This is your brain on Marching Band

She might as well have passed me the crack pipe and said, here try some of this….

My secretary, office manager, assistant, and now hated enemy came in yesterday and started talking about marching band, and her son, and band camp, and oh by the way, did I know anyone who would be available to coach the drum line this summer.

So how do you light this thing?....

Trying to remain nonchalant, I asked her about how many kids were in the group, what instruments did they use last year, who coached them last year, how good were they, all the while pretending to search my memory for a good coach.

So after you get it lit then what do you do?....

Let me give a little background. I was a percussion major in college. I dreamed of being a high school band director. I lived and breathed marching band. I think that a good marching band show is the greatest of all performing arts. I went back to my high school from 1995-1999. I took a drum line of six kids and molded them into a winning unit. I loved it. I still do. In 1998, the old band director left, and a new one came in. The new one practically ran the program into the ground. She is one of the reasons why I left. The other being that I was ruining my marriage over my involvement with the organization.

But I am a recovering addict…are you sure that a little puff won’t hurt?....

Since she brought this to me, I have thought of little else. I truly am an addict. The school that we talked about is the other local high school in my town. This is where the band director at my school went after she wrecked the program at my old HS. This is a public school. I have sworn that I would never work at a public school because of the state of discipline there. I did a job in a Jr. High school in this town and had a run in with the principal that almost lead to physical violence. I lost so much respect for him that day that I swore my children would NEVER go to a school where he was an administrator. Guess where he works now?

I am in a quartet that could be District Champs in a few years, I am in a chorus that will be vying to be International Champs in a few years, I have a son that has a learning disability and needs me every night to help him with his work. I have a marriage that is on solid ground. I have a company that I may be running one day soon. I have responsibilities at Church. I coach track. I help with athletic fund raisers. I was going to stay away from the whole marching band thing till my son hit high school, three years hence.

But they have 15 kids, plus the kids in the pit. They have new equipment. I know the director, and she knows me, and will let me do things my way.

I was born to do this.

I might even get paid this time.



Let me see how you smoke that thing again…..
And by the way, I hate you.


Peace

Its the truth, I swear

This is a question that has gone unanswered for centuries but, now we know.

If you put a woman on a pedestal and try to protect her from the Rat Race you're a male chauvinist.
If you stay home and do the housework you're a pansy.
If you work too hard there's never any time for her.
If you don't work enough you're a good-for-nothing bum.
If she has a boring repetitive job with low pay this is exploitation.
If you have a boring repetitive job with low pay..you should get off your lazy ASS and find something better.
If you get a promotion ahead of her..that is favoritism.
If she gets a job ahead of you it's equal opportunity.
If you mention how nice she looks it's sexual harassment.
If you keep quiet. It's male indifference.
If you cry you're a wimp.
If you don't you're an insensitive bastard.
If you make a decision without consulting her you're a chauvinist.
If she makes a decision without consulting you she's a liberated woman.
If you ask her to do something she doesn't enjoy - that's domination.
If SHE asks you it's a favor.
If you appreciate the female form and frilly underwear you're a pervert.
If you don't you're gay.
If you like a woman to shave her legs and keep in shape you're sexist.
If you don't you're unromantic.
If you try to keep yourself in shape you're vain.
If you don't you're a slob.
If you buy her flowers you're after something.
If you don't you're not thoughtful.
If you're proud of your achievements you're full of yourself.
If you don't you're not ambitious.
If she has a headache she's tired.
If you have a headache you don't love her anymore.
If you want it too often you're oversexed.
If you don't there must be someone else.

Men die first because they want to

WTH?

What the HELL is going on here?

In the same weekend, the following has happened:

A former President has said publicly that the West should not punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas, a group that publicly states that Israel should be destroyed, and has sponsored terrorism around the world.

