Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

I Surrender!

I used to be such a friggin' tough guy. Pressure? Stress? Bring it on! My first band in New York City was named Tension. Peace and quiet? Well, that was for pussies. I figured I'd catch up on my sleep when I died.

No more. I'm ready to throw in the towel. I don't want to prove anything to anybody. Don't want to sit in somebody's office and prove to them that I'll work my ass off. Fuck the boss. I don't want to do what anybody tells me to do.

The job in the city just about killed me. I don't have the ability to push myself to the limit that I had when I was young. My body breaks down. My face turns into a mess of red sores. My mind falls to pieces.

I've been fighting against the obvious. I really am an Old Dog. I can't do this shit any more. Don't want to either.

Tough on the ego admitting that. What the fuck?

I'd like to blame somebody, but it's just time, age and wear and tear. I really used it up. Can't say I've been cheated out of anything.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life taking it easy. Play some music. Sit around and bullshit with the other Old Dogs. Talk about all that pussy I got in the past, and all that pussy I'd be getting now if only I had the energy to chase after it.

Two months to Social Security! Sign me up! I'd like to have more money, but what the hell? It ain't gonna happen.

Maybe I'll find a part time job. Nothing very stressful. I'll keep looking for that church organist gig.

I'm hanging up the jock strap. Just can't do it any more.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The deciduous trees haven't shed all their leaves! Makes for a strange picture. By the time snow usually arrives, the deciduous trees are bare naked.

It's a great day for firing up the pellet stove and doing very little. I'll watch some football and play some music. Got to get ready for Tuesday's rehearsal with those damned Old Dogs.

Time for me to learn some new tricks.

New Old Dogs Logo!

Major renovation of the Old Dogs logo! Here's what it looks like now!

What do you think... Johnny? Mike? Big Joe?

Up in the right hand corner, you can see the logo as an icon.

All we need are some pics of the boys in their official Old Dog costumes, complete with floppy ears and waggy tails... and a CD... and we've got a band! 

Well... we could use some gigs, too.

Just to jog your memory...  Here's what the logo looked like before.

That dog is clearly wailing on a Rickenbacker.

Old Dogs On the Hunt

Rehearsal with the Old Dogs ended at 10 last night. I poked my hand in my jacket pocket as I stepped into my pickup truck... and... no keys! I looked around the rehearsal room... nothing! So, I enlisted the entire band in the hunt. We looked just about like the picture below, except we were sniffing around in the dark.

We searched every inch of the lawn and driveway in front of Mike's house for 40 minutes, noses to the ground. We had a couple of little flashlights, and we turned on the headlights of all the cars.

I have a tonneau top on my pickup that I lock on two sides, so I knew that the keys were probably lost somewhere around the back of the truck. We assigned three of the Old Dogs, Joe, Mike and Johnny, to try to sniff the keys out of the undercarriage, while I continued to search the lawn.

The old noses don't work so good any more, but the Old Dogs make up for it with years of experience.

Mike finally located the keys just above the leaf springs on the undercarriage at 10:40 p.m.

He said: "You pull them out so you can have the satisfaction of finding them."

We may be Old Dogs, but we can still hunt.

What we need is some bitches. That's what keeps Old Dogs going. All we need is a little petting. Scratch our bellies and feed us. Is that too much to ask?

Retirement... Here I Come!

I'm ready to bail. I can't take the conflict and stupidity of the workplace. My patience is used up. Hilariously, I'm making more money than ever, but to do that I'm having to put up with bullshit beyond my endurance.

My job is more senior and demands more responsibility than I really want at this point in my life. As Big Joe says, the level of responsibility and pressure I want in a job can be defined by the phrase: Do you want to supersize that order? I'm tired and beat up beyond comprehension.

Burying two wives really kicked the shit out of me. You try it.

The job is bad for my health, too. I'm sitting 8 hours a day. Combined with the hostile atmosphere of the office and the pressure of the job, that's producing a fierce beating on my body. I'm still healing from a broken collar bone, so my yoga routine is very limited. I can't work out the stress.

This weekend, I'm trying to pull myself back together. Big Joe's going to be over for a bike ride. I did ten miles yesterday. We'll do 20 today. I'll do 35 to 40 minutes of yoga today. Then it's back to the grind (and the boss from hell) tomorrow.

My days on the job are clearly numbered. I really don't give a shit about the work. I know I should, but I don't. Learning another programming language, or mastering another application program... who gives a fuck? I'd rather tear my eyeballs out of their sockets with a pair of pliers.

