing in front of a cathedral in France (which you posted to make me jealous).  I don't care about your cute cat, and even less about your precocious grand kid, and I especially don't care about the squirrel that is raiding your bird feeder, but thanks for sharing.

So, after learning about the thousands of fake Facebook accounts set up by Russian operatives to influence the 2016 election, and then more recently hearing about the data breach by Cambridge Analytics, I decided that I could live without Facebook --which for me was a colossal waste of time invested for the amount of entertainment enjoyed.  I also deleted my Twitter account.   A big problem with these platforms is that there is no editor.

Anyone can say anything in the name of free speech regardless of how inane or wrong they are.   If you like that type of chaos, you are welcome to it.  I'll  pass.

I have not missed it.  I'm even thinking of updating my blog on a regular basis. 

Don't laugh, it could happen..