What do you think, Mr. Carter, is going to happen, when the Israelis find themselves in a situation where they are isolated, surrounded by enemies emboldened by your pacifist rhetoric, and they are facing certain annihilation? Let me remind you that the Israelis have both nuclear and biological weapons, and would not hesitate to use them to preserve their country. The Militant Muslim’s don’t give a rat’s ass about economic sanctions or a hand slap from the UN. They will do what they have wanted to do for centuries as soon as they think that no one will stop them. You are propagating that idea.

Another former President said in a speech overseas, that he feels that the cartoonists who made the defamatory cartoons of Mohammed should be tried and jailed. It seems to me that you love of country and appreciation for free speech evaporates depending upon who pays you to speak, and how much you are paid. Your true colors have come out once again sir. You betrayed this country by going to our enemies, dodging the draft, and protesting against the war in Viet Nam. You disgraced your office and yourself by lying to a Grand Jury. There are no caveats in the law about what it is appropriate to lie about when questioned by a Grand Jury. Just because you and your liberal sycophants don’t think that lying to a Grand Jury is wrong simply because the questions in your mind and theirs are not relevant, does not excuse the fact that you are now technically a felon and should be in jail. Your reasoning for the outrageous statements that you made regarding freedom of speech and the Danish cartoonists you justified by saying that we cannot offend the religious sensibilities of certain people. How then can you justify your pro abortion stance? Do you realize that if you kow tow to the fundamentalist Muslim law that you so want to defend, that you have sentenced Monica and all the others that you raped, molested or otherwise misused to death? Don’t you know that the penalty for fornication is death?

Finally, it has come to light that our country is seriously contemplating allowing control of our major ports of entry to an enemy nation. This makes about as much sense as allowing Vincente Fox to set immigration policies. We already know that 95% of the containers brought into this country go unscreened. We have been lucky so far that we have not had a bomb or other device brought into our midst via the ports. We trusted the government of Yemen to deal with the terrorists that attacked the Cole and killed our servicemen. Has anyone reported that capture of the men that escaped? Do you seriously think that the agencies that will supposedly control our ports cannot be compromised? It only takes one nuke on a container vessel to flatten New York. Can we be this stupid?

Mr. President, this may or may not be your fault, but the only way to fix this situation is to stop it. Today. Proceeding forward as if you know better than the rest of us will accomplish nothing more than to make us even more vulnerable, if that is possible, and hand the liberals the White House in the next election. I don’t know which one would be worse.

Peace. Pray for it.

Look inside my mind...

I dont have something really creative to post today, but there is a reason---my brain is being overtaxed by this bid I am working on.

Here is the dillema

I am working on a bid to build a grandstand in Indiana. (our office is only 40 minutes away, so its not like it should be difficult).

The principal players in this bid are the bleacher suppliers. There were five listed as acceptable by the architect, three will be bidding, unless the other two change their mind.

Now comes the problem-
Supplier #1 wants to bid all of the bleachers, plus the steel, plus the concrete underneath supporting the structure
Supplier #2 wants to bid the bleachers and the steel, but no concrete
Supplier#3 wants to bid bleachers only.

Of the two that want to bid the concrete, one wants to bid the excavation, one does not.

In order to bid this properly, I need the pricing separated out, so that I may compare them against other bids from non bleacher people- the goal being to have the lowest bid possible, but still cover all the expenses plus make a profit.

Now, I have other bids coming in for concrete. Some of them include excavation, some don't

Some include the pricing for digging the footings, some include footings, and site grading.

It is making me dizzy.

So thanks for your patience. I am sure I will have something really witty and thought provoking when I have a brain cell to spare.

Peace

The other day, unbidden, this song came into my head.

The Trial (Waters, Bob Ezrin) 5:16
Good morning,
Worm your honor.
The crown will plainly show
The prisoner who now stands before you
Was caught red-handed showing feelings
Showing feelings of an almost human nature;
This will not do.

Call the schoolmaster!

I always said he'd come to no good
In the end your honor.
If they'd let me have my way I could
Have flayed him into shape.
But my hands were tied,
The bleeding hearts and artists
Let him get away with murder.
Let me hammer him today?

