Work Part 1

Now I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here. I'm not one of those old timers that walked to school uphill in both directions. I don't hobble around in a state of curmudgeonly rage (well actually I do, but that's only because everybody sucks) grumping about how "Kids now a days just don't understand the value of hard work". Quite simply...



Again don't get me wrong I  was always willing to work. Even though I've always had a misogynist sense that women invented work when the men weren't looking so they could have money( women invented money too I'll bet) to buy baskets for their potpourri  (why we need baskets for old leaves I'll never know. Couldn't we just leave them on the ground?). Still working seems like a fair trade off in order to have cool stuff.(Like potpourri baskets?) You don't have to like it. The world is full of stuff you have to do even though you don't like it.

Just to establish my working cred. I once worked 6 years in a row and never called in sick. These were 300 work-day years too, not the sissy 250 day years. I did 3 New England winters in an unheated cinderblock building.

I said they were New England winters!

I get it.

I do get it. Why people like their dose of religion so much. Worlds a tough place, sometimes you need a little help slogging on. I'm not a big fan of embracing nonsense answers to life's tribulations though. Sure a frosty adult beverage and some recreational pharmaceuticals can help you through the day. There's no question that wallowing in consumer goods has a certain addictive charm. There is no doubt that a book of fairy tales wrapped carefully in some serious theatrics is more of a comfort than facing the world head on and alone.



3 Wars, the economy, Japan, April Fools storms, congress, Dancing With the Stars. Has it ever been this bad? The answer of coarse is yes. Yes many times over as a matter of fact. Now drugs and alcohol are unquestionably fun but if you need them to keep on keeping on you're in trouble. Buying stuff, owning stuff, all that gets you in the end is stuff. Nobody ever cried out on their death bed for one more day so they could complete their collection of Franklin Mint Glee collector plates. Ditto with religion, embrace it if you wish, but in the end you better have cash until you leave this world. Separate a man from his god: that's the real test. Will he still do good? In fact can it even be considered goodness if the payoff is infinite happiness?

A sad twisted man.

So last week, giddy over the 20 or 30 regular viewers I have achieved, I made a post about "True Love". Not my strong suit. I even tried to clean it up, hose out the negative undertones, and fix some nasty errors in logic. Still not getting it. Unfortunately I can't leave it alone. So here is something that popped up on a friends facebook page which I am now poaching for this post.



Now that's what we think of when we think of true love ( I know they are the same gender, Hello also two completely different species.) "True Love" as it exists in Disney movies and too many peoples heads does not involve sex. Hell, I'll go with it. I even get a bit verklempt when I watch the video. ( a verklempt  50 year old fat man sitting alone in front of a computer; not exactly a vision that suggests mental health, but we will let that go for now.) Something nags though...

I have it. The elephant doesn't care if the dog goes out with other dogs then comes home smelling of cat poo and dead squirrel. The dog doesn't care if the elephant can't drop those last 5 pounds of baby weight or insists on getting a new more stylish water trough even though the old one is perfectly fine. In essence the dog is the elephants pet and the elephant is the dogs pet.

This is not the way humans function. If you want a pet to supply your love buy a dog. ( no cats, the only reason a cat seems to love you is because you are too big for it to eat.) Unconditional love is great in your head, just like great deep fried food is great at a clam shack, stick either in the real world and things get messy and hard.

Mmmm messy and hard!

Is it just Me?

It was a tough week at the new job. I got the usual new guy pass on things for the first couple of weeks, but eventually the real people emerge from those smiling helpful folks that I was introduced to. Oh well. Nothing I haven't dealt with before, but it still wears a body down. So Wednesday I got my arm twisted into going to McBrides. There was serious twisting involved too, I'd passed on trivia Tuesday night and I never pass on trivia. McBrides is a perfectly grungy Irish Pub with perfectly greasy pub food a mere quarter mile from the condo.

Mmmm grungy pub!

