Ah, our favorite non-candidate. . .

. . . (from The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said Calendar)

[After being asked by a television news anchorman if any new initiatives are in the works] "Gah! Nothing specific right now. Sitting here in these chairs that I'm going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it's our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don't get away with that."

You must have guessed who said this. It's Sarah Palin.




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On very special. . .

. . . occasions. . .

When celebrating felt right
This place we'd go
With AMBIENCE AND WINE
On a Saturday night
Caricatures hung on the wall
Eavesdropping on our most intimate moments
I love you

It was essential to go there
To mark the passage of time
Between the dates
We used to signify
The bond we shared and to dine
Only served Angus A-1 prime
To patrons of each and every persuasion
I loved you

But now that place is all gone
Where did our love go
Where is the ambience and
McCafferty's piano

While you eat you're serenaded by some local musician
Playing bad renditions of the popular songs
You sing along

And so it ended
Our passion somehow just faded away
And likewise too
That place we held divine
Became a dance club today
The memories come flooding in
Sweet talk and all the romancing we did there
It's gone now

But now that place is all gone
Where did our love go
Where is the ambience and
McCafferty's piano

McCafferty's Piano (from the forthcoming AMBIENCE & WINE [stay tuned])
©2010 Raymond M. Jozwiak


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Finally it happened. . .

. . . the trials and tribulations of Ful Treatment. . .

A match. A 'club' that required exactly the musical product we were offering. It was a relatively roomy, oblong configuration with a large rectangular bar that encircled the tending staff, located at one end with a dance floor to the side and a stage at the far end of that. It was located in an industrial area to the south of the city, in close proximity to the docks, business of which brought many merchant marine and an assortment of blue-collar clientele for some weekend reverie. In fact, we frequently, unfairly generalizing, joked about the patrons' general lack of teeth and violent tendencies. Let's face it though, large amounts of quickly consumed alcohol frequently does result in less-than-gentlemanly behavior in humans, irrespective of type of employment or socioeconomic level.
Our bigotry was not based entirely in fiction though. One particularly well-lubricated Friday night crowd included two, physically imposing females, complete with the teased, bouffant hairdo, each with a personalized version of a blond-streak adornment. Someone in the crowd was heard to refer to these ladies as 'skunk-heads', referring to the aforementioned blond coloring. As the evening progressed, it became obvious to us and our wives/girl-friends/significant others that accompanied us to the gig that night that the 'skunk-heads' had become enamored with several male members of the crowd. It became more obvious still later, that there was some discontent among the party of ladies and their newly-found, romantic interests. Eventually a real, true-to-life bar brawl erupted as a result of the developing sexual tension (or was it friction?) When the fists began flying, the entire band and our visitors were, for lack of a better description, was flabbergasted. At that point, we all know precisely what happened, but each would relate a different version now if asked, one of the involved merchant marines picked up a chair from a table adjoining the dance floor, and broke it over the head of his antagonist, sending a wooden chair leg hurling meteor-like onto the bandstand. It seemed as thought the frame froze at that point, all sound ceased, and we all stared toward the crowd, mouths agape in astonishment for what seemed to be a short eternity, but ended with Greg (our saxman/vocalist) picking up the disconnected furniture appendage, waving it in the direction of the audience saying something to the effect that he dared anyone to try anything NOW!




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Getting ready. . .

. . . for the rain.

Only once in a lifetime
Does the right time appear
And that time for me
Was the day that I met you
There are good and there are bad things
Misunderstandings
That's just the way life is
So we'll have to face each storm
Before the next kiss

I'm getting ready for the rain
Here come the clouds all rolling by us
Are we ever really ready for another pain
I'm getting ready for the rain

But I know the rain will surely end
And the sun will shine again
It always does
It always will
Nothing ventured nothing ever gained
Always different but the same
When will we learn
When will we learn to

Live like its our last day
Don't take the fast way around
Cause this love we have
Is a fragile thing we've found
Why should we continue hurting
And go on skirting the issue of our love
Cause we know these sleepless nights
Will pass like the clouds from above

I'm getting ready for the rain
Here come the clouds all rolling by us
Are we ever really ready for another pain
I'm getting ready for the rain

READY FOR THE RAIN
©1992 Raymond M. Jozwiak



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Stuxnet. . .