Crazy, Toys in the attic
I am crazy,
Truly gone fishing.
They must have taken my marbles away.
Crazy, toys in the attic he is crazy.

You little shit you're in it now,
I hope they throw away the key.
You should have talked to me more often
Than you did, but no!
You had to go
Your own way, have you broken any
Homes up lately?
Just five minutes,
Worm your honor,
Him and Me, alone.

Baaaaaaaaaabe!
Come to mother baby,
let me hold you
In my arms.
M'lud I never wanted him to
Get in any trouble.
Why'd he ever have to leave me?
Worm, your honor, let me take him home.

Crazy,
Over the rainbow, I am crazy,
Bars in the window.
There must have been a door there in the wall
When I came in.
Crazy, over the rainbow, he is crazy.

The evidence before the court is
Incontrivertable, there's no need for
The jury to retire.
In all my years of judging
I have never heard before
Of someone more deserving
Of the full penaltie of law.
The way you made them suffer,
Your exquisite wife and mother,
Fills me with the urge to defecate!

"Hey Judge! Shit on him!"

Since, my friend, you have revealed your
Deepest fear,
I sentence you to be exposed before
Your peers.
Tear down the wall!



This is from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”

This is a powerful album in many ways. Unfortunately, since it produced some hit singles, namely Another Brick in the Wall, and Comfortably Numb, the context and concept of the album was ruined.

I need to check back into my Desert Island list of music to see if I included it. If I didn’t, I should have.

The reason I am mentioning all of this though, is because of the reference to walls, both real and emotional. This week has been a week of walls for me. There have been some that were knocked down, and some that were put up.

“…The prisoner who now stands before you
Was caught red-handed showing feelings
Showing feelings of an almost human nature;
This will not do….”

What a frightening, yet true description of the world that we must live in.

Peace

Sempre Fi

The chorus did a show last night at a local retirement community. I really like doing these shows because the residents are so appreciative of the music and entertainment that we bring. After the long day that I had, it was so refreshing to see the looks on their faces and the smiles when we sang songs that they remembered from their youth.

We almost always close our show with a patriotic medley. The one we used last night was our Armed Forces Medley. We sing the songs of each of the Armed Forces, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. At the beginning of each song the flag of each service branch is carried out, and the Vets from that branch are asked to stand up and be recognized. Although I was never in the service, since I have long years of experience in marching, I was asked to carry the Marine flag. Each time I do this, I try my very best to honor those who served, and live up to the honor of carrying their banner.

We close the song with America the Beautiful, which is one of my favorite all time pieces of music. Since I am carrying that flag, I am not supposed to sing, so as I stand through the song, my eyes will scan the crowd. It never fails to bring tears to my eyes when we bring out the American flag, and all of the people in the room stand. Some of them struggle to do so, and many have to be helped up, but everyone stands. I am glad that I don’t have to sing because I am sure that my voice would crack with the emotion that I feel.

But it always makes me think of the people who won’t stand; of those who think they have a political point to make, and need everyone around them to know that their agenda is bigger than what this flag means. Sometimes it makes me angry, but most times it makes me sad. It seems to me, that these old people would be hurt by the lack of respect. It seems to me, that the people with the political agenda are saying that they are smarter than these doddering old fools who would stand when the flag was presented. I think that they should have to look into the eyes of the ex Marine and tell him that his friends, or his brother, or his father, that did not come home from World War Two, or Korea, or wherever, died for a corrupt, repressive, racist nation.

Where is their courage, to face those who sacrificed so much, so that they can be heard? And if they have the courage, where is their heart, that they could belittle someone who paid that price?
I am in no way saying that there should not be debate regarding the running of this country, and the things we involve ourselves in. But there is a need for a return to politeness, gentility, and common sense.

Grab someone you love and hug them tight today.

Peace


On a related note, my doc says that my BP was normal yesterday for the first time in years.