So I'm in there eating my bacon burger, Mmm bacon!, when a few of the young ladies to my right order oreotinis. Seriously people? A martini is ice cold gin ( vodka if you must) with a swish, a soupcon, a tad of vermouth and an olive ( again, if you must). My Buddy ordered a cherry lager. Freaking cherry, are you kidding me? Consuming the stuff doesn't bother me. Knock yourself out. This is America; you can drink out of the toilet for all I care. I just don't think you can put a Dairy Queen drink in a martini glass and pretend you are a grown up just because you are drinking out of a big peoples cup. Ditto with the cherry lager. I was coerced into trying it. You don't call it beer when it tastes like Dr. Pepper.

Even looks like the guy serving it should be wearing a paper hat.

Gin, vermouth, olive;that's it!

Well That was Terrible.

Yesterdays post was weak, Damn you Turkey hangover. So today I'm going to step back and take a few deep breaths. Of coarse in life you have to be willing to be terrible if you ever expect to be good.



For the youngsters in the crowd that was good for the gong show. Maybe things really did suck when I was a boy. Anyway I was thinking about the body paint, Mmmm body paint, and I decided that you could use simple syrup instead of corn syrup in the recipe. The advantage to this is that you can make simple syrup yourself, it is super cheap, and you can put it in daiquiris and lemonade.

You will need water and sugar. That's why they call it simple, Duh!

This is not about fried turkey.

So we were having fried turkey last night. Mmmm fried Turkey! Everyone was having a good time. The food was great. People were laughing, telling jokes, telling stories, arguing, just doing what friends do, when K suggested that her friend, and everyone for that matter, wants to find true love. If you want to ruin a party...



Now I'm not  big on discussing gender anything. A known misanthrope with obvious emotional issues I'm the last one to comment on the nature of love. For example I picked the Snow White clip mainly because the whole concept it portrays is destructive to the future happiness of every young girl that sees it. There are many number  other examples ...perhaps Cinderella hooker from "Pretty Woman" or maybe converting to slutdom from the end of "Grease". I might be a misogynist, but I wouldn't feed my kids, if I ever stopped  hating long enough to have some, fairy tale nonsense or destructive stereotypes if I could help it. But that's Hollywood love. It doesn't really answer the question. Doesn't everyone long for true love?

Well there's a problem here. What is "True Love"? If  by "True Love" you mean everyone has a soul mate that is born to be your other half you have already lost me, and since all you need is one person to say no to end the concept of "everyone agrees with this", this case is closed. That was easy except...

What if "True Love" isn't something you have, but something you get too? I posted this morning about pay-offs in life. What if true love is the end of your journey? Not that fade to black moment from the movies when your  journey together would normally start? That's the moment you're all-in, head over heels, can't bare to be apart, in love, right? That's true love, right?How about 2, 3, 5 years along, still young, still getting you some 5 times a week; that's true love, right? But then come kids, and mortgages, and aging parents, and accidents, and illness, and money issues, and money woes, and desire, and neglect and they're all in the future and they're all going to always be there, but they're not simple to deal with and they don't always have good outcomes. Whoa!

I don't know how love starts for women, hell I don't know how love starts for men, but since I am a man I can venture a guess for my peeps. You ladies aren't going to like it, but for most of us it starts as a carnival ride.

"Look Ma, no hands"

I am not proud of the fact that for most of my gender when we see a woman we are attracted to we are hardwired to want to climb on and go for a spin. Crude I know, but also true. Now how do you separate that feeling, which starts in your drawers but ends in your head, from your emotions, which start in your head and stay there. The answer is you can't if you are a well raised man, but it is no problem if you are a sociopath. Too many man are sociopaths; and I'm sorry ladies but I have no tips on how to avoid them other than take your time, make sure you are not the only one he treats well, and erase that prince charming bull from your DVD player right now. We aren't talking about sociopaths though we are talking about "True Love". Most men are not sociopaths, but they do have a case of the munchies for lady parts every bit as strong as a stoner has for oreos. Again crude but mostly true. Boy are we crude.

