SO WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?

The Annunciation. The Circumcision of Jesus. Other pre-Christian celebrations on the day. Other Pagan celebrations on the day. Throughout history great importance has been placed on the eve of this first day of the New Year, regardless of when it falls in the various calendars. That tends to puzzle me.

At one time the passage of time was really marked by the passing of the seasons. That was simple. That was easy. That seems to me so logical. Man’s survival, literally, was at stake. When to prepare, when to plant, when to harvest, how long stores had to last all meant feast or famine, life or death. At the least it meant life would be harder if you screwed up the producing cycle than if you prepped properly for it and accommodated it.

So that brings me back to New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure of what it is an expression.  Well, when we wake on New Year’s Day, not much is different than it was the day before. We have a new calendar but no more or less money in the bank, no better or worse health (unless you have hang over from celebrating celebrating), no less or more sorrow or joy than the day before. So, it can’t be an expression of real change either for the better or worse.

Maybe it’s an expression of a desire for new beginnings. Well, why is that the rather exclusive domain of the changing of the year? A gym can be joined any day of the year. Savings, diets, the breaking of habits and the shoring up of resolves can take place on May 1 or December 11 or August 30 just as easily and determinedly as January 1. Perhaps it is just a delaying tactic allowing us to wallow in our old ways a bit longer.

Oh, I’ve celebrated New Year’s Eve in many ways. None of them ever made sense to me beyond the reason for a party, a big one. So, maybe that’s reason enough, a desire to have a really big feast with a bunch of people all of whom are spending pots of money. I like it quiet.

Let The Rolling Begin

LET THE ROLLING BEGIN

An article in the business section of the September 13, Palm Beach Post really got my goat. It’s subject reflected the penchant of some of our private citizens and elected officials alike to want to insure that the wealthy and businesses are treated to charity.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not against the wealthy and the super rich and businesses and making money, lots of it. In fact, when friends of mine used to refer to “them” as “those rich, f*^%@(g  B!+*&%#s” or another referred to their life style as “conspicuous consumption,” it always surprised me.  

As a further “in fact,” I admire their acumen for making lots of money. Free enterprise is what the United States of America is all about. I was always happy that the rich existed and companies made money.  That gave me hope that someday I/we might be able to achieve some of what they have achieved. I always considered the rich as incentives to the rest of us. It was good to know that there really were people who were free of money worries. It meant that achieving was possible and not just some fairytale that we were fed as children.  Real people worked hard and obtained success.

However, I believe that I’m changing my mind. Correction. I believe that they are changing my mind for me.  Statistics show that, proportionally, the rich pay less in taxes than most of the rest of us. Figures show that many very wealthy individuals and companies pay no taxes at all.

Companies say that they need tax breaks so that they can create jobs. Bush gave them the breaks. They created the jobs overseas, put their money into foreign banks and demanded more tax breaks if we wanted them to bring the money back into the country that allowed them to make it at the expense of our jobs and our economy in the first place!

What a pity. Greed has taken complete control of so many minds. Hearts have been replaced with adding machines. “Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah!...I, I, Me, Me…My team must win at all costs!” has become the new individual anthem replacing patriotism.

Investors don’t want profits. They want windfall profits on every single cent that they invest. Companies don’t want to make money. They want to beat their competition into the ground and then fleece the public with gougingly high costs or pitifully poor quality.

We can’t afford the good quality, American made products because our jobs went overseas. So we go for the cheap Chinese made products. With them “breaking in” means just “breaking,” requiring us to replace sooner than the ones we can’t afford. Hence, the Chinese ones, the cheap ones, end up costing almost as much, if not more than, American made products that are of better quality and last longer.

Now, the middle class is shrinking dramatically and the poor are becoming alarmingly poorer and more numerous. Sources of money for the support structure of America and the Industrial Military Complex, that President Eisenhower warned us about, are dwindling in direct proportion to the plight of the middle class and the poor. Some members of Congress are actually looking at ways to keep us solvent, viable and strong.

As such they are looking at our tax sources. The disparity between what the rich and businesses make and what they pay in support of our country has become increasingly visible. Hence, people are beginning to want that disparity lessened by a miniscule percentage for companies and the rich. Well, the privileged ones are screaming “Class Warfare…Discrimination…Unfair…We are sacrosanct! CLASS WARFARE!”

The middle class can’t be taxed anymore. The low income can’t be taxed anymore. Those who need assistance still need it. In fact, because those companies took their jobs overseas, there are many more poor who need assistance than there were before. Infra structure still needs to be maintained and upgraded. The Industrial Military Complex, that President Eisenhower warned us about, still keeps on growing larger and larger. We still need to find the money to invade countries that benefit those super rich and those big companies.

According to those rich and those big companies, no more should come from them even though they are not paying proportionally what the rest of us are paying. They claim that are special. They run or are companies that charge $2,000.00 for a toilet seat for that same “Industrial Military Complex” that President/General Eisenhower warned us about so long ago.