Yay me

Damn Funny if you ask me

Subject: Ireland declares war on France

Jacques Chirac, The French President, is sitting in his office when his telephone rings.

"Hallo, Mr. Chirac!" a heavily accented voice said. "This is Paddy down at the Harp Pub in County Clare, Ireland. I am ringing to inform you that we are officially declaring war on you!"

"Well, Paddy," Chirac replied, "This is indeed important news! How big is your army?"

"Right now," says Paddy, after a moment's calculation, "there is meself, me Cousin Sean, me next door neighbour Seamus, and the entire darts team from the pub. That makes eight!"

Chirac paused. "I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 100,000 men in my army waiting to move on my command."

"Begoora!" says Paddy. "I'll have to ring you back.

Sure enough, the next day, Paddy calls again. "Mr. Chirac, the war is still on. We have managed to get us some infantry equipment!"

"And what equipment would that be Paddy?" Chirac asks.

"Well, we have two combines, a bulldozer, and Marphy's farm tractor."

Chirac sighs amused. "I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 6,000 tanks and 5,000 armored personnel carriers. Also, I have increased my army to 150,000 since we last spoke."

"Saints preserve us!" says Paddy. "I'll have to get back to you."

Sure enough, Paddy rings again the next day. "Mr. Chirac, the war is still on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne! We have modified Jackie McLaughlin's ultra-light with a couple of shotguns in the cockpit, and four boys from the Shamrock Bar have joined us as well!"

Chirac was silent for a minute and then cleared his throat. "I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 100 bombers and 200 fighter planes. My military bases are surrounded by laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke, I have increased my army to 200,000!"

Oh, glory be says Paddy, "I will have to ring you back."

Sure enough, Paddy calls again the next day. "Top o' the mornin', Mr. Chirac! I am sorry to inform you that we have had to call off the war."

"Really? I am sorry to hear that," says Chirac. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Well," says Paddy, "we had a long chat over a few pints of Guinness and decided there is no fookin' way we can feed 200,000 French prisoners."

Brooks was here....

I am wondering if I committed Blogger Suicide by entitling a post "Farewell"

Judging by the hits on the stat counter, I may have been successful.

That was not my intent.


Troubador

Its a dogs life

Pavlov in reverse?

My dog, bless her heart, has a bladder the size of a pea. I usually let her out before I go to bed, which is some time between 11 and Midnight most nights. Then she goes out when my wife gets up at 6. For some reason, the dog has it in her head that she needs another potty trip sometime around 4 AM. I watch when she goes outside, and she really does have to go. Then she usually wanders into a far corner of the yard to check on something very important.

What I can’t figure out, is how she lasts from 7:30 in the morning, until 5:30 in the evening without exploding. But that is a mystery I might never figure out.

Anyway, since I try to use my time efficiently, while the dog is patrolling the back yard, I will stumble into the bathroom for my own little potty break. This saves me from having to get back up in another 20 minutes, when my brain catches up to my bladder. It’s a 40 year old guy thing. So when I am done, I go out, call her back into the house, wipe her feet give her a treat, and then stagger back to bed for another hour or so of sleep.

This morning the dog came in and was doing her pee pee whimper, and I decided that she was just going to wait. She tried everything to wake me up, the cold nose under the blanket, the pawing at the side of the bed, whimper some more. Finally, she managed to wake my wife up, who scolded the dog and told her to go lay down.

Just as I was drifting back off to sleep, the signal reached my brain from my bladder, and I HAD to get up. It seems that I was the one being trained all this time, not the dog. I could swear that she was laughing at me as I let her out.

And I was having such good dreams of the Swedish Bikini Team cage match with the Ben Gal Cheerleaders…

sigh

Farewell

I posted this yesterday.



“…every interaction that I have with the creations that God has made, matters in some way. I don’t believe that there are actions without results, or decisions without consequences.”


This morning I received a reply from a person who has been a reader of my blog since I first started writing. Her page was the first link that posted on my daily reads (chronologically, not the order that they are in right now.)