The Big Pay-off.

It's Sunday morning again. Wow, that long slow march to the big dirt nap at the end will not be put off. Knowing that makes it easy to understand why people like themselves some religion. No matter what I do all week long Sunday is going to show up whether I like it or not. Then the next Sunday, then the next Sunday after that, until there are finally no more Sundays. If the march must continue relentlessly to its' final conclusion you definitely want a big pay off at the end.  Every Sunday I like to post a little spiritual, or spiritual feeling, music as a nod to my desire for that pay-off. Like a winning lottery ticket, or a night with Pam Anderson, knowing it is not likely to happen doesn't change the fact that you would like it to happen. Well this Sunday we're going all in on the payoff. Don't listen to the music though until you let me blabber. We are modern folk in need of context. If  you get "it" you'll be all "Beethoven? Sex? What to choose? What to choose?" If you don't get it... well I don't know... sorry?



So back in the late 18th century classical music had run it's coarse. There was nothing new under the sun. Short of cutting the music loose from it's tonal base (Hello Wagner) everything had been done and done well. I don't know if Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony as a punctuation mark on the whole period, ( or on music in general, it's that good) but that's the way it plays.



Symphonies are in sonata form, (which means music, as opposed to voice i.e. no singing). Like I said, up until the 9th everything had been done. This is only the last movement of 4 (if you have an hour read my little tips for listening then go all in) but even at the beginning of this movement you can hear the music struggling with form. It's muddy, straining at it's tonal base. The strings are tentative, themes are lost or not even there. It dithers. It strains. This sucks! It seems like Beethoven has no place to go. What the hell is he going to do? Then Bang! the whole things bursts into song. (sonata form remember, voices are a no no. Good thing Beethoven doesn't care about rules). Not just any song either. Beethoven chose Schiller's "Ode to Joy" for his words.

O friends, no more these sounds!
Let us sing more cheerful songs,
more full of joy!

Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired we tread
Thy sanctuary.

Thy magic power re-unites
All that custom has divided,
All men become brothers
Under the sway of thy gentle wings.

Whoever has created
An abiding friendship,
Or has won
A true and loving wife,
All who can call at least one soul theirs,
Join in our song of praise;
But any who cannot must creep tearfully
Away from our circle.

All creatures drink of joy
At nature's breast.
Just and unjust
Alike taste of her gift;

She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine,
A tried friend to the end.
Even the worm can feel contentment,
And the cherub stands before God!

Gladly, like the heavenly bodies
Which He set on their courses
Through the splendor of the firmament;
Thus, brothers, you should run your race,
As a hero going to conquest.

You millions, I embrace you.
This kiss is for all the world!

Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.

Do you fall in worship, you millions?
World, do you know your creator?

Seek him in the heavens;
Above the stars must He dwell.

(Probably better in the original German.)

---

This is important. It is not "Ode to God" The poem celebrates the unity of man not the mightiness of god. So in one giant blast of music Beethoven finishes off the classical period, turns all tonal music to come into a pale imitation of his talent, ( yes Bono even you) and echos that "All men are created equal" thing from the Declaration of Independence which was written around the same time. I know it seems like I am disproving my own first paragraph, but that paragraph is about wanting a pay-off for life's hard slog. The 9th symphony is all about pay-off. After 80 years of the classical period it is it is nothing but pay-off. It takes you from a birthing train wreak to an orgasmic finish in less than an hour. ( think about it ladies, a whole hour not the usual 2 minutes). It is the moment Dirty Harry plugs Scorpio  times a thousand. If that isn't spiritual I don't know what is.

I'm all in this morning. I've loaded up on some 9th symphony, I've got my Boston Globe, and I'm off to Linda's for a asparagus omelet with swiss cheese and a bucket load of hollandaise sauce. It's a long march, the pay-off is unknown and unknowable, but the trip is worth the price of admission if you are just open to how much greatness is around you.