I can't afford to retire. I'll probably have to give up my house and live a very modest life. I'd hoped to find a partner to share my life with, but that hasn't happened. That's probably my fault. Nobody can possibly replace Myrna. That's a curse I have to live with. And, it feels like it's too late to struggle with a new relationship. I want peace in my life.

What's retirement going to be about? Maybe I'll move to a warm climate. I need to find some sort of housing that I can afford where I can actually sing and play music. That's not going to be easy.

I want to spend my days doing what I want to do. I'm fed up with bosses. I've got 10 to 15 years left of good health. It's time to give up the rat race.

Retirement, here I come! Ready or not!

OWS Protest at Ground Zero

I walked out of work on Friday, right into this OWS protest march headed down Vesey Street at Ground Zero. The protesters finally have gotten their chants together, linking to 60s nostalgia with: Hey, Hey! Hey, Ho! Wall Street greed has got to go! You can see in the picture below that unions, particularly those involved in the Verizon strike, are now heavily represented.

My life is hilarious right now. I'm working on the Wall Street "reform" for one of the major villains. My boss is the boss from hell... an adherent of the threat and tantrum style of management. For eight hours a day, I sit chained to a desk, bored silly. On breaks and lunch hours, I take a walk through Tribeca. Then, as I emerge from work, I step into the human traffic jams and the screaming protesters.

I am a Wall Street Zombie! This might well be the last gig of my life before I retire.

I think we're seeing the beginning of a dramatic change in social organization on the horizon. Computers and computer aided machines will slowly, I think, erase most jobs, leaving humans to try to figure out something else to do with their time besides going to work. The problem: How to distribute the basic goods and services in the absence of work?

There is a humane and civil rights issue in this, although not on the scale of the 60s Civil Rights movement, as leftists like to claim. I've wasted so much of my life under the thumb of some dumb tyrant boss. Time when I could have been doing things that are pleasurable and useful solely to me.

I think we're going to have to solve this dilemma in the future. People need to be freed from the S&M bondage of boss and worker. How and whether this will happen is anybody's guess. The opportunity will be there in the future. Will we know how to seize this opportunity?

Old Dogs Howl!

Big Joe and I have been rehearsing with the Old Dogs in Hyde Park. It’s a fun group. Johnny plays bass and vocals. Mike supplies the practice space and plays drums. We’ve been recording rehearsals on Mike’s Zoom. An amazing device.

Here’s a bit I cut out of our rehearsal three weeks ago. We’re still learning to get the gain right and place the Zoom correctly. This is a Badfinger tune.

I’ll keep putting up tunes. You’ll see. We’re starting to get it together as a band. We always have fun playing together, which is the most important thing.

We need to play some dog tunes. Like “Hound Dog!”

National Unfriend Day... November 17th

Jimmy Kimmel has designated November 17th as "National Unfriend Day." I'm down with that idea. Kimmel believes that we're suffering from an epidemic of fake friends. I've got a few of those on Facebook. But I get unfriended regularly.

I'm not one of those people who rests his entire identity on how many Facebook friends I can acquire. Last time I looked, my friend list was just pitiful. Some people have thousands of friends. My friend list is a joke in comparison.

Like everybody, I argue politics on Facebook. I usually find myself in lengthy arguments with my liberal friends. They're very touchy. As I've said before, liberals are tolerant about everything except for disagreement with any of their ideas.

Liberals have their long list of "bigot" issues that no sane person could possibly disagree with. Racial and sexual quotas are at the top of the list. Disagree with a liberal about that and you'll get unfriended in a hurry. You're also not allowed to make fun of gays, women or blacks. That will send a liberal stomping off in a huff.

Sometimes, I really want to get rid of a liberal friend, but I'm constitutionally opposed to censoring them out of existence. I'll read their dithering idiocy for as long as they want to keep at it. If I really want to get rid of them, all I have to do is to mention that I absolutely love gasoline and that I think green energy is a scam.

Presto! Delete! They disappear.

Happened a couple of times this weekend. Two of my liberal friends solicited me to join a campaign to censor Facebook. They want to delete posts and posters who they regard as "homophobic." I replied that the value of Facebook is precisely that it is uncensored, and that gays should just develop a thick skin and learn to live with disagreement and ridicule like the rest of us.

I also said that it might be better to know what people really think, instead of censoring them into silence. That's the idea behind the old saying: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

There went two "friends."