It is no wonder that those rich and big companies are the ones who are so hawkish when it comes to protecting the United States by financially ruining it. No person could undue the useless, baseless, money/morale/ confidence sapping debacle known as “Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove’s governing of this country. Their invasion of Iraq has knocked us for a loop!  They’re probably still running Congress, and we’re still being knocked for loop after loop because of them.

$2,000.00 toilet seats and $300.00 “O Rings” make the people either making them for or selling them to the United States Government a killing. The fact that those making the killing don’t want to have to help share the burden for the maintenance of the United States of America is an atrocity!      

We can’t improve health care or extend unemployment or create jobs here in America anymore.  Our military toilet seats cost too much and there aren’t enough jobs. Those rich people and companies exported them. Those rich people need to keep enough of the money their big companies bring to them in order to buy $25,000,000.00 to $74,000,000.00 mansions in the luxury locations of the United States and the world. After all, they are privileged. They get our charity. More accurately, they demand our charity and call what we earn a handout.

They really are very selfish, greedy, and a severe threat to this country. The planes that hit the Twin Towers, killed 3000 people. These greedy hogs are affecting the quality of life of millions and millions of us. These people are citizen terrorists. They are destroying us for money, not even a higher power than that.

What’s even more amazing is that some of those who need help the most are supporting those clowns in dark suits and red ties who talk from the sides of their mouths like Al Capone did. Hm. What a startling resemblance, In Motive Too.

The last time there was such a disregard for all of the rest of society in favor of the luxurious life of the rich and richer, a very famous rich lady expressed their view so well. Her “Let them eat cake” went down in history! With that pronouncement heads began rolling.

Well, damn it, although we can’t have a literal head rolling, we can roll their heads figuratively. How dare they say that the money we get from Social Security is charity! They are the ones receiving the charity from us. They don’t pay any taxes or at least not as much proportionally as we pay!  We Social Security recipients paid for our retirement benefits for all of the years while we were working. Even some of the very wealthy, who paid into it, are able to collect it, and rightly so.

The rich don’t need health insurance, although they’d be fools not to have it, and they are not fools at all. The poor need it and can’t afford it. The big businesses have contributed to the disaster of our economy by exporting jobs. Unemployment soared. That means we have more poor people to care for. Those who don’t pay at least a proportionate share of taxes as others are not doing their duty as American Citizens! They are selfish, at the least, and Traitors, at the most.

So, let’s roll the heads of those who don’t think that the rich and companies should pay a greater portion of their fair share. Let’s vote them out of office. They cry, “Where’s the money gonna come from?” The rational voices say, “From everyone’s paying the same amount as everyone else, which hasn’t happened since Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove changed the ratios and gave the rich and companies greater charity from our tax dollars.  

I say, “Let’s let some heads roll!” We need to clean house of all of those elitist politicians who care only about their rich friends and big companies. It is definitely time for a revolution. Damn! I wish Madame DeFarge were here. She knitted so well!

What To Say When There's Nothing Much To Say

WHAT TO SAY WHEN THERE’S NOTHING MUCH TO SAY

A couple of people have mentioned that they have visited my blog but found nothing new there. Well, my friends, that is because I have not been writing lately. Oh, I write every morning, as I have done for years. I also write E-mails and answers to E’s. I even write about my Kabbalah meditations. I just have not been moved to write for my blog.

I guess I need the inspiration of frustration or fear or annoyance or politics or  whatever it is that I have not had lately. I’ve received some “stimulating” E's and forwards about politics. However, whatever “they” have said or sent has not changed my mind about whom I favor and how I see how our government's being run or who's ruining it. I suspect that what I have said or forwarded to “them” has not changed their views either. So, why bother.

I could talk about my stubborn glaucoma or my stubborn glaucoma MD who insists on wanting to shove hardware in my eyes to control it, or the recently discovered mild swelling of my internal “man organ” that usually swells in most men who have been in their bodies for a certain length of time. (I don't use the "o" or "a" words.) Then, there are the physical aches and pains following my capoeira sessions or the psychic pains following my Kabbalah ones. Maybe I could talk about my many fears from financial to fantasmagorical.  I don’t think that anyone, especially me, really wants to hear about them. I don’t think so.

I did cut the back lawn the other day with my weed whacker. The machine died, so I had to finish by pulling out the remaining weeds. That should speak volumes about my lawn and my machine and my landscaping incentive. Thankfully, the external manifestation of my internal “man organ” still works well, except when excess bodily fluids try to pass through it. It's great in the middle of the night, when it works overtime, but none of that has any relationship to the lawn or weed whacker, so mentioning it here is inane. I like non-sequiturs, though and run-ons and run together ideas lately. They appear almost like the effects of our actions when the former manifest themselves so far removed in time from their causes that we forget that what we did back “then” caused what we are experiencing at the moment.