She told me that my blog had become too religious, and that in good conscience, she could no longer come here and read what I had to say, and that she was removing my link from her blog.

I am not writing this to be retaliatory, there are no hard feelings, and she will always be welcome here.

I am just surprised that my point from above has been reinforced so emphatically, so directly, and so quickly.

Peace

Spam catcher- Please disregard

Taking a break from the rant, at least till lunch...

I hit a deer on the way home from rehearsal last night. It was dark and late, and she ran out in front of the van. I was standing on the brakes, and you could smell the rubber. When I got out to check the truck, I did not see her, so perhaps I only knocked her down and she managed to run into the brush, which is where she wanted to be in the first place.

This has been on my mind ever since though. It bothers me that she might have been severely injured and suffered. I hope that either she was severely bruised, or else so badly injured that she died quickly. I think that God puts all creatures and things in this world for a purpose. I cannot conceive that the purpose for this deer was to end up on the grill of a van.

Maybe her purpose though, was to remind me of my place in the overall scheme of things. It seems obvious to me that the deer was known to God. All things are. The deer likely had a name, because all things do. I am certain that if the deer was killed, or that it suffered, that God suffered along with it. That is his nature. God does not create something, and then forget about it. The point I am trying to make, is that every interaction that I have with the creations that God has made, matters in some way. I don’t believe that there are actions without results, or decisions without consequences. Perhaps the life purpose of that deer was to remind me of this. I hope not.

On it goes...

The rant continues:

JJ, a Blogger who I read every day now, observed on her blog that a lot of people have slowed down in their postings. She surmised that the reason might be all that is going on in the world. I think she is right. So many things have happened over the past few days, that if you are not in some way affected by what you see and hear, you are either ignoring it on purpose, or else you have no idea of the implications of it all. That is not meant to be a belittling statement. I wish that I could just go about living my life, safe and secure, and not have to worry about the future, but I cannot. I put my finger on (finally) why I get so emotional now when I recall my trip to Disney. The reason is, that for four short days, I didn’t have to worry about anything. I didn’t have to nag the kids about homework, I didn’t have to meet a dead line at work, I didn’t have to worry about getting the shopping done, or whether or not dinner would be on the table on time so that we could get to whatever practice the kids were involved in. For four blessed days, the yoke was lifted off my shoulders, and I could be a child again. Those of you who do not know or do not care what is going on in the world, you may be the smartest ones of all.

7. Twenty prisoners have escaped from prison in Yemen. Twenty terrorists, some of who were responsible for blowing a hole in the side of one of our ships, the Cole. Have any of you seen pictures of the Cole? Does anyone know what kind of explosion it takes to do that kind of damage to a man of war? Has anyone considered how lucky the sailors who survived were that the fuel tanks did not ignite, or the weapons magazines did not explode? We are lucky, as a nation, that there is not another mass grave on foreign soil standing as a tribute to the folly of trusting terrorist nations. Let me ask another question. How many people think that this could have been accomplished without collaboration from the local government? How many accomplices does it take to tunnel under a jail and then have twenty inmates vanish? These men were convicted of mass murder. Yet our peaceful Islamic allies have not found them yet. Allow the rumor to circulate that the Koran was some how mishandled, and our politicians wet themselves. Watch the news and see if there are any repercussion for another crime committed against the people of the United States. Sure, the politicians will stand at whatever podium and talk into whatever camera is pointed at them, but when it is all said and done, much is said and nothing is done.

A veritable cornucopia

Its gonna take a post or two to get this all of my system, so please be patient.

Also, I started "the diet" today, so if I sound a little cranky, its because I am a little cranky



Our world today….

I have about a million things running through my head, and I am going to try and share a few of them. Pick the ones you like….