As I said, I'm down with unfriending friends who aren't really friends. There are all sorts of ways to do this. Be creative!

My Early Favorite... Herman Cain

I like Herman Cain. He's quite personable. Republicans have their own black guy! I see a lot of humor in that. How dare a black guy identify as Republican! His 9-9-9 tax plan is quite interesting. And, of course, he has extensive business experience. That's good.

The left is already busily at work on its standard Republicans Are Stupid! motif with Cain's tax plan. He got the plan from Sim City! Or (as Ann Althouse has suggested) the plan is a reflection of Cain's belief in numerology. Such ruminations upon a black candidate's ideas would, of course, be prima facie evidence of racism were it inflicted upon a Democrat.

Last week, as I was listening to Fox New on Sirius Radio in my truck, I happened upon an interview with Art Laffer, the architect of President Reagan's supply side economics.

Surprise! Laffer endorsed 9-9-9! He was particularly enthusiastic about the plan's ability to (1) reduce the incentives to evade taxes, and (2) promote growth and thus increase federal revenues. President Reagan's tax and economic policies were the foundation of the 25 year period of economic growth and prosperity that we enjoyed in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

So, Cain is not a dummy after all! And, he has decades of experience as a CEO running a company and meeting payroll... the exact opposite of our current president, whose only real life experience was as something called a community activist.

Of course, nominating Cain would give the Republicans a huge tactical advantage. President Obama has nothing but a record of failure to run on, so he will (and already has) resorted to his Vote for Me Or You're a Racist strategy. Nominating Cain would render this strategy inoperable. Hilarious!

I'll vote for AOB (Anybody But Obama). But, Cain offers a refreshing alternative. I'll look into his resume a little deeper if he remains a serious, viable candidate.

Pictures of Occupy Wall Street

I took a walk to Wall Street Friday to check out the occupation. Plenty of tourists did the same. The encampment is small. I'd say a couple of hundred people at most. At the West entrance to the park, I encountered the inevitable drum circle. Same thing as the Sunday afternoon session on the Green in Woodstock.

Like everybody else, I'm trying to figure out what the occupation is about. I encountered the sign below just behind the drum circle.

I'm not aware of any government assaults on unions, or racist attacks on Muslim, immigrants and people of color, but maybe I missed them. The United National Antiwar Coalition's website features a live webcam of the occupation.

The kitchen was a little bare when I passed by. Note the U.S. flag shoved upside down in the pumpkin in the foreground. In the background, you can see volunteer food preparers wearing plastic gloves.

Occupation is hard work. The occupiers have to get their rest somehow. The kids (and most of them look to be college kids) sprawled on sleeping bags all over the park. From the scent wafting through the breeze, I'd say some very high quality weed was being smoked. In fact, I saw a couple of joints being passed.

The above picture has everything! These young people are reading about themselves in the New York Post. Note the guitar. One of the young men has covered up his face with a bandanna, emulating a Latin style revolutionary. And, of course, in the background you can see a banner featuring Che Guevara, Fidel Castro's executioner. That romantic fantasy seems to always appeal to the young.

I'd heard that student loan debt was one of the major complaints of the occupiers. So, I was glad that I ran into this young man. He wants justice! He doesn't want to pay his student loans! As I walked through the crowd, I encountered a bewildering mess of causes.

This guy seems a little out of date with his (her?) obsession with nuclear war. And, what an outfit! He's put together elements of the Grim Reaper and Darth Vader. I don't know how he stands to wear this outfit all day, but occupation demands sacrifice.

The media was out in force. Multiple interviews were in progress all over the park. TV reporters interviewed occupiers. Occupiers interviewed other occupiers. Tourists took pictures and shot video. I listened to the O'Reilly show on Fox tonight, and Geraldo Rivera discussed his brief appearance at the occupation. Trucks and vans with satellite dishes on their roofs ringed the site.

Of course, at any lefty event, the great villains must be cursed. So, I wasn't surprised to encounter this poster denouncing Fox News and the Tea Party. Earlier in the day, the demonstrators marched to Rupert Murdoch's mansion to curse him. Murdoch owns Fox News.

Don't ask me what it's all about. Looks a lot like the antiwar demonstrations of the late sixties. The causes haven't changed much. The demonstrators, then and now, are mostly kids.

Back at the office, my co-workers were betting that winter will chase the occupiers out of the park, and send them packing home. We'll see.