Oh, yes. I planted a banana tree in my back yard. I hope that I get bananas. I like them a lot. Maybe that will be the start of my turning my backyard into a tropical paradise. After all, I’ve only been in my house for eight years now and have always wanted a banana tree and a tropical paradise. So, I planted the banana tree as a the start after the eight years. Perhaps in another eight years I’ll plant something else.

I know what! I made a duck the other week. I made it the way I made my Christmas goose. I have to go through the process again, though. I forgot to dunk the damned thing in boiling water after brining it. Leslie and Charles liked it very much, none the less, and, after all, I did make it for them and as an excuse to clean my house because I had invited friends for dinner!

That’s what makes house cleaning such a challenge, you see. I have to wait until I invite people over for dinner. Then, I have the house to clean and the dinner to plan and make. It would be so much easier to did dinner without the cleaning, but then, no one  would want to come over for dinner, not even me. Hm. Perplexing.

Well, now, since I have nothing to write about, maybe I have the makings of a successful TV show like Sienfelds. He said his show was about nothing. Believe it or not, I never saw it. I just read that. I figured, if it was about nothing, I live that, so why would I want to watch someone’s nothing turned into a TV show making them millions when I worked my ass off and never made near a million. Maybe that’s sour grapes. Maybe it’s wisdom.

I’ve been watching a lot of HGTV again. I tried it after years of boycotting it. All of a sudden back a couple of years ago, someone in that show’s control group got the brilliant idea that a room or a porch or an attic or a basement or a yard should be called a “space.” That was so blanking pretentious that I wrote to everyone of their shows that I watched (I watched a lot of them, believe me.) and told them that I was done with them. Between that “space” pretentiousness and their “price point,” aka “price limit” or “asking price” or whatever other price,  pomposity, I was done with them!

Well, I gave them another try about a month ago. Lo and behold, they only used those pretentiousnesses a couple of times per show and they reserved them for the shoppers use. So now only the “property virgins” or the “house hunters international” or the “house hunters” or the people who had their basements and yards crashed use them. How refreshing. The show made them look like the pompous asses instead of making their realtors or contractors or designers look like that – as much as they used to anyway.

Well, maybe someday again I’ll have something to write about. I hope so. This writing about nothing is so ...

A TOUCH OF SADNESS UNEXPLAINED

THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT…

...Memorial Day, 4^th of July and Labor Day that have always caused a touch of sadness within me. It hasn’t mattered if I’ve had big plans, small plans or no plans. I’ve experienced this same phenomenon when I lived in New Jersey, Virginia, New York, Florida or been anyplace else when one of those days hit. Being with family, friends, strangers or alone has made no difference either. I’m still hit with a touch of sadness, regret and ennui.

Now, just to be perfectly clear about these feelings vis-à-vis holidays, I am perfectly fine on all of the other ones, well, with the exception of a bit of down at Easter. That’s just a touch though. In fact, for all of the other big days of the year, I am rather enthusiastic and rather eagerly participatory. Not so with these three, though.

I can remember picnics at our house when I was a kid. I guess they were some fun, but they always seemed more trouble than they were worth. Sometimes we went to Bubbling Springs Lake or down the shore or to someone else’s backyard. I guess they were fun then. I don’t remember the sadness back then, but that may just be a memory glitch. Maybe not. Maybe there wasn’t any sadness. I don’t remember having been allowed to be sad when I was a kid anyway.  

For most of my life Memorial Day, at least, should have been a happy occasion. It signaled that school would soon be ending. It wasn’t though. I could understand the 4^th of July’s being a bit of a bummer because that signaled that summer was half over and lesson plans, tests, record keeping, difficult students and parents and administrators would all be coming back into my life in another month. Naturally, Labor Day should be the worst, but it wasn’t anywhere as down as the other two.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the onset of heat of summer. Maybe. I remember planning my being drafted into the army in February so that I wouldn’t have to go through basic training in the heat of summer after school ended. So, here I am in Florida, enjoying the heat even in summer. No, the heat isn’t it.

Maybe it is just my attitude generally about holidays. I tend to prefer intimate and somewhat reflective atmosphere for them, all of them. There really isn’t anything more intimate than a family and/or friends get together. Yet, even when I was in my salad days with wild friends at Riis Park, stoned, buzzed from booze and naked in the ocean there was still a sadness. No. It isn’t my general attitude about holidays.

I like the fact that at those three times of the year it is especially quiet because everyone has gone to the beach or the lake or the mountains or to someone’s backyard. No, I’m not sad when it is quiet at other times of the year. I actually like the quiet and solitude. It is one side of my Pisces nature. No. the quiet can’t be it.

Well, I can’t figure it out. I can’t put my finger on the clue or the key. So, I guess that all I can do is to enjoy the quiet and solitude or plan an event for some or many friends. I can take the time to do things like this and explore or do whatever the moment affords and catches my interest and enjoy it all, even the sadness.

Happy Memorial Day…4^th of July…Labor Day.

Huh!