. . . sounds like the name of a new, sci-fi, thriller. Well it IS!!!! Only it's real.

(from Wikipedia.com)
"Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in June 2010. It targets Siemens industrial software and equipment running Microsoft Windows. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems, it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.

The worm initially spreads indiscriminately, but includes a highly specialized malware payload that is designed to target only Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that are configured to control and monitor specific industrial processes. Stuxnet infects PLCs by subverting the Step-7 software application that is used to reprogram these devices.

Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations, with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran; Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60% of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran.Siemens stated on 29 November that the worm has not caused any damage to its customers,but the Iran nuclear program, which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured clandestinely, has been damaged by Stuxnet. Russian computer security firm Kaspersky Lab concluded that the sophisticated attack could only have been conducted "with nation-state support", this was further backed up by the Finnish computer security company F-Secure's chief researcher Mikko Hyppönen who commented in a Stuxnet FAQ, "That's what it would look like, yes". It has been speculated that Israel and the United States may have been involved. . . "

Doesn't sound out of the realm of reality, does it?!




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Have you ever really. . .

. . . read the story of Sodom from the book of Genesis? This is the text used by the literally 'uninformed' to defend their homophobic positions; those who think their Bible must be interpreted 'literally'.

(paraphrasing from The Sins of the Scriptures, by John Shelby Spong, © 2005 John Shelby Spong)
'Travel in the ancient world was hard and dangerous, so travelers were few. Visitors depended upon the hospitality of a citizen of the place they were visiting. Without it, more often than not, strangers became fair game for abuse which usually took the form of ribald play in which the manhood of the strangers was compromised.

The two 'messengers', who accompanied the Lord in his inquest of the citizens of Sodom with the intention of destruction, left the Lord with Abraham and visited the city of Sodom. Late on the evening of their arrival, Abraham's nephew Lot offers the strangers hospitality, much to the dismay of the town's menfolk who had been eagerly anticipating a night of debauchery since the arrival of the two. They surrounded Lot's house and demanded the surrender of the two visitors. Lot refused knowing that once the protection of a home had been offered, the honor of the entire household was at stake if that protection was compromised.

So Lot makes a counter offer, one that literal interpreters of the Bible generally fail to criticize. He offers his two virgin daughters to the crowd to "do to them as you please." (Also consider the literal interpretation of offering daughters as though they were property, precisely the ancient biblical view of women.) The daughters have, of course, not been consulted regarding the proposition, as being property only, they have no say in the matter.

Well, in short, Lot and his family (including the daughters) escape and the city is destroyed by the visitors in accordance with the Lord's intention.'

Have we learned the biblical condemnation of homosexuality from this fascinating little story? I must have missed it. What I did, and we all should, learn from it is that NONE of this material should be taken LITERALLY!




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I can't explain . . .

. . . or to paraphrase Ellington, 'If you have to ask, you'll never know.'

from Slate By Dahlia Lithwick|Posted Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011, at 5:57 PM ET
". . . I confess to being driven insane this past month by the spectacle of television pundits professing to be baffled by the meaning of Occupy Wall Street. Good grief. Isn’t the ability to read still a job requirement for a career in journalism? And as last week’s inane “What Do They Want?” meme morphs into this week’s craven “They Want Your Stuff” meme, I feel it’s time to explain something: Occupy Wall Street may not have laid out all of its demands in a perfectly cogent one-sentence bumper sticker for you, Mr. Pundit, but it knows precisely what it doesn’t want. It doesn’t want you.

What the movement clearly doesn’t want is to have to explain itself through corporate television. To which I answer, Hallelujah. You can’t talk down to a movement that won’t talk back to you. . .

. . . By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance. The rest of America has little trouble understanding that these are ragtag, complicated, and leaderless times. This may not make for great television, but any movement that acknowledges that fact deserves enormous credit."




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