1. I read about a tunnel discovered leading from Mexico into the US. It was large enough to funnel hundreds of people in, and it probably did. Why are we not working harder to stop this?
2. I am disappointed, once again, with the outcome of the Super Bowl. The Steelers should have never made it out if Cincinnati. I will never be convinced otherwise that it was not a cheap shot that took our quarterback out of the game and put his whole career in Jeopardy.

3. I think people who think that Islam is a religion of peace are delusional. I saw what has happened in Europe in response to a couple of political cartoons. I don’t think that the people who were burned out of their embassies and are in fear for their lives think that Islam is very peaceful.

4. I think that modern day government is a new version of slavery. I am a normal hard working middle aged, middle class male. I work 50 hours a week to put bread on the table and keep my house warm. My government takes my labor and gives it to people who have not worked for it, and don’t intend to work for it. If I refuse to hand over my hard earned dollars, I am facing jail, and my belongings can be sold to the highest bidder. Then the proceeds from the sale go to those who did not sweat and bleed for the things I have. The recipients of my work are not the fat cat politicians, they already have their money. The people who are the new slave lords are the masses that cross the border every night who “play the system.” Their excuse is that they are poor in Mexico, or Latin America, or wherever else they came from. Their accomplices in politics look down upon me as if I am some kind of un educated fool, or as if I have no compassion for the plight of the poor. Neither is the case. I have a college degree and I consider myself well educated. I am also a compassionate person, but it seems to me that compassion is something that and individual should decide to show. You cannot decide for me, to what causes I will be sympathetic and which I will not. Governmental compassion, shown by subsidizing those who overwhelm our emergency rooms, and our schools, and our welfare, and our jails, is nothing more than taxation without representation.

5. I really don’t care what Cindy Sheehan has to say about anything. I think that her invitation to the State of the Union address was simply another publicity stunt, and an attempt to embarrass our President. Whether you voted for him or not, no one has the right to disrupt the State of the Union address which is a Constitutionally mandated duty of the President. Free speech is not at stake here.

6. I will say it again Amanda, free speech is a myth, and you should be glad of it. This will sound very patronizing, but you simply are not old enough, not seasoned enough to understand why this is true. You have an astonishing intellect, but there is no substitute for experience.

Telephone Directory Papparazzi

We were looking up a phone number this morning in a local directory. And there, on the bottom of the City page, was a photo of my son. He was standing next to a sculpture that had been displayed in the town square.

This is clearly my son, and he knew he was having his picture taken. Now, two things bother me about this. One, the little turd didn’t tell anyone, but more than that, nobody asked permission to publish his photo. This phone book gets distributed all over the county. Its not that I would have said “No”, but I thought that a person had to be asked.

I am thinking that the Yellow Pages might have just bought his college education. But then again, I am not that sort of person. I will have to ask a lawyer friend if this is legal or not.

Or maybe someone out there knows.

Peace

I get the best e mails...

A man walks to 5th Ave. & 42nd St. in New York City during a downpour
and somehow manages to hail a taxi immediately. He gets into the taxi,
and the cabbie says, "Perfect timing. You're just like Sheldon."

"Who?"

"Sheldon Cohen. There's a guy who did everything right. Like my cab
being vacant during a rainstorm. It would have happened like that for
Sheldon every single time."

"Well, no one is perfect. There are always a few clouds over everybody", stated the passenger.

"Not Sheldon," said the cabbie. "He was a terrific athlete. He could
have gone on the pro tour in tennis He could golf like Tiger Woods.

He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star.
Handsome and sophisticated, more than Cary Grant. He had a better
body than Schwartzenegger in his prime. He was something!

"Somehow, Sheldon just knew exactly how to make women happy," the
cabbie continued. "He had a memory like a computer. Could remember
everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which fork to eat with.

He could fix anything. Not like me. I try to change a fuse, and the whole
neighborhood blacks out."

"Wow, incredible , no wonder you remember him!" said the passenger.


"Well, I never actually met Sheldon," admitted the cabbie.


"Then how do you know so much about him?" asked the passenger.


"After he died, I married his wife."